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Little Big Man

Little Big Man

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I am the Race and Diversity Correspondent for MyLondon, and I enjoy writing about stories to do with ethnic minorities. Best known for designing clothes for Diana, Princess of Wales, Bruce Oldfield was born in Durham and fostered at 18 months by a seamstress, Violet Masters, who taught him how to sew. From 13, he lived at a Barnardo’s care home in Ripon, North Yorkshire. Chris Fretwell Because of it, he has to adopt the mantle of ‘man of the house’. Forced to scavenge for food and miss school to care for his baby brother, his life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system. An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley begins a descent into crime, heroin addiction and gang life. It is only when he is sent to a young offender’s institution that he slowly begins to turn his life around." It’s also a book about belonging and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery. Browne, Derek. ‘Centenary Year of Dr Stanley Browne’. Leprosy Mailing List Blog. 23 May 2008. Online.

What I learnt about myself is the realisation that I have actually survived my trauma. I already knew how far I had come, but I almost belittled the trauma over the years because of my successes. Writing this memoir emphasised why I felt compelled to share my story with others in the first place. Sonny and Christine want to escape. They have a night to remember but underneath the surface things aren’t what they seem. Cyrus is frantically trying to piece together the truth about that night. Unexpectedly a tragedy is about to unite them all… Born in Wigan to an Ethiopian mother, Lemn Sissay was placed in foster care as a baby, and sent aged 12 to the first of a series of children’s homes. Later, while piecing together his origins, he discovered that his mother had pleaded for his return and been denied by social services. Sissay has spoken out about his care experience and its many traumas throughout his career as a poet and broadcaster. Allan JenkinsBefore joining digital arts platfrom WhyNow as creative director last year, Janet Lee worked for the BBC, where she was the editor of programmes including Imagine and The Culture Show and a producer on Desert Island Discs. Stewart Lee In and out of care from the age of five, Stanley J Browne says his “horror story” began aged eight, when he was separated from his siblings and fostered off to Nottingham. He rebelled against the system and later ended up in detention centres and prisons, dealing with drug addiction. His autobiography, Little Big Man (out 14 October), describes how he turned his life around to become an actor and musician. Clare Gorham Every one of us has a different story,” says Sissay, beaming around the room in a shirt that is playing catch-up with the sun. Johanan Walker enthusiastically nods. “We usually get the narrative told about us so it’s nice to tell it ourselves,” she says. She was taken into a mother and baby unit as a 12-year-old mum, and had to fight to keep her daughter. Her experience of finding herself homeless and powerless after leaving care inspired her to start a campaign, calling4gr8ness.org to support young care leavers in the same predicament. In 1963 Browne produced a "Report of a Study Tour of Leprosy Research Centres in India and the East". He mentions visiting Buluba Leprosarium (30 miles from Jinja), where there were 23,000 registered leprosy cases. The view of care leavers is typically: unable to achieve a higher education, expected to fail in life,” says Michelle Brown, who went into care at 11 and was “hugely let down” by her local authorities – she was left on the streets aged 15 after one of her foster carers relocated. “Many of us who stood at the Foundling Museum have had to battle our way through systemic failures and discrimination. Today we stand proud as care leavers and remove society’s stigma.” Brown defied expectations by progressing to university and getting a Masters. She is now a psychodynamic psychotherapist and the director of two companies. Nze Kriss Kezie Akabusi MBE

An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley descends into a life of crime and drug abuse. During his time spent in various young offender's institutions and prisons he battles with addiction and slowly begins to turn his life around.Because her care experience happened so early – she was in and out of a foster home in east London until the age of five – Siroun Button never really thought of herself as somebody who’d been in care. “Now I’m starting to realise that it did really have an impact on me,” she says. To help others like her, Button has co-founded calling4gr8ness.org, a programme supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. Lennox Cato DL The 51-year-old says his life changed when his mum was diagnosed with schizophrenia (Image: MyLondon) I remember the photographer who turned up at my mothers house that day, a complete stranger to me who didn't belong in our house," Stanley recalls. "He'd been brought over to take some pictures of my mum, but suggested at the end of the shoot to do a couple of us kids standing together... I felt extra protective over my sisters then."

Browne was born in London in 1907. He was awarded two scholarships, which covered his education in medicine and theology at Kings College, London. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1934, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons the following year. After completing an additional qualification in tropical medicine, he was recruited by the Baptist Missionary Society to work as a medical missionary in what was then the Belgian Congo.When Allan Jenkins embarked on his gardening memoir Plot 29, he found himself writing about the “helplessness of seed” just three paragraphs in and was prompted to revisit his unsettled past, growing up in foster care in south Devon with his older brother Christopher. The memoir was warmly received, though Jenkins, who edits Observer Food Monthly, has mixed feelings about becoming a figurehead for care-experienced people. “Sometimes, if you’ve had my childhood, you try not to be defined by it,” he says. Richard Bramble Donna Ludford applied to become lord mayor of the City of Manchester “to raise aspirations for young people in the care system”. She had a deeply unsettled childhood, moving between foster families and children’s homes from the age of six months, after her parents were badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Ludford began as a cleaner at Manchester city council before working her way up, earlier this year, to lord mayor. But success is “not about being the lord mayor,” she told a group of care leavers recently. “It’s about thriving in life and doing what makes you happy.” Zarina Bhimji I hope to move, touch, and inspire my readers through sharing my story as a testament that our past doesn’t define who we are and that change is achievable, regardless of our circumstances and the cards we have been dealt in life. Above all else, it takes time to heal, and we are not alone. I hope readers will be able to see themselves in some form or another through my own story and identify with that common human trait of just wanting to be loved. Although this can be seen as being a bit of a cliche, but it’s the truth we can all relate to and keeps coming up time and time again. On some level I guess we all just want to be free. Free from self critique and self doubt.

Stanley J. Browne is an actor, and he has been an actor all his life. Born to a Jamaican mother in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changes when his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Natalie Hirst spent eight years living in foster care in Greater Manchester and had a mixed experience, but her resilience helped her to develop the strength and skills to overcome many challenges. “My experience has taught me the importance of having kind, supportive adults in the lives of children in care to help them feel safe, cared for and treated like one of the family,” she says. “These experiences have shaped who I am today, an independent woman, passionate about my career and working with local authorities in Greater Manchester to ensure every young person has a voice, choice and control over decisions made about them.” Michelle Brown Actor Stanley J. Browne sheds vital light on addiction, mental illness, and our underfunded care system in this powerful true-to-life story about male coming-of-age. Wherever I lived, my care experience included libraries and reading, and without them I wouldn’t be here,” says Rosie Canning, who was put into care in London at six weeks. “Books were a way to escape from the madness around me, be that foster care, family, or residential homes. Libraries were my hallowed space, and librarians were kind guardians who gave me orphan tales.” Now, as part of her PhD, Canning is writing her own novel, entitled Hiraeth, about a 16-year-old orphan leaving a children’s home in the mid-1970s. Meera Mistry Today we are living in an era where these topics are no longer taboo. It seems we are all open to having the uncomfortable conversations we once avoided and learning from each other’s life experiences.Browne trained at the Anna Scher Theatre in North London, going on to win the sole scholarship for men at Mountview Acting Academy in classical theatre. He has performed Shakespeare’s "Othello", and also appears in film, TV and theatre. He is also a singer songwriter and has recorded an album. Complex and darkly satisfying, One Under proves that when drama moves beyond formula, anything can happen.' Spy In The Stalls It was amazing to be seen,” says Olumide Popoola about some of the social workers who helped her through care in Germany. She lived with a foster family from 12 to 14 and then spent a couple of years in a children’s home. Both places recognised her writing talent and helped her get work published. Now Popoola is a novelist and an associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins in London. “I always feel these two years [at the children’s home] made it possible for me to be who I am today.” Janet Lee Browne's success at Yalisombo became internationally known, and the eminent leprologist Robert Cochrane, while visiting the Congo, encouraged Browne to leave behind his interest in general tropical medicine and focus entirely on leprosy studies. It’s a mixture of stigma and admiration,” says Martin Figura of attitudes towards people in care. He spent his childhood moving between different carers after his mother was killed by his father in 1966. He wrote about the experience in his 2010 poetry collection Whistle, which was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes award and which Figura later turned into an Edinburgh show. He expected “a certain amount of difficulty” from the exposure but “it’s not made anything weird at all,” he says. “It’s been fine.” Greg Bramble



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