Allison Davies (she/her) creates online resources for parents, educators and service providers and delivers seminars and workshops around the use of music as a regulatory tool within a trauma informed and neuro-affirming framework.
Alli hosts retreats founded on the therapeutic use of music and voice, as a way of experiencing felt-safety, deepening relationship to self, moving emotions and exploring our inherent and authentic musicality.
She also speaks internationally on neuro-affirming practice, embodying autistic culture and understanding neurodivergence, in particular Autism and ADHD.
Who is Allison?
Education and Professional Career
Allison Davies creates online resources for parents, educators and support staff and works with schools to deliver professional development around both the topics of neurodivergence and the use of music as a regulatory tool. She is an independent liberatory scholar currently exploring the gatekeeping and classism of the social construct ‘musical vs non musical’.
Allison holds a Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Teaching (University of New England, 2003), a Master of Music Therapy (University of Queensland, 2005) and Neurologic Music Therapy training (Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy, 2016). A former Registered Music Therapist of 16 years, Alli left the Allied Health industry in 2021 in order to align her work more deeply with culturally responsive practices and to switch her focus from individual change to socio cultural change.
Alli is an autistic person with attention, sensory processing and executive functioning differences. She works within a neuro-affirming framework that favours deep acceptance and regulation over assimilation and intervention, and shares her lived experience of autism openly within her seminars, workshops and conferences as part of her ‘emotive storytelling mixed with science’ approach to education.
In 2016 Alli was named a ‘National AMP Tomorrow Maker’ for her contribution to supporting Australian families through her 2 day workshop, Brains = Behaviours. As an online course, Brains = Behaviours has impacted over 2000 families. In 2018 she founded A Gathering of Voices, an online membership for adults aiming to self-regulate through therapeutic based music experiences.
In 2024 Alli was awarded the Telstra Best of Business Award for Lutruwita/Tasmania.
Allison is a regular contributor to online network ParentTV, and radio station ‘Vision Australia’.
She lives in the rainforest of Lutruwita/Tasmania, with her husband and 2 children, where she enjoys the beach, the bush and baths.
Alli is a PDA AuDHD’er bringing up multiply neuro-divergent children in a neurodiverse world that is only just beginning to understand the complexity of neurotypes. With the number of official diagnoses and (equally as valid) self identifications taking place around the world, it is important that everyone learns what neurotypes are so that we can unlearn the outdated notion of disorder, early intervention and assimilation therapy and replace these notions with neuro-affirming practice such as culture, acceptance and accommodation.
For a number of years Alli focused heavily on the advocacy and education of autism online, on social media and within the development of her online programs. She has moved away from her role as advocate and is no longer creating resources or writing predominantly about autism, however she has kept these resources available.
You will find Brains = Behaviours, The Brain Bundle, Understanding Autistic Culture and the Manifesto for Autistic Experience by visiting her shop.
Alli continues to accept requests to speak on autistic culture, understanding neurodivergence and neuro-affirming practice in the school and workplace.
You may contact her to request a speakers kit by visiting the ‘enquiries’ tab, and search for any neuro related event that may already be scheduled in your area by visiting the ‘events’ tab.
In recent years Alli has shifted her focus from clinical work and now supports all humans to re-member their voice and identify with their musicality. The brain is a musical organ and every single one of us embodies a unique musicality that does not require lessons, instruments or ‘singing in tune’ to be considered valid.
A Gathering of Voices is her online membership which includes webinars, pre-recorded melodic mantra lessons, a song library, monthly themes for enquiry and a global community that meets weekly for song sharing circles. These online circles have become a deeply supportive community that honours each other with respect, holds space for each other with non-performance based expectations and sings to our needs, our desires and our emotions.
If you wish to work with Alli in a more personal way and delve into her knowledge as a Former Neurologic Music Therapist combined with her deep reverence for music itself joining A Gathering of Voices is the best way to do that.
Many of you know that I closed my private music therapy practice back in 2016, and now focus on providing educative resources that empower you to use music strategically in your own homes and schools.
There were so many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that I’d lost my place within the Methodology of being a therapist and no longer personally aligned with the (only) way I knew how to do it. It was one of the wisest, bravest and most powerful decisions I’ve ever made.
If I one day return to private practice as a therapist, it will be with a very firm understanding of my personal pedagogical influences and with an extremely informed outlay of the way I work to my clients and their parents before we engage in any relationship.
There is so much personal work I need to explore before then.
Firstly, cultural well-being is an essential. And until I have a good enough understanding of my own place within individual, collective and universal culture how can I fully commit to supporting the cultural safety of my clients?
This is especially important within the music therapy industry because music is a foundational experience of every, single, culture, in the world.
This self knowledge will inform how I can use music, how I can protect music culture and how I can respect lore and therapeutic ethics.
Secondly, as a trauma informed therapist my desire is to use music therapy as a tool for safety, re-empowerment, personal insight and personal growth. I have no interest in setting goals, assessing outcomes, aiming for behavioural change, developmental milestones or learning indicators.
I am a Gestalt Therapist at heart.
I believe that any therapeutic benefit comes from the interplay of the entire interactive and environmental experience. From the therapist creating a safe space and a high vibe environment to the client maintaining full autonomy over their presence in the experience, and feeling safe enough to just BE, and not necessarily have to DO. In fact, in my truest gestalt expressions the concept of therapist and client doesn’t even exist, and I like that too.
I have a long way to go, but delving into my own truest forms of expression as a music therapist, as well as abiding by the safest of community inclusivity and social justices, feels responsible.
And i know that if/when I do put my therapy hat back on I will be working from a place of true belief in the system (my chosen systems), and in the full knowledge that if you and/or your children still want to work with me?
Then together we will both truly grow and expand in ways that the allied health industry desperately needs more of.
(FYI. This list refers to my pedagogical and psych influences only. My spiritual influences? Too multi dimensional to put into words)
