Interview: Deaf entrepreneur Marion Marincat on accessible acoustic gigs taking place this World Hearing Day (BSL)

With World Hearing Day taking place again on Friday, deaf entrepreneur Marion Marincat speaks to Liam O’Dell about his hearing wellness brand Mumbli and their collaboration with live music company Sofar Sounds on a string of accessible acoustic gigs taking over London tomorrow.

Last year, for the first time in three years, Marion Marincat was able to do what many hearing people can perhaps take for granted: attend an acoustic music gig which was both accessible and enjoyable. The cochlear implant user, now 38, went to the concert which was a pilot of a new partnership between live music brand Sofar Sounds and his own tech start-up, Mumbli.

Using audio technology, Mumbli records the decibel levels of a space (though not conversations) and analyses that information to present recommendations for how an environment could be made more accessible to the more than 12 million people in the UK with hearing loss, and the eight million people who are otherwise sensitive to sound through conditions such as tinnitus, autism and ADHD.

Marion believes the technology goes beyond a hearing loop system, as although it is “beneficial”, a restaurant environment could have such technology available but still be very loud.

“As you know, hearing aids are getting more and more hi-tech, special and amazing,” he tells me over Google Meet, “but it makes up for about half of the experience, because I couldn’t connect in social spaces with friends. I couldn’t understand much of what was going on, and noise is a massive factor for me, at least.

“Mumbli was born out of this idea of, well, hearing is not something people talk about unless you have a problem with it, or unless you know someone who has a problem with it,” Marion continues. “But even then, they talk about it, but they don’t really understand what it means to have a hearing problem. So hearing wellness as a whole was not a thing, so I wanted to change that.”

As for the recommendations, Marion explains buildings are given an “audio accessibility score” made up of eight metrics. “Each metric can be influenced by small to big tweaks, depending on how bad the score is. Funnily enough, in the last few years, the absorption material options have become more and more affordable, so the venue doesn’t need to invest half a million. There are some small things that can be done to improve some of the metrics.

“We can have a sound map of the space. We take the floor plan and we look at the whole venue [and] we can suggest quiet areas that are always – not necessarily the same area – but the venue can always provide a quieter area for people when you go to a restaurant and you ask for a quiet table. Where would you get it,” he adds. “Always, the waiter or the staff will turn around and guess, ‘maybe there’s that one’. So we want to take that guesstimate out of it.”

Marion also notes that while a venue is wheelchair accessible if a ramp is provided, but audio accessibility is not as “black and white”, given that sound is “so volatile and versatile”.

It’s a challenge, but one Mumbli and Sofar Sounds hope to tackle with a string of acoustic gigs across London on Friday, on an awareness day which Marion says is “great”, but historically has also been “very sad and dull”. Sofar Sounds’ regional performances co-ordinator Brandon Myers believes it will “enable every guest to connect to the artists through their music on another level. We’re delighted to be partnering with Mumbli to make live music a pleasure that everyone can enjoy.”

And what do the artists involved in the acoustic sessions (so secretive is the line-up that even Marion doesn’t know who’s performing) make of the initiative? “We had a couple of artists in the warm-up sessions saying that it feels a lot more powerful for them to sing without application. They feel much more connected to the crowd and a lot more emotional, which is interesting,” reveals Marion. “We suggested the artists bear in mind that it would be great to almost share what they’re about to sing about, or create an anticipation of what’s going to happen, because in my case – and I’m sure other people are like me – it’s easier to understand what’s about to happen if someone is laying the floor.”

It leads nicely into my next question. If we’re talking about expectation, what can audiences anticipate from the gigs? “It’s like going in someone’s living room, sitting on the floor, grabbing some chips and a beer and listening to amazing artists performing just for you,” he replies. “That’s the feeling. The idea of being intimate is real.”

Though not every concert comes with such a vibe – others have amplification, and are far noisier in packed venues – and in Marion’s view, it’s possible for these types of gigs to be audio accessible, but a “lot of intention” is needed from organisers to get to such a point. “I think we could do audio accessible concerts, but it might not be easy to do an audio accessible concert where everyone enjoys it as much as these intimate acoustic acts,” he admits. “I could be wrong, but we have to test that and see how we can do it.”

Five Sofar Acoustic gigs will take place in London on Friday 3 March – in Hammersmith, Shoreditch, Covent Garden, King’s Cross and Broadway Market.

Shoreditch is sold out, but £25 tickets can still be bought for the other performances, with a discount applied using the code ‘MUMBLI15’.

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Photos: Mumbli/Sofar Sounds

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.