John Rolls: What If Inclusion Worked Better Than Quotas

What if everything you thought you knew about autism and
mental health wasn't the full story. Today's conversation might change
the way you see it. This is why not me
embracing autism and mental health world, Why real conversations about autism,
mental health and the stories that shape our lives. I'm
Tony Mantor. This is where understanding begins. If this kind
of conversation matters to you, follow the show so you
don't miss what comes next. Joining us today is John Rowls.
He's here to share the story behind a powerful and
inclusive event he hosts at the Gremlin Club, one that
creates a truly special night for all, especially within the
special needs community.
Welcome to the show, John, Tony's nice to see you
as always.
Oh yes, it's my pleasure to have you on. So
give us a little information on what you're doing with
the Gremlin Club now.
The Gremlin Club is a small social club down here
in West Wales, in Commarvin. They were really looking forward
to having some entertainment on a Sunday night. The rest
of the week is all filed. They didn't have anything
on a Sunday, so they approached a company called Welsh
Factor which was a talent competition down here.
I think they covered up most of South Wales.
And the idea was basically to have a night where
the contestants could practice the song's practice performances, practice all
the year round, so that when they get to the
Welsh Factor competition then they were a bit more rehearsed
and a bit more polished. The lady who was hosting
it was a Lease I think you've met at Lease before,
a larger than life cabaret singer as well. She knew
her trade, so that was the idea behind it. And then,
of course because it's in an open pub, then on
top of these very accomplished singers which gave it a standard,
you then had all these other pub singers who wanted
to come in and have a go. Now they were
not karaoke singers, they were people who genuinely wanted to
join in and sing.
How did you find that to work out? With everything
he was doing? Moving forward?
What we found is that people who were on the
circuit or on the Saturday night trade were coming on
a Sunday use the club and again practice songs, try
them out, see if they're going to be crowd pleasers.
Sometimes you have a song and you think this is great,
the crowd's going to love this, and it just dies
a death for some reason. And then other times when
you're sitting around in a group and somebody gets up
and sings a song and everybody's up and singing and
the crowds are dancing, and you think, why is that
in my set list? So there was a bit of
a learning curve for proper singers.
So while you were seeing this, what was your input
and what did you see coming out of it?
At the time, I was just sitting back watching my song,
was joining in singing. I could see these newcomers. Some
of them had huge confidence issues. I remember one girl
she would walk off the stage crying because she got
her words wrung. Everybody was so supportive and cheering everybody
or oh, don't get off the stage, go and have
another girl, We'd be fine. And then of course then
she would get back on when she finished. Then the
biggest round replowse of the night. So I saw it
building confidence. I'd suddenly realized that this was far more
of a karaoke night. It was more community building event.
I was seeing people get in more than just singing
from what they were getting. It was a way people
could leave their troubles at the door, come in, enjoy
some singing, enjoy a bit of fun, and then go
home slightly better than they came in. As time has
gone on, the Welsh factor folded and at least parted
company with Welsh factor. Now the only target that we've
got to hit because we haven't got to train people
up to go into this competition. The only goal now
is can we give people as much fun as possible?
So now it's a fun night that people could just
come in sing with friends. Everybody's equal, even we have
good singers, we have very very bad singers sometimes, but
they have the same stage time, they have the same attention.
Everybody is equal, and that's what I love about it.
How have you seen it evolve since you have taken
over and put it in the direction that you saw
it going.
Yeah, I should, I should talk about that, but if
I can, I just changed the subject for one second.
Alice managed to get a diagnosis that she had bowel cancer.
She was going to retire.
There was nobody to take over, and I thought, well,
I can't let this just fold. So from the back
of the ranks and from basically from being insignificant in
the corner, I said, well, I've got DJing experience.
Can I carry on running it?
Suddenly then everybody took like five steps back, and I
was the only one standing.
Like you see in the Juggle book.
There I was with the spotlight on me, and they said, yeah,
as from Sunday night you're taking over.
Wow, that's great. So moving forward, how did it work
for you?
What I've seen?
I think because now we don't have the Welsh factor,
I love the world factor because we don't have that
those targets to meet. We're not trying to get people
into the music industry. We're not trying to get them
into winning common petitions. I'm finding now a lot more
people want to come in and have a go. There's
a lot of people know I've seen. We've got a
young lady just joined us about a month ago, fourteen
years old, plays the guitar, very very nervous, no stage
experience whatsoever. But when she finishes a song, the smile
on her face and the applause that goes around the room,
I mean she gets a bigger reception than many of
our really accomplished singers. That's just because it's not sympathy vote.
It's the way the crowd are.
They are just.
Naturally supportive and really keen to give everybody that shot.
Now, I know that you are a huge supporter of
artism and special needs. Yes, have you seen some from
the artistic community come out and support what you're doing
and participate?
Absolutely? I joke about it. I say we are a
drop in center for dropouts. This is because many of
our audience and singers are let me just get my
braining gear there. They may have social disadvantages, they may
have some kind of mental health issues. I know we've
got one guy who's an absolutely amazing singer, but he
has schizophrenia and bipolar and somehow that doesn't affect him.
When he's on stage. He may be having the worst
day possible, but once he comes in the club, gets
up singing, he gives this amazing performance. We have one
young lady who is one hundred percent blind. She's been
blind from birth. Of course, it's much harder for her
because like a karaoke night, we have the lyrics on
a screen. She gon't read that, so she has to
learn everything and perform it by heart. But somehow nobody
really notices. Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely, and it's great to hear.
We we had one night when we didn't have the
words on screen and somebody printed them off. We go
around with sheets of paper like for community singing, and
he gives this one to this young lady and she.
Just laughed at civil. That's no good to me.
So do you see his face and think, oh, my gosh,
I wasn't thinking. I hope I haven't offended you. But
that's just the way this She is just one of us,
and the disadvantages and disabilities really don't exist. We see
past that, and whatever your ability, your needs, your religion,
your color, your creed, your beliefs, it's all flatlined and
everybody's equal, and everybody comes in with no preconceived reputations.
So some people come in and we've heard about them
when we think, oh, these people are going to be
trouble again, they start at a zero, same as everybody else,
give them exactly the same stage time, and then everybody
kind of earns their stripes. So whatever you've got outside
the club, that's a whole different issue. When you're in
the club and when you're singing everybody's equal.
That's such a great way to look at it.
I think I think that's one way that we have
to look at our attitude towards discrimination. I'm not a
fan of positive discrimination. I'm not a fan of quotas.
We've got one girl from Vietnam who's just a bundle
of energy. We love it when she comes in.
Everybody's equal.
If if the club ends up one hundred percent Chinese
one night, or one hundred percent Asian or one hundred
percent Welsh, that's the audience that we've got and welcome
one and all the same with ability. If we have
a busload of autistic people, they will be treated exactly
the same way as our regular segments. Obviously, there are
people who have to have special treatment. For example, if
somebody's in a wheelchair, they need to be helped onto
the stage. When I say everybody's equal, it's the attitude is.
The attitude is we treat you equally. But we do
realize that people have to have a bit of extra
attention to make that equality.
Now that you've got it to this point and it
seems to be really going, well, what's your plans for
the future with it? What do you see it evolving
to eventually.
Honestly, I'm just having fun and that's what we really
want out of it. We're not trying to go anywhere,
We're not trying to do anything. We just want as
many people to come in, have fun and enjoy the night.
One thing I'd like to do is attract a bigger audience.
For that reason, we don't brand it as a karaoke night,
because people don't go to karaokes to listen. People got
a karaoke to get on stage and sing typical songs
very very badly. As a former karaoke host, I know
that the first thing you've got to do is get
somebody very bad on stage to start the night, because
suddenly then everybody wants to have a go. Whereas what
we're doing is the exact opposite of that. We want
to put on a show and have a handful of
really good singers or really entertaining singers. I think the
entertainment factor is more important. We have several people who
are less accomplished singers. We say, but oh they're great
fun to watch, and getting that entertainment out there and
letting the audience see these people having fun and again
to encourage everybody to just leave your troubles and get
up here and sing with us.
Now that this space has evolved beyond a training ground,
how has that changed your mindset? Are you leaning more
into creativity, taking risks, and giving yourself permission to explore
without expectations. By doing this, it seems like this shift
can create space not just for creativity, but for people
to discover what they're truly capable of. Have you tried
anything different?
I tend to have at least three or four group
songs on the stage. I look around and think, oh,
let's put together maybe a five piece girl band, and
they all come up on stage and they'll sing together,
and that's sponding that people make friends that way. Again,
if this new person comes in, maybe a bit timid,
it's a great way to get them on the stage
for the first time, and suddenly they feel part of
a small family. After they've been on the stage and
they know what it's like to standing there on the
spotlights on their faces, it's much easier to make the
second attempt, which will be a solo performance. That's really
what I want from it. I want to see people
enjoying themselves. I want to see people progress and turn
into more confident versions of themselves. If I'm a tread
to achieve that goal, and I see people come and
then they become more confident, and then they leave, and
then we see other people coming in, and we do
it all again, I'm quite happy with that. The smile
on people's faces is exactly why I do it.
Since you're in video production, do you film this?
We do not for any particular reason. Sometimes it's nice
to have it recorded in case there's a particularly good performance,
or in case somebody says something funny, or if I
say something funny in the odd occasion, then it's worth
having it filmed. I do tend to put a couple
of performances up on Facebook every now and then to
let new audiences see what goes on. Also, then, because
we filmed it, I let people have copies of them
so they can go back and analyze their performances, see
what went right and what went wrong. Trouble with filming
things is it never sounds as good unless you use
studio quality recording equipment. You're only basically used on a telephone.
The microphones tend to be fairly poor, so I always
say to people. When you listen back, Remember you've got
acoustics of the room, you've got bodies, your people talking,
you got background noise. You'll listen to a very sterile
performance on your phone. You can overanalyze that sometimes, but
they recorded mostly for nostalgia rather than for anything professional.
So with it doing so well, how are you promoting
it so that people know that they can come and
hear all this badly?
It's the answer. Most of it is just word of mouth.
We tend to.
Have a lot of free bees with our logo on
it that we kind of pass around, and if people
got a fridge magnet with the Gremlin open Mic logo
on it, then it becomes a topic of conversation. We've
got our Facebook page, there's nobody with any social media experience,
so it just organically grows every now and then, and
the club tend to promote it on their other nights,
so we get a mention on a Saturday night, which
is their live events. But apart from that, we really
very very bad at promoting things. I hear there's a
guy out in Nashville called Tony Mantor who I'm going
to see if I can have a word with him
and see if he'd help us from promote one't they?
Yeah, absolutely, we'll promote it any way we can. Now,
you mentioned that you have had some autistic people attend,
and have you seen that change the way people look
at neudiversity? Now if you go into the real world
that just happens to be outside the club. Unfortunately, people
still do not understand autism or mental illness. Unfortunately they
have no clue what it is. If they can see
those that are autistic and deal with mental illness that
are inside that club, hopefully they can get a different perception.
Have you seen that change in any way help the
perception even just a little bit in what you're doing.
Definitely, I've seen people become a lot more accepted as
a result of getting up on stage and singing in
the way that the audience accepts newcomers and the audience
accept really good singers. When somebody gets up and they've
got autism, and again I won't mention names, but there
is one lady who is heavily autistic. She can't speak
very well, but oh boy can she sing. And when
she gets up and bells her tune out. Then I
mean everybody they set their goals and their expectations lower
because of her autism, and as a result, she's just
a hero. She's one of the stars of the night.
Not necessarily the best singer, not necessarily the best performer,
but the audience really really kind of get behind her
and encourage her to go on.
I nearly said her name, then go on, then go
for it.
And then when she comes off the stage, her smile
is infectious. The audiences smile is infectious, and yes, the
audience have accepted her as part of our gremlin family.
That's just incredible to watch. Somehow, people with autism tend
to have a lot more confidence than the rest of us,
and they're going to get on that stage whether we
like it or not, and they often steal it. Again,
the audience reaction to that is always so warm. As
you say, if they met outside the club in one
of the supermarkets or department stores, they may have just
sort of walked down the other aisle, whereas now it's
all kind of accept.
So you've mentioned that they come off feeling good about themselves.
So this is a real confidence builder for them. Have
you seen I know you've seen this, but how can
you do you have a story about how someone went
on and they were really timid, they were really afraid,
and then once they saw that they was accepted, they
came off that stage with more confidence than you thought
they would ever have.
There is one lady again forgiven me if I don't
mention her name. When I first went there, which would
have been twenty seventeen something like that, and obviously we
had all the Welsh factors SA guess who were semi
pro and then this one young lady who was quite large.
I would always regard her as the friend. She wasn't
incredibly good singer, and I would have probably overlooked her
if it hadn't been for the format of the night,
because when she got up and sang, she had this.
Incredible low register in her voice.
I could hear there was something different about her voice
gets sing songs like Yazoo said that kind of Alice.
And Moyer richness of it.
Another music mogul who was happened to be there one
night he said, I'm going to pay for you to
have some singing lessons with Elease, and which they didn't
do because she didn't need it. But she just kept
coming every Sunday, and her confidence grew and grew and grew.
She's still coming now and she is one of the
best singers that we've ever had. Her voice is really
exceptional and she's often now asked to come and guest
perform at various charity functions fates. You'll often see her
headlining or I know over for Saint David's Day, which
is our Welsh patron. The local Welsh Male Voice Choir
put on a concert to raise money for charity and
they asked this young lady to come along and be
a guest singer.
They all gave her flowers.
I found out on Sunday she did eleven songs, so
it was far more than being a guest. She was
really fronting this whole male voice choir, which has had
about forty people behind the forty men with a big
wolve zone. A few years ago, she would have never
had the conference to do that. Again, she's gone from
being quite a timid character right in the background to
fronting some fairly big shows.
Wow, that's awesome. Now, how many people help you put
this together?
The actual running of it is just a small family event.
Now it's just myself and my son actually do the
running of it. My wife is always behind me and
everything I do, so even though she's not formally involved,
she's there putting out the beer mats.
With our logos and things on.
And we really need to mention the committee of the
club because they do an amazing job of promoting the
night with the various posters announcements. They have to pay
our expenses obviously because I live about forty miles away,
so transport and things like that to get us up there,
so their support as well. But even though they're not
directly involved in the running of it, there's a lot
of people behind it who are making it happen. Ultimately,
on the front line, it's just me and Dan really.
Now, since you started this, you've got it up and
running and it seems to be doing very well. How
does it feel that you've taken something that was a
completely totally different animal, So how does it feel that
what you started now and what you've created is actually
making a difference.
It feels fantastic.
I can't say anything else apart from that it's changed
because well, partly because of my beliefs.
But also it was evolution.
At least had to run it the way she did
because she was funded by the Welsh Factor, so she
was quite constrained it had to be a very, very
high quality performance. Whereas when I came in I was
really lucky because I didn't have that noose er on
my neck.
Suddenly I then had.
The ability to involve everybody in the room because I
was then financed by the club. My ultimate goal, as
much as we like to think it's all about singing,
my ultimate goal is to get money behind the till.
So yeah, my goal was really to attract people in.
I had different targets in the way and the way
we get people in there is, as I've mentioned before,
building this community and building up this everybody's equal attitude,
where everybody can come along and sing, everybody can sit
in the audience and enjoy the night, sit in the
audience and sing along. The other thing I think is
quite important. I think when you go to a certain
karaoke knights, you sit in the corner and you think, oh,
I hope they don't call me up, and you sit
there all like worrying. Whereas I make a point of saying, look,
if you don't want to come up, fine, don't put
your name down.
We've got more than enough singers.
If you haven't put your name down, sit back, relax,
enjoy your drink, enjoy the music, and you know, maybe
just sing along from where you are. So it's been
in a kind of an evolution, but the core elements
of encouragement and building confidence and accepting everybody for who
they are, not what they are, has gone all the
way through. And I think the shell may have changed,
but the core is still very much the same and
that's not going to change.
This is based on community, and from what I see,
it's a community within a community. Yes, how have you
seen the community bond together? Has that community gone out
and expanded by telling more people about what's going on
and what you're doing, this could evolve into something even
bigger than you ever anticipated.
I don't see that part, to be perfectly honest. I
know very often people do go out and they say, oh,
we had a great night on Sunday again. We talked
about that male voice choir, and one of the choir
performers is one of our regular singers, so very often
he'll go out to me, you must be talking.
About our nights when they're at choir practice.
Because we've had four or five other members of the
choir coming in occasionally to take part, must be going
out and talking about it and saying, well, a good
night they had. So I suppose in a way we
are kind of infiltrating our way into people's conversations. But
that's just something that's happened organically rather than my attention.
My intention was just to give them a bit of
fun on a Sunday night.
Well, that's how organic promotion happens. It just works just
that way. So if you would tell everybody where it's
at so that they can come out and see you
and hopefully support you as well. Oh yes, one last question,
do you live stream?
It's not live streamed, And again that's a conscious decision
because I want people to get up on stage and
be able to try out something new and it can
be a complete car crash, and if it is a
car crash, well then everybody's going to whoop and share. Anyway, Again,
we've got some very accomplished singers, but they will always
try out something new. If they do try something new
and it goes badly, I will then get out one
of the more popular songs that they've done well, so
that at least when they walk off. Everybody's heard them
singing a good song and for that reason we don't
want it to go out across to the internet. I
want people to have the confidence that they can get
up and try things. New singers probably wouldn't want to
get up. They had an audience of twenty thousand. With
an audience of fifty sixty maybe one hundred people who
are cheering for you, it's much easier, so it's not
live stream.
The only way you.
Can come in and see the mayhem and enjoy the
camaraderie and the chaos because it is organized chaos and
that's part the magic of it. Is to come along
to a town in Wales called Carmarvin, which is in
West Wales, and the club is called the Gremlin Club,
which is right in the town center.
It's a small.
Social club which if you know the social clubs that
Peter Kay has sent up in his Phoenix Nights, it's
exactly like one of that great fun, great people, cheap
alcohol that's always a winner. And it happens every Sunday
from eight through to eleven. And you can find more
information on our Facebook page which is the Gremlin Open
Mic Sunday.
Well this has been a pleasure. I've genuinely enjoyed this conversation,
and more than that, I've learned a lot about what
you're doing today, and I know our listeners have too,
So I really appreciate you taking the time to join
us today.
Tony's been a joy.
It's always a joy to come and talk to you,
and I never did an excuse to talk about myself.
Oh that's great. Well, thanks again, A sincere thank you
to our guests for sharing their journey. If today's conversation
helped you see the world a little differently, then we're
doing exactly what we hope to do. Until next time,
keep believing, keep learning, and most importantly, keep asking yourself,
why not me?