The release of this episode, November the 15th, coincides with European Music Therapy Day. The focus this year is on 'Hearing Your Voice'. Appropriately, this is the first interview in this series with a music therapy service user.

Dean Beadle has toured the UK for a number of years sharing his experiences of life as an autistic person. He has also spoken in Denmark, Belgium, Guernsey and Ireland as well as undertaking four annual seminar tours of Australia and New Zealand. Through his humorous and insightful speeches Dean outlines his positive outlook on his diagnosis. You can see a clip of Dean in 2011 on YouTube. Dean had music therapy as a child in SE London with music therapist Judith Nockolds, which he talks about in part two of this interview, out next month.

Part one has a focus on perceptions of autism, including Dean's own feelings about his diagnosis, and some of the challenges he faced as a child coming to terms with various aspects of his identity. He also draws interesting parallels between autism in a social context and other social issues such as gay rights.