Hannah is a Neurodivergent, working class, multidisciplinary artist and has been in professional practice since 2018.

Hannah has ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia and Irlen’s Syndrome so is particularly passionate about advocating for reasonable adjustments and access in the arts.

Hannah specialises in unscripted performance, presenting and improv theatre. She has also recently developed some audioplay work and recorded at Studio 6 in Essex. Current work includes project planning for developing a neurodivergent performance collective, facilitating workshops to capture creative storytelling of underrepresented people (Volunteering Matters and Suffolk Archives) and creative workshop facilitation.

Hannah is a member of The Cambridge Junction’s 'Troop' talent development programme and has worked with The Mercury Theatre extensively. Her collaborative short play 'Lullaby' was produced by High Tide Theatre Company and Performed at The New Wolsey Theatre in 2021. Hannah participated in the Ink festival Intermediate Playwrighting Development Course in 2021- 2022 with tutor (and esteemed Theatre Critic) Paul Davis.

Chloe Akasha Carson is the Director of Akasha Dance Theatre. Chloe has ten years of experience working as a dancer, choreographer and director. She trained from a young age in Vaganova (Russian) ballet, and completed three years of training at a dance school in Cambridgeshire, in RAD ballet, contemporary dance and musical theatre, as well as studying Butoh and Tanztheater. After graduation, she trained for one year at a Russian drama school, where she learnt the principles of creating characters for stage and screen, as well as taking on various production duties, such as lighting/sound operation, costume design/production and set building.

Chloe is developing Exoskeleton, a dance/physical theatre piece, inspired by neuroscience. She was inspired to choreograph the piece after personally experiencing a condition called FND, or Functional Neurological Disorder, which causes fainting and seizures, amongst other symptoms. FND is a common disorder seen in outpatient neurology clinics and is misunderstood and neglected by society and the wider medical community.

In sharing the piece, Akasha Dance Theatre will raise awareness of FND, whilst sharing an artistic expression of real-life through dance.

Gemma Garwood’s research interests are grounded in the fields of heritage, performance, installation and theatre but often venture into other territories as necessary. She is especially concerned with site-specific and socially engaged practices, how we relate to, understand and construct our environment and our relationships with each other.

As a thoughtful practitioner she is also fascinated with the role of the artist in collaborative work and how we democratise our practices, the role of text in post-dramatic theatre and performance, and the relationship between theory and practice.

Ellena is a community artist working in a variety of mediums. Through poetry, performance and visual art, she makes work for and about minority perspectives, telling unique stories in a universal way. Drawing on her identity as a disabled and trans woman, she seeks to empower and uplift queer, trans and disabled voices.

Listen to “Voice Notes to my Child Self” here.

Christina Jane AKA C. J. is a Spoken Word Artist with Autism and A.D.H.D. who has performed at Autism Anglia’s ‘Neurofantastic’ event at Firstsite, many ‘Emotional Madness’ events at Three Wise Monkey’s, many ‘Unfamiliars’ events at various venues including Colchester Arts Centre, the ‘Mindfizz’ event at Colchester Library for Essex Poetry Festival and performing under the name ‘Satine’ for the ‘Poetry Brothel’ event for Essex Book Festival. She also performs a poem as an icebreaker when being a Public Speaker for Neurodiversity. She won the ‘Future Voices Award’ by Young Writers in the year 2000 for her poem ‘With My Little Eye’ resulting in publication in the hardback ‘Future Voices Anthology’. Her poems have also been published online, in many ‘Unfamiliars’ Zines and the recent book by The Ikouii Creative called ‘Inside Their Studio: Artists with Disabilities and their Collaborators’. 

Graduating in 1995 from Drama Studio London, after 3 years at Cambridge including performing with Footlights, Justine spent 5 years as a jobbing actress before founding South London based interactive performance company, Ladder to the moon. As Artistic Director she created and managed many site-specific, interactive and youth drama projects, including ACE funded work, before leaving in 2005 to take part in the Clore Cultural Leadership programme. This included secondments with The Royal Albert Hall and Aldeburgh Music, and she went on to facilitate on Clore leadership courses. 

In 2008 and she founded her multi-faceted storytelling practice So… what’s the story? ranging from storytelling sessions at festivals, events and schools across the country, to story play sessions for under 5s, to adults only pub nights to story projects with prisoners. This included performances and workshops at Cambridge Folk Festival, Bath Literary Festival, Edinburgh Literary Festival, Hay Festival and The National Centre for the Folk Arts. She also trained librarians in multi-sensory storytelling for the ACE funded Bag Books project Telling Tales. From 2015 to 2018 she was a founder and then Artistic Director of the East Anglian Storytelling Festival (ACE funded 2016). 

Her love of live, spontaneous, responsive performance runs through her other performance practices, from co-founding improv company The Unqualified Yes, to hosting open mic events to support new performers, to gigging as her musical persona Lady J who encourages audience percussion and hands out cherry bakewell awards!

Virginia Betts is a tutor of English, a writer and actor from Ipswich, Suffolk. She made her publishing debut with a ghost story and a poem in an anthology and Acumen Poetry Journal respectively. Many poems have since been published and aired on BBC Radio and she collaborated with Hightide Theatre Company and The Wolsey Theatre on a short play about lockdown, Lullaby.

Her first book of short stories, The Camera Obscure, is due to be released June 30th 2022, which showcases Virginia’s interest in the darker sides of life and the traditional gothic genre. Virginia also played the lead role in The Suffolk Poetry Society’s All Change, A play in verse by Peter Sandberg for their annual festival in May 2022, and is often seen playing the parts of various ‘Angry Ghosts’ around the local area to celebrate the works of poet, Mai Black.

She is currently working on her second collection of stories, a novel and her collection of poetry, Tourist to the Sun will be published Summer 2022. Virginia never really stops reading, writing or analysing text, and loves helping her students to improve their grades by developing depth of thought and expression. She is a particular specialist in Neurodiverse learning, and is herself Neurodiverse. When she is not working, she can be found swimming, playing the violin, or spending time with her husband, a Nurse Practitioner, and son, who is a 21 year old undergraduate studying English.

Nicola is an award winning neurodivergent playwright from a working-class background.  As a disabled writer, she is committed to exploring underrepresented voices in her writing and has successfully run engagement projects with diverse communities including Polish, neurodivergent, and deprived communities.   She writes for theatre and radio and was part of the BBC Writers’ Access Group of BBC Writers Room for talented disabled writers expanding their writing skills for radio and television.

Nicola was 16 when she was a runner up in the Royal Court Young People’s playwriting competition but due to the undiagnosed disability and the debilitating effects, it took her another 15 years before she wrote professionally, once she had the life-changing diagnosis of dyspraxia.

Since then, her work has been developed and produced regionally and nationally with theatre partners including Hampstead Theatre, the National Theatre Studio, the Royal Court Theatre, Theatre 503, the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Salisbury Playhouse and with Graeae Theatre, the world-class company placing deaf and disabled actors centre stage and challenging preconceptions.   Recent work includes her 5 star sell out show SILENCE which toured nationally in 2018 and her radio debut co-writing Graeae’s Christmas classic adaptation with a radical new imagining of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, entitled AMY DORRIT, for BBC Radio 4  in 2019.    At present she is working with Graeae as librettist for a new opera about a blind female musician at the time of Mozart called THE PARADIS FILES, with music by award-winning composer Errollyn Warren  and directed by Jenny Sealey, for a national tour in 2022.

Nicola is currently Associate Artist at High Tide and at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester where she is working on developing an adaptation of THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence, as well as with the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich: MASKED, a play about undiagnosed female neurodivergence and The Marlowe in Canterbury with BROKEN ENGLISH, a contemporary piece about the impact of Brexit on Polish migrants. She is adapting  THE SECRET GARDEN for Bury Theatre Royal’s summer show.

Nice Cave and the Sad Bees is a Nick Cave tribute act that never plays any Nick Cave. Making their debut with Neurodelicious, Nice Cave and The Sad Bees is a collaboration between Nice Cave (Steve Goatman) and The Divine Yostara (Ellena Woolf).

Through drag and genderf*ck performance, and a mixture of live vocals, lipsyncing and pure sexy foolishness, 'The Sad Bees’ examines queerness and neurodiversity in a cabaret-style performance.

Nice Cave is the drag persona of Steve Goatman, multi-instrumentalist and singer in new alt-drag band Nice Cave and The Sad Bees, co formed with poet Ellena Woolf. Steve is a Neurodivergent emerging artist and this project is his first public drag performance, having played in non-drag bands in Colchester and London since 2003, and hosted open mic nights as resident musician and host at Lakeside Theatre’s The Hook open mic between 2012-16. Steve is also an independent producer, facilitator, coach and co-founder of Colchester Fringe festival.