Time to tell you more about our team – this time, it’s the turn of co-curator Sarah Pickthall – just who is she and what does she do?

Sarah is a freelance consultant, coach, artist and community producer with over 20 years experience in arts, television funding, training, education in the UK and Japan. She runs her own coaching and consultancy – Cusp inc – which aims to make people’s lives feel better and mean more.

In all her work, Sarah prioritises people – she is passionate about people’s voices being heard and removing barriers to people moving forward in their lives and being counted. As a curator on PUSH ME, one of her core roles is to interface between our film team and our artists, ensuring that all perspectives can be heard and acknowledged.

Sarah and Jo, the other curator, have worked together on numerous projects prior to PUSH ME, most recently Sync Leadership – a programme funded initially through the Cultural Leadership Programme and then directly by Arts Council England focusing on disability and leadership.

Sarah Pickthall trained in Drama at Exeter University and studied Kabuki Theatre at Kokuritsu Gekijo, Tokyo in Japan. A career spanning live performance and children’s television, she is best known for writing and performing The Handymen in the Bafta nominated programme Zzzap – a televisual comic for CITV in association with The Media Merchants.

Sarah has recently moved back to a focus on performance and is currently developing a fascinating project – Loyal Enemy – a mixed-media performance that springs from the life and work of Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, a rector’s son from Suffolk who translated the Koran and who is also Sarah’s blood relation. Political and eclectic, Loyal Enemy promises to incite, delight and deliver something radically unusual – very much Sarah’s signature style!

In this Cultural Olympiad year, Sarah is also leading a carnival project  – Blue Touch Paper – in partnership with West Sussex the New Carnival Company collaborating with Rio’s Embaixadores de Alegria putting learning disabled people at the heart of carnival.

She is also developing a unique new project called The Pantry in partnership with NHS which works with young people at risk of eating disorder working with artists and makers.

Basically Sarah adds integrity and authenticity to all the work she is involved with – and no more so than PUSH ME. As co-curator she is at the heart of its creative drive, and also a lead for access, developing new and innovative ways to ensure all people can experience the work, especially with the audio described versions of our films. Do have a listen to them (just click on the AD button) – and you’ll get to hear her dulcet tones too.  Surely a great way to get to know such a key part of the PUSH ME team!