Office staff and project team

Office staff

Sara Lee, Artistic Director
I have an amazing and inspiring job, combining the two things I love most in life: music and people. On a regular basis I witness how writing and performing music can change individuals, offer them new choices and help them think differently about their future.

It all started in my living room after I was asked to set up the organisation in Irene Taylor’s memory. It took about six months of building contacts and fundraising before we delivered our first project in 1996. Feedback from prisoners and staff was fantastic, word got out as to what we were doing and we’ve never looked back. Today I am responsible for the long-term strategy of the Trust, developing projects and planning our programme of work. I also continue to work on the music projects themselves.

I get as much enjoyment seeing how music can change lives today as I did when I first started. I have met, worked with and learned from some extraordinary and inspiring people, none of whom I was ever likely to have come into contact with yet all of whom have played their own part in making the organisation what it is today.

Luke Bowyer, Funding & Communications Director
When I joined the Trust back in 2008 I didn’t really know what I was letting myself in for. I had no idea how much being part of this work would come to mean to me. Music has always been an important part of my life, but for many of our participants it’s a real life-line, a source of positivity, pride and hope against a background of struggle. Every project performance is a major achievement, and as we see from the letters that follow – sometimes many years later – the experience really stays with participants. I feel immensely proud every time I sit as part of an audience watching people share the original music they’ve created.

Being part of a bijou team means that every day brings new things, excitement and challenges. There’s a great deal of pressure on small organisations in the current climate, but seeing the impact of our work makes it all feel worthwhile.

Joe Bibby, Finance & Operations Manager
I’ve worked in the charity sector for the past 15 years, most of it in the arts, and mostly for charities supporting young people’s self-expression in one way or another. I’ve been privileged to see first-hand how powerful creativity can be in helping people grow, heal, and learn more about themselves. As a musician myself, I know how central music can be to forming our identities, creating a direct conduit that bypasses preconceptions and differences to bring people together. I’m delighted to have the chance to support the staff, musicians and beneficiaries of the Irene Taylor Trust to continue changing lives through music.

Imogen Flower, Projects & Progression Coordinator
Coming from a research background focussed on the potential of music as a platform for activism within marginalised communities, I have always been curious about the role music can play in society. A lot of my work has been with a sex worker-led musical theatre project called Sex Worker’s Opera, which uses performance to challenge stigma and advocate for the decriminalisation of sex work. My experiences in Sex Worker’s Opera showed me how vital it is for everyone to have the opportunity to tell their own story on their own terms, and to be listened to – something that is also central to the Irene Taylor Trust’s ethos.

I joined the Trust fresh off the back of a long stint working alone to write my PhD, and it has been an amazingly re-energising experience to witness the creativity, kindness, humility, and the sense of community that characterise the work this organisation does. Every day brings new and exciting challenges, and every project brings fantastic songs that stay in my head long after the instruments have been packed up, but the most important thing is the people. Everyone who is involved with the Irene Taylor Trust – whether taking part in a project, leading a workshop, or taking care of business in the office – makes it what it is, and I feel very lucky to be a part of that.

Rupert Tate, Business Development
After a thirty year career in finance, I was keen to broaden my horizons and take on new challenges. I have been involved in a number of start-ups and charities as a non-executive director, consultant and trustee, but what I was really looking for was an opportunity which would allow me to use the skills I have developed over my career, but also focused on my main interests. I have ten years experience as a charity trustee and in my spare time, I am an amateur musician.

I first came across the Trust in my role as consultant grant assessor at the Fore, a collective organisation that makes grants to smaller charities. I was hugely impressed by the team and the impact achieved by the Trust’s activities. The chance to join the Trust in 2019 offered a fantastic opportunity: I have joined a small and dynamic team that uses music programmes as a way of helping those who for a variety of reasons are disadvantaged and have not reached their potential. I share the team’s conviction that music, particularly playing with others and performing, can be a tremendously powerful way of building self-confidence and self-worth, as well as communicating with others and building relationships. My role involves managing the relationships with our funders, and developing relationships which will lead to new funding opportunities and income generation.

Jake Tily, Creative Programmes Director
Since graduating from Central School of Speech and Drama I’ve been fortunate enough to deliver and manage a range of different arts based projects with young people and adult community groups. Two projects that have always stuck out for me were arts based programmes in prisons. Firstly a two week residency with young fathers, where they wrote and performed a piece of theatre to their children, and secondly a healthy relationships drama workshop with a group of women on International Women’s Day. I found both experiences really rewarding, and I was able to see how powerful and integral the arts are within criminal justice settings.

My role at the trust is to manage the day to day running of our three main programmes; Music in Prisons, Making Tracks and Sounding Out.

Project Team

Nick Hayes, Project Leader
It’s a great pleasure to say that I have been working for the Irene Taylor Trust since the beginning. It’s an amazing experience to be able to work intensively and collectively for short periods of time to create sets of amazing songs. The work is invigorating, inspiring and challenging both personally and creatively. I have had some profound experiences in this work, such as helping fledgling musicians move forward an inch, where for them it would seem to be miles, having arrived there through sheer graft and determination.

Rex Horan, Project Leader
I am yet to meet someone for whom music means nothing – who doesn’t have a favourite song, band or style of music. Because of this commonality, it is an ideal starting point and conduit for work which has the potential to be truly transformative.

Over the past eleven years I have conducted more than 150 projects for the Irene Taylor Trust. I have been affected in the most profound ways by every single one of them. They have been at once wondrous, baffling, hilarious and touching. I have been privileged to witness the very best from the people I have toiled, created and performed with; people who are commonly coming to the projects bereft of hope and self-belief. I consider myself extremely lucky to play a part in this process month after month. I’m always learning and growing as a musician and, I hope, as a person through this work.

I also play bass in the Neil Cowley Trio, and have recorded with artists such as Laura Marling, The Staves, Emeli Sande and Ed Sheeran.

Charles Stuart, Project Leader
A singer-songwriter and musician, who enjoys working with both analog and newer digital technologies. As a freelance music tutor I have also been involved with Epic Arts and Lewisham College. More recently I have been performing in ‘The Fish Police’ a band made up of both disabled and non-disabled musicians from the Heart n Soul creative arts company, in addition to playing in Grace Jones’ band.

There are so many inspiring people and things that can happen in an ITT project across a very short 4-and-a-half-day week. Some inspirations are huge and some are very small but I am constantly inspired by meeting people who at the beginning of a project week may only have a non-musician’s appreciation of music. These people very openly trust us, the project team, to gently guide them through the madness that is creating pop music whilst learning how to play an instrument in what amounts to only a few hours! We ask a lot of the participants and they pretty much always deliver.

Emma Williams, Project Leader
I love the diverse range of people that we get to work with on projects. Walking into a room and meeting a group for the first time knowing that we are about to create, record and perform new music that is a true mix of everyone’s personalities and tastes is such an exciting feeling. It comes with its own challenges but this is all part of the process; it can be an emotional roller coaster!

I have had the absolute pleasure of working for the Irene Taylor Trust for over 5 years now and alongside these projects I teach the Electronic Music elective to undergraduate students at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama as well as running workshops for various organisations. I love to sing and write songs and am fortunate enough to have an active performing career as a keyboard player and backing vocalist. I’ve worked with a number of groups and artists, most recently with electro-pop singer Kyla La Grange. I am also a member of Urban Voices Collective, a fashion-led London based choir who have worked with artists such as Paloma Faith, Gary Barlow and Labrinth.

Rob Willson, Project Leader
I’ve been fortunate enough to work on music projects with people from a diverse cross section of the community in a variety of settings. Past projects have included those in SEN schools, pupil referral units, centres for homeless people, care homes and children’s hospices. In every case, I have witnessed first-hand music’s ability to connect people, to break down barriers, and to bring renewed focus, energy and confidence to people whose lives are in need of a boost. The projects that the Irene Taylor Trust has pioneered are unique in their ambition and quality, and I feel very privileged to be involved in such an inspiring organisation.

I trained as a classical trumpet player. As a freelance musician I work with a number of orchestras and chamber ensembles, and am a founding member of Meridian Brass. In the world of pop and rock, I work regularly with my function band, Brando, and have recently been performing and touring with Public Service Broadcasting and the Old Dirty Brasstards.

Lucy Drever, Project Leader
I absolutely love working with the Irene Taylor Trust – I love helping people create music, and lyrics, and the end product always amazes me – and the songs are stuck in my head for days… and months after the project has finished.

I am a workshop leader and presenter. I work with various arts organisations on their learning programmes; I lead vocal and creative composition workshops, I work with instrumentalists, and I love working with people of all ages, and all musical skills! I also present concerts. For education concerts, I really enjoy working with incredible artists to help communicate what they do, to audiences that have never experienced anything like it.

I think I have the best job in the world as it’s a real mixture, and every day something new happens. I feel very privileged to work with a huge range of people, using an artform that I have absolutely loved since I was small!

Emma Doherty, Project Leader
I’ve been lucky enough to work with the Irene Taylor Trust since 2017 and since then I have learnt so much both musically and personally. It’s always a highlight of my working life when I get to do an ITT project and I feel very privileged to be part of an organisation that does such vital and exciting work. I split my time working in music and theatre as a singer, song writer and director and over the years have been lucky to work with all sorts of people including those affected by homelessness, babies and toddlers, women who are asylum seeking and children and adults with PMLD. I’m currently working part-time with Settle, an organisation that are committed to tackling the cycle of youth homelessness, and have worked on the helpline at Manchester Rape Crisis for the past few years. I believe the arts are a tool for empowerment and social change and I love seeing first hand the impact of the trusts work on wellbeing and community.

Marcus Joseph, Musician in Residence
I am a Jazz Musician and Composer who regularly performs throughout the UK. I play the Alto Saxophone, Clarinet and Piano. My childhood experience as the only Afro-Caribbean boy playing a classical instrument in ensembles later developed a passion for working with youth to cultivate interest in live music, musicianship and music production. Whilst working for the Irene Taylor Trust I have been fortunate enough to see the positive effects that music has on young people and have witnessed them grow in confidence, which always inspires me. Check out my website for more info: www.marcusjosephsax.com

James Dey, Musician in Residence
I’m a freelance teacher/composer/performer from Leeds. I studied music at Salford University with my main focus on drumming and composition. I’ve been working in prisons around Yorkshire for the last 5 years facilitating all sorts of wonderful music making and I’m really excited to be Music in Prison’s Musician in Residence at HMP Wakefield. I love the creativity, energy and excitement the prisoners bring as they write their own songs, learn instruments, put bands together and put on performances. It’s a real privilege to be part of and inspiring for me as a musician too.

Find out more about James in this interview.

Craig Fortnam, Musician in Residence
I am a composer and performer, directing my own chamber music group North Sea Radio Orchestra. I have also been active in education throughout my career, teaching guitar, running creative workshops and now working for the Irene Taylor Trust. I find working with prisoners rewarding and challenging – it is fantastic to help facilitate personal development through music-making; the prisoners get a lot of pleasure from rehearsing, composing and performing….as do I!

Emily Jacques, Musician in Residence
I’ve been working in prisons on rehabilitation projects since I was 21, and I’ve been making music since I can remember. The Irene Taylor Trust has given me the opportunity to combine these two passions. In the time I have been working for the Trust I have gained a lot, developing greatly as both a musician and a person – and I feel the same can be said for them men who take part in the sessions I run. It is amazing to see people from all different ages, backgrounds, cultures come together to create something in the music sessions. Music gives people a voice, a positive activity to immerse themselves in, a way to develop confidence and self-belief, and helps to create a community in the unlikeliest of places. I have known all my life that music can make a difference to people; I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to witness it first-hand.

When I am not in the prison running music sessions I can be found writing, recording and performing as Minnie Birch or with 10-piece folk band The Company of Players.

Mark Howe, Musician in Residence
I have greatly enjoyed working as a musician in residence for the Irene Taylor Trust since January 2014. It is inspiring to work with guys who, no matter what their music making background, ability or experience have an innate and sometimes profound sense of music, its power, worth and importance in their lives.

As a community music practitioner I am rooted in inclusion, often through the use of junk percussion, found sound, rescued instruments and, the use of accessible repertoire to develop fundamental music skills, the associated life skills, personal/social outcomes and to promote well-being.

I am an active musician, performer and song-maker working primarily with the Neutrinos and KlangHaus, an ensemble that enjoys playing with the conventions associated with live performance.

Keir Cooper, Album Cover Designer
I’ve worked as Album Cover Designer for Irene Taylor Trust since 2018. I really enjoy the work. It necessitates a quick graphic solution from a few written clues: when the albums come back from the printers it’s a fab feeling, and I hope the music-makers dig the angle we’ve gone with. It’s work I can put skills to and I feel useful contributing to these people-centred projects.

Outside of graphic freelancing, I have a practice in music, theatre and writing. More recent projects involve a suite of music for opera singer and guitar (coming 2023) and a co-authored punk prose revision of Shakespeare’s Dream – on a theatrical bookclub tour. Other work includes a jazz-rock big band, theatre pieces with pole dance and flamenco dance, and one that features a guest lead performer each night who steals an audience member away with them.

A background in graphic design has enabled a DIY approach to my wider arts practice and getting things out there. I hope to bring this energy to my work with Irene Taylor.

Lizzie Coombes, Photographer
I have been working as a photographer since 1990 and have a long track record of cross-art-form collaboration and innovative community projects. I’ve worked as a photo artist, documentary and publicity photographer and a designer with a wide variety of people and organizations. Work includes projects with Opera North, The National Media Museum, ArtForms/Education Leeds, Creative Partnerships, and of course Music in Prisons, who I have worked with on many projects from 2000 to the present day, including the commission in collaboration with Mark-Anthony Turnage as part of The Cultural Olympiad 2012.

The two key strands to my work are photographing people and spaces. I have developed a style of portrait photography over the years, which I’ve used to develop self-esteem and promote positive images of the people I’ve worked with. I’ve also worked extensively photographing spaces and what they say about the people who inhabit them, working in a way that makes the space speak with care and sensitivity.

I am an artist who enjoys both the process and the product of what I do and have been involved in creating exhibitions, resource packs, projections and DVDs that have been shown in a wide variety of places, for example in October 2012 I created the exhibition Submerged, in collaboration with I Love West Leeds Festival, a set of 32 photographs that were viewed underwater in the Bramley Baths pool. I also work under the name Betty Lawless, the name I use on Twitter and Instagram. Betty loves photographing the beauty in ordinary things, revels in colour and light and is partial to a little glitter, with a kitsch or vintage twist. See Lizzie’s work on Flickr and Facebook.