Q: What do Lego and musical theatre have in common?

A: Our guest for this second last show of 2024 that’s what.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with our new friend Matthew Shifrin, someone we met with the rest of the gang at the drama camp/artist’s retreat we attended in Mount Vernon, Maine over the summer.

We spend the first half of this episode talking all things accessible Lego as Matthew shares about how the world-wide children’s activity was finally made accessible for him on his 13th birthday, about his visit to LEGO HQ in Denmark, and how he’s created Bricks For The Blind, a non-profit organisation bringing sighted allies and blind testers/users together to adapt 220 complex sets in its first year in operation, not to mention unthought-of uses for the famous stackable blocks.

In the second half of this second last show of ours for 2024, we hear about how Matt’s love of musical theatre began, including learning to play accordion in a week to attend an Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and his work at one time with a gesture coach, Matt being kind enough to share with us and the listeners a bit of his immense musical talents with a few songs from his various performances such as the musical he wrote about his Jewish grandmother.

Bonus Material: we’ve included a second song (two-for-one) for this episode of the podcast which wasn’t included for the live airing on Radio Western originally. And, whether sighted or blind/young or simply young-at-heart, go check out Bricks For The Blind to learn more about how LEGO’s being made accessible, one brick at a time, by Matthew Shifrin and friends:

https://bricksfortheblind.org