Before BAW, Brian Popay studied at Bath Academy of Art and graduated in 1969. He spent the next 40 years mainly with the Workshop and the Natural Theatre Company. He has two children, one aged 45, the other 25 and he lives in Frome. After leaving the Naturals, Brian formed his own performance company, Fine Artistes, in 2009. Despite attending kidney dialysis three times a week, he still finds time to ‘keep his hand in’ on the performance front.

Jennie Potter-Barrie worked in a private residential school for severely disturbed boys then went on to mainstream schools to work with children with differing needs. With two jobs and three children she managed to get a first class honours degree in Psychology at the OU, followed by a teaching degree and further special needs qualifications. Jennie feels privileged to have worked with so many courageous children. She has two sons, a daughter, a daughter-in-law and three grandsons – her greatest joy. She is now learning to play guitar, rather badly!

Corinne D’Cruz later formed British Events Theatre Company with Mick Banks, an artistic partnership that lives on to this day. Performances are often informed by particular interests and preoccupations, using visual imagery, special effects and humour. Corinne has performed and run teaching projects all over the world, escaping Thatcher’s Britain in 1988 to base the company in Germany for 25 years, where she was a founder member of the Federal Association for Theatre in Public Spaces. She continues to believe in the power of the arts to transform reality.

Penny Dale studied Fine Art in Exeter, then worked in theatre design and with an alternative technology cooperative. Penny is now a well-known author and illustrator of children’s books, with over 30 titles published since 1986. She has produced sessions and workshops in schools, festivals and galleries, as well as collaborating on reading initiatives and group exhibitions. She met her husband at the 1976 Sunshine Festival
and they now live in South Wales. They have a daughter and a grandson.

After travelling in South America,
Phil Shepherd worked in the arts and film in Tower Hamlets, Bristol and New York. He became a Dad in 1985, helped establish the London to Brighton Bike Rides, studied at Bournemouth Film School and worked in documentary production at BBC Children’s TV. In 1995, Phil set up an educational charity, Somerset Film, establishing the Engine Room media centre in 2003. Just now he’s finishing an OU humanities degree and loving it.

Aged 25, Victoria (Tory) Forbes Adam went to university then spent a year in a Mexican town researching for her social anthropology PhD. In the 1980s, she had a research job at Amnesty International’s London HQ. Tory went on to spend six years working on human rights and living in Haiti (a country full of artists). She came back to London in 2001 with her daughter and joined an organisation working to end the use of child soldiers. Lately, Tory has been learning about group dynamics and psychotherapy.

In the 1980s, Thornton Kay ran a salvage yard, made a car run on wood, and persuaded the Bath MP and then Environment Minister, Chris Patten, to include reclamation and reuse
in the UK planning system. In the 1990s, he co-founded Salvo with Hazel Matravers, moved to France, Ireland and Northumberland and started an annual fair promoting reuse. Salvo now has a global impact helping reduce climate change and is a partner in a major EU project to increase reuse of reclaimed building materials.