Getting into the beyond programme for me was both an amazing opportunity, yet came at a time when my life was falling apart due to Covid and grieving my father who was very much alive but Covid changed him and me quite a lot.

Thanks to Graeae, I feel more confident now that this is what I want to do, helping people and making accessible, very human works of art and just telling people they can do what they want to do.

I think my biggest success is workshopping. I ran a group on Tuesdays in Nottingham for two years on and off. We started in November 2021 and ran till July 2023. It gave me incredible amounts of confidence. I know what I want to do now and it made me start ‘Tentacles’ again which is a disability writers group/course based in Nottingham. We started a zoom course in spring of 2023 and looking to start them again this winter and hoping to take it into schools and have an in person base in Nottingham.

I have faced a few challenges, mainly Covid, and for a while I lost confidence and never thought I’d be doing what I’d love again. My dad was in hospital twice and everything I tried to do kept being pushed back and pushed back. I thought I was never going to get anywhere in this industry. It is still slowly recovering while reeling at the same time. I would say to other artists, just do not give up, keep going and do what matters. The project I first came up with in 2019 is only just going into rehearsals. It is about walking, mental health and my grandad. I’ve also worked with Derby Theatre too, to create VR safe spaces, something I’m very proud of myself for doing.