Stagetext is pleased to announce we have recruited four new Trustees to join the Board: Astrid deRidder, VP of Content at Save My Exams; Ben Park, Independent Consultant and Coach; Lena Batra, Founder of Hearing & Music PROM-T5 ® Foundation Course and Warren Stapley, a Lawyer and Consultant.
Stagetext was established in 2000 and has championed deaf access to arts and culture across the UK for 25 years through theatre captions and subtitles for the 18 million people in the UK who are deaf, deafened and hard of hearing.
Our Board of Trustees plays an integral role in our charitable aims, bringing invaluable expertise and influence to support our work in providing and advocating for deaf access to arts and culture across the UK.
Sophie Ede, Co-Chair said: “Following an overwhelming response to our recent Trustee recruitment campaign, we are delighted to welcome Ben, Astrid, Warren, and Lena to our Board. They have an incredible range of specialist skills and expertise which will further enhance Stagetext’s Governance and Leadership, ensuring we are well placed to continue to deliver our mission and charitable objectives.”
Melanie Sharpe, CEO of Stagetext said: “I’m thrilled to welcome four incredibly talented new Trustees to our board, three of whom are deaf. They are all highly skilled, and of course lovely people who have joined at a pivotal time for Stagetext as we embark on a new ambitious programme of bringing more captioned events across England through our Creative Foundations Funding from DCMS and ACE and roll out our new software Stagetext+.
The new trustees are joining a highly committed and effective Board and I and the Co-Chairs look forward to working closely with them over the next few years to ensure we bring more access more often throughout the cultural landscape in England.”
Astrid deRidder, is VP of Content at Save My Exams and has had leadership roles at Cambridge University Press and FutureLearn. She is hard of hearing and said it was an exciting time to join the board: “Stagetext is doing something genuinely difficult: holding the line on quality at a moment when technology is making it very easy not to. That combination of mission clarity and technical ambition is exactly what drew me to the board, and I’m looking forward to contributing to the next chapter.”
Ben Park, is an independent consultant and helps cultural organisations and technology companies grow their audiences. He has more than 20 years experience including with the Edinburgh Fringe. He said he was delighted to join: “The talent and dedication across the Stagetext team is clear to see, and the scale of what they achieve, reaching many of thousands of deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people every year, speaks for itself. I’m delighted to play a small part in supporting that work as a trustee, and look forward to contributing where I can.”
Warren Stapley, who is deaf, had a career as a corporate finance lawyer and has since worked on accessibility and disability rights, LGBTQ+ inclusion and supporting marginalised communities. He said: “Becoming a trustee of Stagetext enables me to help advance accessibility for the D/deaf community. I’m looking forward to applying my legal and EDI expertise to this work, and to collaborating with truly committed people who are driving positive, inclusive change at the heart of the arts sector.”
Lena Batra, registered hearing therapist, consultant and founder of the PROM-T5 ® for music rehabilitation, said cultural inclusion is crucial: “Having been hard of hearing since the age of eight, I have straddled the vast divide between the hearing and deaf worlds.
Continued access to music and the arts played an important role in that journey and reinforced my belief in the importance of arts access for health, wellbeing and social connection – something widely recognised within research and from which no deaf person or individual with hearing loss should be excluded. I look forward to working with such a talented and diverse group of trustees and contributing to Stagetext’s important work in advancing cultural inclusion nationwide.”
The new trustees bring the total number of Stagetext Board members to 10, with 70% of the Board being deaf, deafened or hard of hearing.
