We’re Thrilled to Welcome Samantha Baines as Stagetext Patron
We’re pleased to announce that Samantha Baines, actress, broadcaster and deaf advocate, has agreed to become Stagetext’s Patron, lending her voice to our work of making theatre and live events accessible to deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences through captions and live subtitles.
You may have seen Samantha on The Crown, Call the Midwife, or presenting on The One Show and BBC Morning Live. But what really excites us is her passion for making arts and culture accessible. As someone who’s deaf and wears hearing aids herself, she’s been accessing our captions since getting her first hearing aid at 29.
Samantha is also the bestselling author of Living with Hearing Loss and Deafness, and writes children’s books featuring deaf characters, including the award-winning Harriet Versus the Galaxy. She understands first-hand how important captions are.
Accepting the patronage, here’s what Samantha said about joining us:
“I’ve been a Stagetext fan for years, so I’m thrilled to be able to support the charity as patron. Getting my first hearing aid at 29 means that having captions in the theatre and at live events has been vital for me not only as a deaf person but as someone with ADHD too.
The arts are incredibly important to me and my job and without Stagetext captions I would have lost access to this key aspect of my life. I’m very excited to work with Stagetext to continue to champion deaf access across the UK.”
With 18 million deaf, deafened and hard of hearing adults in the UK, that’s 1 in 3 people, the need for accessible arts and culture has never been clearer. Having Samantha’s voice championing this work alongside us means we can reach even more people and venues.
Our CEO Melanie Sharpe said: “We’re delighted to announce Samantha Baines as our new Patron to help support us in our ambition of bringing more captions to audiences who have previously felt excluded. We’re very excited about working together as she personally understands how life changing our work is, both as someone who is deaf as well as neurodivergent.
With Samantha’s support and extensive work in arts and culture, we will be able to amplify our impact even further. With so many talents under her belt, she will be a fantastic patron and an influential voice for deaf people.”
Having Samantha as our Patron is fantastic news and with her support and extensive work in arts and culture, together we can create more access, more often.
Welcome to the Stagetext family, Samantha. We’re happy to have you with us.
