An Accessibility Success Story

Wed, 7 April 2021

Amidst the shutdowns, border closures, cancellations and redundancies the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought upon the arts industry, Melbourne Digital Concert Hall has been an incredible success story. 

Co-directors Adele Schonhardt and Chris Howlett established the ticketed live music streaming platform as a way of supporting musicians whose income suddenly dried up in March 2020, but they had no idea that just a year later they would have presented hundreds of concerts (including almost 1600 appearances by more than 700 individual artists) streamed from locations around Australia as well as London, Berlin, Singapore and San Francisco, raised over $1.25 million and become the country’s fastest growing national arts company.

According to an audience survey conducted by MDCH, people who don’t go to concert halls formed more than a quarter of the platform’s total market. “That's a significant group of people and certainly worth looking after,” Schonhardt says. “It can be for any number of reasons, it can be health related or due to living remotely or whatever the case may be.”

“Because we’re not bound by a particular place it means that we can really start to work towards that accessibility for everybody that a lot of arts organisations talk about – how to increase access to the arts for all Australians,” she says.

Listen up tonight at 5.30pm, Wednesday 7th April and 9.30pm, Saturday 10th April.