Access Scheme Advisory Group

I love being creative and being part of anything that’s arts related. 

I have various aspirations, not least of which is continuing to achieve greater access and equality for disabled people. I hope to work in the TV and film industry, and even have my own chat show on TV. Finally, on my bucket list is to win a BAFTA for writing or acting. 

I am particularly interested in TV and film-making, from drama to comedy and presenting and documentaries. I also love the theatre. I play harmonica and used to be in a band. I love travelling and going to new places. I follow sport including football, rugby, athletics and snooker. 

I have just finished working towards my Master’s degree in Cultural and Creative Industries at Cardiff University. 

The Welsh-language novel Tami from Y Pump (Y Lolfa) series, which I co-authored, was recently awarded the ‘Tir na n-Og Upper Literature Prize 2022’ as well as Literature Wales’  ‘Welsh-Language Children and Young People’s Book of the Year 2022’.

I am passionate about increasing accessibility in the arts, developing creativity through accessibility, and using writing as a platform for representation and education.  

I love creative writing, theatre producing and directing, and – as a Welsh-language speaker from Caerphilly in South Wales – I am very interested in Welsh language work and experimentation. 

I’m also a parent to three disabled adult children.  

Throughout my career, my work has included managing an accessible housing project in Cardiff , and working for ten years as Access Policy Manager at Disability Wales. This involved working with Welsh Tourist Board to develop an accessibility accreditation scheme for hotels in Wales (a bit similar in some ways to our project).

I am also a qualified and experienced access auditor and am very keen on inclusive design. I have audited BFI’s Southbank building, and have worked with them on other projects including helping to edit the Disabled Britain archive collection and writing a blog about old and new visions of disability on screen.

I am currently working part-time at the charity Scope to embed co-production as a key operating model throughout the organisation , and am also a Fellow of the RSA (the royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce).

I am passionate about fighting for disability equality.

My interests are film, theatre, music, architecture, and drumming 

I am the Founder and Artistic Director at CRIPtic Arts, the disability arts hub. I established it for a Barbican Pit Party in 2019 and registered it as a CIC in 2021. It’s amazing to be in a position where it is now an established organisation making a noticeable impact. I hope to achieve a stable funding position with CRIPtic such that I can eventually move on, leaving it in a stable and ongoing position.

I am also CEO at Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance. I was selected for the 2021 Shaw Trust Disability Power 100 as one of the 100 most influential disabled people in the UK.

I’m passionate about the idea that in order to really effect change we have to be working across multiple levels and industries, and that bringing those diverse impacts and approaches together is the best way of successfully effecting that change. That being said, I also aspire to really make an impact as a disabled creative outside disability arts.

My personal interests include poetry, screenwriting, cooking, disability politics, and walking my dog. I also love reading bad crime fiction on Kindle Unlimited!

I was also the Artistic Director of Above and Beyond and Attic Fusion Theatre Company.  I currently work with The Misfits Theatre Company in Bristol leading on Arts & Wellbeing projects. 

For many years, I hid my disabilities and mental health due to fear of losing work,. It’s only in the past couple of years I have started to come out and advocate for myself. I am passionate about accessibility and inclusivity in the arts, with people as experts by experience at the forefront of decision making, development and delivery work. I have worked in various arts venues and have experienced very little awareness around accessibility and reciprocal communication in consulting people with lived experience. I feel this can be a massive barrier to not only people with lived experience attending live events but also feeling that the arts as a career is challenging or very limiting to get into if you have lived experience. I hope the Access Scheme can open dialogue, develop opportunities, and create sustainable change. 

I love singing, reading, dancing, writing, cooking, Qigong, meditation, and Yoga.

Our aim is to remove the mystery around access provisions, address challenges creatively, and ensure that organisers big and small are empowered to make their events accessible.  

I’m passionate about best-practice access in the arts, and providing equal opportunities to all who want to engage with the arts.  

I play guitar, ukulele and piano (self-taught), and I draw and paint as well as write. I love eating good food, travelling to new places, and going for long country walks.  

I’m currently working on my first
book, an essay collection, and on getting my first play ready for staging. 

I’m passionate about diversity and inclusion – obviously! – and especially about
encouraging marginalised people to view themselves, and be viewed by society,
as creatives in their own right. Too often we’re an afterthought, or only thought of
as audience members who need to be the focus of “outreach” and “inclusion”
campaigns, when lots of us are really desperate to be included!

In my day job, and as a freelance consultant, speaker, and workshop leader, I’m
always striving to make the arts a more inclusive and accessible place for all of
us, drawing on my experience as a queer, neurodivergent disabled person.

I’m interested in art in all its different forms, and have a background as a theatre,
music and literary critic. I also love video games, nature, crafting, and RuPaul’s
Drag Race.

I am involved in delivering ITV’s Disability agenda and I also work closely with Producers and the commissioning teams to ensure a diverse and inclusive team are involved for ITV commissions, working particularly closely with the teams in Factual Entertainment, Sport, Daytime and the soaps.  

Prior to joining ITV, I worked for training and consultancy company thinkBIGGER!, where I worked on projects such as the Channel 4 Production Training Scheme and on the training programme for the disabled presenters and reporters for the coverage of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. 

I also chair the BAFTA's Disability Advisory Group, am a member of their Learning, Inclusion and Talent Committee, and am part of BAFTA's Diversity Steering Group for the Awards. I am also part of the British Film Institute's Disability Advisory Group and am Chair of the Board of Trustees for Graeae Theatre Company. In 2021, I was listed in the Shaw Trust's Power 100, the list of the top 100 most influential Disabled people in the UK. I was awarded an MBE for services to Disabled People in the Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours list in June 2022. 

A lot of my job is focused on representation and ensuring people from underrepresented groups are given opportunities to gain, develop and thrive in their career within the Television industry. I'm passionate about breaking down barriers and levelling the playing field for all, especially disabled people, and ensuring that the voices of those we don't hear from often are elevated. Access and accessibility within the Creative Industries is a key subject area at the moment and I'm excited about working on embedding accessibility into the system of everything thing we do and I hope this Access Card will be part of the solution for many. 

I go to the theatre often and love nothing more than watching live performances. I also watch a LOT of Television. Luckily for me I can count this as work but I watch a lot of it, whether than is drama, documentaries, live events, big entertainment programmes or reality series I love them all!

I moved to Northern Ireland from the States in 2004, and in 2005 my partner and I made history as the first public civil partnership in the UK, and proceeded to take the NI government to court in 2015 to bring same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland.  My experiences as an immigrant, biracial ethnic minority (Chinese/Caucasian), queer artist-mother with a disability living in Northern Ireland are deeply embedded in my work. 

I've recently mentored artists as part of Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant, Wysing Arts Centre’s Amplify project, LGBTQ Outside’s Queer Youth Arts Collective and Drake Music's Artist Development programme.

I’m proud of my work as Artist in Residence at Drake Music (2022) and Wysing Arts Centre (2022), receiving the Jerwood Arts Bursary in 2021, and being both a Womxn of Colour Art Award finalist and Adam Reynolds Award finalist in 2021.

I am passionate about inclusion and accessibility: widening access to arts and culture are core values at the heart of my work as a practising artist, educator, artist mentor and access consultant. 

My personal interests include: coastal trail walks and bike rides; rollerblading and skateboarding; yoga and intuitive movement; wild gardens, botany and herbalism.

I started working in theatre after gaining a First Diploma in Performing Arts at 17, after which I went on to join Double Act Disability Theatre Company in Bournemouth. In 2011, I was funded by Ammonite to learn about Producing and spent a week at Mind the Gap. In 2012, I was the Assistant Producer for a show called Breathe which was for the opening ceremony of the sailing event for the Olympic games.

In 2014, I moved to Bradford from Dorset to join Mind the Gap. I went through the company training course and became an Artist with the company. In 2018, I was co-producer of the BEYOND learning disability arts festival in Leeds. From 2018 to 2019, I was the intern Assistant Producer for ZARA at Mind the Gap, Walk the Plank and Emergency Exit Arts’ production about learning disabilities and Parenthood.

What I am passionate about is not talking on panels about access in the next 30 years. I feel when I am speaking, I want to bring new things to the conversation and don’t want people to think, oh I know what Paul is going to talk about. There always need to be new voices in the conversations that are being heard but we can’t forget the legacy of other disabled people who have helped pave the way.

My personal interests are theatre, football, singing and wrestling and not all in that order. I am a big musical theatre fan, I am a big fan Hamilton, Wicked and Les Misérables which I have watched. I like shows that are in unusual places and how access has been incorporated in the production. In terms of Wrestling - All Elite Wrestling is my favourite to watch but I still watch WWE and independent wrestling shows and try to get to some events. I play Ability Counts football and travel to Dorset to play for my hometown. I support Tottenham, Bournemouth and Wimborne and watch Bradford city matches.