Deaf Awareness Week takes place from 15 to 21 May and with this in mind we have chosen Paul Whittaker as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Paul was born with a hearing loss and has been profoundly deaf since the age of 8. He is an organist and pianist, having gained his ARCO and ALCM diplomas whilst still at school. In 1983 he was accepted at Wadham College, Oxford, to read for a music degree, followed by a post-graduate performance course at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, in 1986.

In 1988 Paul founded the charity, Music and the Deaf, to help deaf people access music and performing arts, covering resources, talks and lectures, training events, workshops, signed concerts, dance and theatre performances.

Paul was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 1992 to research music among deaf communities in the USA and in the same year he began giving signed theatre performances in London and across the UK.  In 2010 he provided the first ever signed Prom, “Sondheim at 80”, which was also broadcast on BBC2, and followed that with a performance of “Porgy and Bess” with Opera Lyon at the Edinburgh International Festival. He has also signed for Rambert Dance Company and with “The Sixteen” choir.

In 2005 Paul was invited to attend a reception to celebrate British Music at Buckingham Palace, and the same year received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Huddersfield, in recognition of his music education work with deaf people.

Paul was awarded an OBE for services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2007.

To find out more about Paul and his work see his website http://www.paulwhittaker.org.uk/

To find out more about the charity Music and the Deaf see here http://www.matd.org.uk/

MS Awareness Week runs from 24 -30 April and with this in mind we have chosen paralympian Kadeena Cox as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

A sprinter from an early age, Kadeena entered para-athletics in 2015 after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In her first international competition, she won T37 100m gold at the IPC Athletics World Championships.

Kadeena began her cycling journey in June 2015 with her first major success being at the British Cycling National Track Championships where she won the first British title of her career in the C1-5 500 metre time-trial. She was selected for the 2016 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships, and won the 500 metre time-trial in a new world record time of 37.456.

This victory allowed Kadeena to complete the unique achievement of becoming a world champion in two different sports and in 2016 in Rio, she became the first British Paralympian since 1984 to win gold medals in multiple sports at the same Games.

Kadeena is an Ambassador for the MS Society and uses her profile to raise awareness of the condition.

She is currently combining life as an international athlete with her university studies to become a physiotherapist, which she started prior to her diagnosis and hopes to graduate in 2018.

To find out more about Kadeena visit her website http://kadeenacox.co.uk/about-me/

To find out more about MS Awareness Week see here

https://www.mstrust.org.uk/get-involved/ms-awareness-week

World Braille Day takes place on 4 January and with that in mind we have chosen Robin Millar as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month.

Robin is a record producer, musician and businessman and was born with retinitis pigmentosa. He has conquered blindness to become one of the world’s most successful ever record producers with over 150 gold, silver and platinum discs and 55 million record sales to his credit. His 1984 production of ‘Diamond Life’ the debut album by Sade was named one of the best ten albums of the last 30 years at the 2011 Brit Awards.

He has also developed and run a string of successful businesses in car hire, music recording and publishing and is currently Executive Group Chairman of the Blue Raincoat Chrysalis Group, which handles 150 artists and thousands of iconic songs, including “Simply The Best” and “Nothing Compares To You”.

He has worked as a fundraiser for vulnerable people for 30 years and in March 2012 Millar underwent a 12-hour operation to install a bionic retina in his right eye to help research into future treatment for blindness.  Although the implant had to be removed after rejection in autumn 2013, the research has made giant steps in the understanding of possible ways to restore sight in the future.

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.

He is currently Chairman of Blue raincoat Music and of CMO Artist Management and Patron of Finding Rhythms, who record and release music from prisoners in UK prisons.

He has been a trustee of Creative & Cultural Skills UK since 2009, is a trustee of The Vietnamese Boat Peoples Appeal, a patron of anti-suicide campaign CALM and Global Advisor to the UN Young Voices mission.

To find out more about Robin see his website http://www.robinmillar.org.uk/

To find out more about World Braille Day see here

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/world/world-braille-day

International Day of Persons with Disabilities is on 3 December and with that in mind we have chosen Derek Paravicini as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Derek, now in his late twenties, was born premature, at 25 weeks, and weighing just over half a kilogram. As a result of the oxygen therapy required to save his life, Derek lost his sight, and his development was affected too. It later became apparent that he had severe learning difficulties. However, he soon acquired a fascination for music and sound, and, by the age of four, had taught himself to play a large number of pieces on the piano, of some melodic and harmonic complexity (such as ‘Smoke Gets in your Eyes’). Almost inevitably, with no visual models to guide him, his technique was chaotic, and even his elbows would frequently be pressed into service, as he strove to reach intervals beyond the span of his tiny hands!

At this time, his enormous potential was recognised by Adam Ockelford, then music teacher at Linden Lodge School for the Blind in London. In due course, weekly and then daily lessons were arranged, in an extensive programme of tuition that was to last for several years. Painstakingly (through physical demonstration and imitation) Derek acquired the foundations of technique that were necessary for him to move forward. His natural affinity for jazz, pop and light music soon became evident; together with his improvisatory talents, ability to play in any key, and flair for performing in public!

Derek’s first major concert was at the Barbican Halls in London, when he was just 9 (in 1989). He played jazz with the Royal Philharmonic Pops Orchestra. Numerous national and regional television appearances followed, in the UK and overseas. Most recently Derek featured in the series Extraordinary People (Channel 5, UK), on the Discovery Channel (Health) in the United States and on RTL in Germany. His increasing maturity both as a person and performer enabled him to give concerts in venues across England, in Europe and the United States; among them, Ronnie Scott’s renowned jazz club in London and the Mandalay Bay Arena in Las Vegas, NV.

Derek’s talent, love of music, and – above all – the ability to communicate through sound means he will continue to thrill audiences for years to come in the UK and abroad.

To find out more about Derek or the International Day of Persons with Disabilities see here http://www.sonustech.com/paravicini/ http://www.un.org/en/events/disabilitiesday/

The Paralympics starts on 7 September 2016 and with this in mind we have chosen Sarah Storey as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month

Sarah is a road and track racing cyclist and former swimmer, multiple gold medal winner at the Paralympic Games in both sports, and three times British (able bodied) national track champion. Her total of eleven gold medals makes her the equal of Tanni Grey-Thompson and Dave Roberts, considered among the most successful British Paralympians. Her list of major achievements also include being a 27-time World champion (5 in swimming and 22 in cycling), a 21-time European champion (18 in swimming and 3 in cycling) and holding 72 world records.

She was born without a functioning left hand after her arm became entangled in the umbilical cord in the womb and the hand did not develop as normal.  In 2007 she married tandem pilot and coach Barney Storey and in June 2013 gave birth to a daughter.

Sarah began her Paralympic career as a swimmer, winning two golds, three silvers and a bronze in Barcelona in 1992. She continued swimming in the next three Paralympic Games before switching to cycling in 2005, reputedly because of a persisting ear infection. At the 2008 Paralympic Games, her fifth, she won the individual pursuit – in a time that would have been in the top eight at the Olympic final – and the road time trial.

She also competes against non-disabled athletes and won the 3 km national track pursuit championship in 2008, eight days after taking the Paralympic title, and defended her title in 2009. In 2014 she added a third national track title with a win in the points race. She qualified to join the England team for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where she was the first disabled cyclist to compete for England at the Commonwealth Games, against non-disabled cyclists. She was also the second Paralympic athlete overall competing for England at the Games, following archer Danielle Brown earlier in Delhi.

In 2011, she competed for one of the three places in the GB squad for the women’s team pursuit at the 2012 Olympic Games. Although she was in the winning team for the World Cup event in Cali, Colombia in December 2011, she was informed afterwards that she was being dropped from the team pursuit squad.

At the London’s 2012 Paralympics Games she won Britain’s first gold medal, in the women’s individual C5 pursuit. She went on to win three more gold medals, one in the Time Trial, the Individual Road Time Trial and finally one in the Individual Road Race.

In 2014, Sarah and her husband Barney Storey founded the Pearl Izumi Sports Tours International women’s amateur cycling team, supporting the charity Boot Out Breast Cancer. The team fielded squads in the 2014 and 2015 British road race seasons.

In 2015 she attempted to break the world hour record at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London. She set a distance of 45.502 km, which was 563m short of Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel’s 2003 overall world record – however the distance did set a new world record in the C5 Paralympic cycling class as well as a new British record.

In 1998 she was awarded an MBE and following the Beijing Games, she was awarded an OBE. In 2012, she was awarded an honorary degree by the Manchester Metropolitan University and following the 2012 London Games, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours.

Sarah was a nominee for the 2008 Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year with a Disability and the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

In June Sarah was selected for her 7^th Paralympics and will be aiming to retain the four titles she won in London.