San Antonio to hold Good Vibrations Music & Arts Festival featuring deaf/hard-of-hearing accessible concert

Next month San Antonio will host the first fully-encompassing deaf and hard-of-hearing accessible concert on May 20, 2017 at the 1850 Settlement in San Antonio, Texas. In recognition of May’s Better Hearing & Speech Month, Good Vibrations Music & Art Festival will feature eight hours of music featuring headliner Ben Rector, Matt Wertz, Penny & Sparrow, Ryan Proudfoot, Brad Blackburn and Miss San Antonio Emma Faye Rudkin.

Our goal is to be a place of fun where festivalgoers can enjoy a musical and cultural experience that people of all ages, backgrounds and circumstances can enjoy with dozens of craft booths, good food and good music. Festivalgoers can enjoy a completely deaf accessible concert. The Good Vibrations Music & Art Festival will have live captioning, and ASL interpretation available as well as T-coiling, vibrating backpacks and a visual light show, which will sync to the performances.

Check out the news below:

SAN ANTONIO, April 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — In recognition of May’s Better Hearing & Speech Month, the Good Vibrations Music & Arts Festival (GVMAF) will host the first fully-encompassing deaf and hard-of-hearing accessible concert on May 20, 2017 at the 1850 Settlement in San Antonio, Texas. Ticket sales and festival commissions will benefit Texas-based nonprofit, Aid the Silent—an organization that caters to the deaf/HOH community.

The festival will include eight hours of music featuring headliner Ben Rector, Matt Wertz, Penny & Sparrow, Ryan Proudfoot, Brad Blackburn and Miss San Antonio Emma Faye Rudkin. Fun for the entire family, festivalgoers can shop artisan’s booths, partake in crafts and games, and delight in good grub from area food trucks. GVMAF’s vibe is unique to the South Texas area, highlighting a free-spirit ambiance complete with custom-made photo ops, flower crowns, handcrafted creations and hours of fun.

The event, open to hearing and non-hearing alike, is designed to promote inclusion and unity within the hearing and deaf/HOH worlds. Presented by industry leaders in hearing solution technologies Cochlear Americas, Ear Institute of Texas and GN ReSound, the festival will include accommodations for those who were born deaf or those affected by hearing loss through a series of efforts that will enhance and assist deaf/HOH persons in experiencing music through visual, tactile, and auditory enrichments.

The concert will showcase real-time captioning; sign language interpretation; T-coiling, a looping technology that allows hearing-aid wearers to tune into the music directly; SubPacs, a transformative wearable audio technology that converts sound into high fidelity vibrations; and a synchronized LED dance floor that will harmonize to the beats of the music.

To hearing persons, these additions might go unnoticed, but for those who are deaf/HOH, it will be a huge step in accommodations—a leap forward not previously accomplished to this magnitude in other music events in the area. The GVMAF’s mission is to educate the local community about hearing loss prevention, early intervention opportunities, and ways to accommodate deaf /HOH persons at events.