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/