I am a working-class theatre-maker and a first-generation university researcher, from a long line of miners who migrated from Barnsley to Kent to dig coal in the 1940’s.

I am also from a long line of performance activists. My aunt, Kay Sutcliffe, penned Coal not Dole, a poem turned into a song and performed by Oysterband and Chumbawamba. My uncle, Alan Sutcliffe, wrote three tracks and toured with Test Dept., one of the most important bands of the British 1980’s industrial music scene. My beginnings as an artist owe much to a small act of resistance within the coalfield of Kent in the form of a large-scale community play by Colway Theatre Trust in which I acted, alongside Kay, Alan and 100 others from the ex-mining village of Aylesham…

My PhD: The Past We Inherit, The Future We Build, borrows the motto of the NUM and re-examines the 1984/85 strike and the end of mining. It does this, not just through the histories of those who stood up to fight to save their communities, but through the postmemories and counter-memories of those people, like myself, who followed in their footsteps, to look for justice – whatever that means…