As Registered Music Therapists, we often speak of accessibility—but what does it really mean to make our work accessible across cultures, systems, and lived experiences? In this keynote, we will explore accessibility as a deeply relational and ethical practice. Drawing upon my program development experiences in both Mumbai and Sydney, I will share how ecological, strengths-based, and culturally responsive approaches can create sustainable systemic change—particularly when we focus on accessibly supporting not just the individual in therapy, but also the community and caregivers surrounding them.

Navigating system requirements—through documentation, funding, and evaluation—creates tension between what we know works and what we must prove. While mixed-methods research balances numerical data with lived experience to meet system expectations, it can also cause moral distress when relational work feels reduced to clinical metrics. We will explore how co-design aligns programs with community and system needs, and how reflective practice preserves the integrity of our work within complex systems. This keynote will also explore the neuroscience behind music therapy’s benefits, using everyday language to support accessible programs that bridge clinical, community, and systemic priorities—amplifying both impact and reach.

At the heart of this conversation is intersectionality—how our identities shape our work, our visibility, and our resilience. As a woman of colour, a new parent, and a practitioner recently engaging with creative arts therapies as a participant, I will reflect on how these experiences inform my evolving understanding of care, accessibility, and healing. We will also honour the ancestral and Indigenous roots of music as a spiritual and communal healing practice and reflect on how this wisdom can guide our modern-day practice.

Together, we will ask: What systems do we need to challenge, what stories do we need to tell, and who gets to define what accessible music therapy encompasses?