Barry Farrimond-Chuong MBE FRWCMD, CEO of Open Up Music and the National Open Youth Orchestra, reflects on a career that blends arts, technology and social change to create new opportunities for disabled young musicians and reshape the future of inclusive music-making.

1. How did you land your current role, and what was your career path leading up to it?
I co-founded the organisation, first as a Community Interest Company with Dr Duncan Gillard, and then as Open Up Music with Doug Bott, who was our Artistic Director until recently. My background is in acting, music, and technology, and I've always orbited the arts. I have ADHD, and the arts were the place that made sense for me, where I found structure, expression, and community. That experience of being met by something, rather than shut out by it, shaped everything for me.

The early Open Up Music work was research and development, co-designing musical instruments that more people could access and play. That led to the Clarion, an instrument you can play with any part of your body, including your eyes. It comes in the form of an app you can download for free, which turns your iPad or Windows tablets into an accessible instrument that can be played live.

From there we established the UK's first special school orchestras, and eventually the National Open Youth Orchestra, the world's first disabled-led national youth ensemble. It promotes a more inclusive world of music, where young disabled and non-disabled musicians rehearse and perform together. Each step grew out of the last. It didn't feel like a career plan so much as following the work wherever it needed to go.

2. What is the most interesting part of your job?
The people. An extraordinary community of young musicians, a team I learn from constantly, and partners who are genuinely trying to shift something structural rather than just tick a box. The world has too often disabled people — not inevitably, but by design. Working together to challenge that is as vital as it is interesting.

3. What would be your alternative career?
Definitely still in the arts. Actor, musician, sculptor. Though honestly, those are all things I still do anyway.

4. What inspired you to work in the charity sector?
A deep love for the arts, and a real drive to make positive change happen. I believe the arts are strengthened by the diversity of people that make them, and that they're diminished when voices are left out. Everything I do is pointed at making sure music is open to everyone, and reflects the full range of human experience.

5. What challenges do you face in your day-to-day work?
The work itself is joyful. The challenge is everything around it! Funding cycles, systemic inertia, and the sheer effort of making change stick. And doing all of that without losing the lightness that makes the work worth doing in the first place.

6. What would make the biggest positive difference to the sector right now?
The sector often treats inclusion as a specialist niche rather than a design principle. If every organisation built accessibility and inclusion into its services from the outset, specialist organisations could spend far more time innovating and far less time filling gaps left by other organisations. That shift would have a positive impact well beyond disability, improving services for many groups.

Barry Farrimond-Chuong MBE FRWCMD is the CEO of Open Up Music & National Open Youth Orchestra.

The National Open Youth Orchestra's #ThisIsOurOrchestra tour launched at the Barbican Centre, London on 30 June 2026 with further dates at, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff (30 July 2026), and at the BBC Proms at Bristol Beacon (9 August 2026). Info and tickets here.

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