Understanding barriers to engagement amongst gender diverse music technology youth

The audio industries are a majority white, cis, male demographic and so this chapter explores the question of engagement in music technology activities. On some level youth culture and music production identities are curated through social (and internalised) attitudes, a sense of belonging and even the design of the technology itself. In 2015 the Yorkshire Sound Women Network (YSWN) was set up to support women, girls and gender diverse people in sound. Hosting workshops in audio as a path to curating an audio community for otherwise isolated gender minorities; in turn lowering the stakes to engagement, increasing social capital and creating safer opportunities to explore, take risks and flourish. As part of a wider portfolio of activities, the Youth Music funded ‘WIRED’ education project, includes face-to-face music technology clubs for young people delivered across various Yorkshire locations as well as a series of online courses, as well as new research exploring the challenges to engagement. The results will be published in this chapter with additional commentary on the concept of engagement and implications of this work from Dr Eddie Dobson, drawing from their recent multimodal research of extra-curricular music technology activities.