Panel Discussion

Sarah Brigham

Sarah Brigham is the CEO and Artistic Director of Derby Theatre. She launched In Good Company in 2013 and has worked extensively across theatre as a Director, actor and facilitator.

Steve McCourt

Steve is a theatre-maker and director who creates work that ignites conversation between young audiences and their adults. Originally from a performance background, Steve trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

As a theatre-maker, Steve has worked with some of the nation’s most highly regarded companies (Tall Stories, Improbable, Blind Summit, The Wardrobe Ensemble). He is the Artistic Director of Punchdrunk Enrichment and his work for the organisation includes Fireside Tales, The Creature Chronicles and the Immersive Learning Toolkit. Steve is also proud to act as a trustee for the Midlands based physical theatre company, Highly Sprung.

Evie Manning

Evie is Co-Artistic Director of Common/Wealth, a political site-specific theatre company based in Bradford and Cardiff, making work with people from their lived experience, from steelworkers to car enthusiasts exploring Islamophobia. With Common/Wealth, Evie has toured shows around the world, directing performances for BBC4, National Theatre Wales and the British Textile Biennial, and received awards from Amnesty International, Scotsman Fringe First, and The Observer New Radicals.

As a freelance director Evie has directed productions for Manchester International Festival, Royal Exchange Theatre, Tamasha, and Battersea Arts Centre.

Evie was named in The Stage 25 as one of the influential theatre-makers of the future.

Evie was brought up and lives in Bradford.

Angie Fullman

Angie Fullman is a Clore Fellow and General Manager at Shakespeare’s Globe. She has previously worked for Frantic Assembly, Charcoalblue and the National Theatre.

As part of her Clore Fellowship earlier this year, she completed a secondment with Birmingham Hippodrome, supporting a proposal for a new National Centre for Musical Theatre in Birmingham, specifically looking at possibilities for training, skills and career development in musical theatre.

Angie is interested in equitable artist and professional development initiatives and the development of new work in theatre and creating positive, accessible environments where people can do their best work.

Dr Rommi Smith

Rommi Smith is a freelance writer, academic and broadcaster. Winner of the Northern Writers Prize for Poetry, Rommi has been awarded prestigious fellowships, residencies and commissions, from organisations and institutions ranging from the BBC to The British Council. In 2025, she was appointed a judge for the Forward Prizes for Poetry.

Rommi is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence. She was Writer-in-Residence for Keats’ House, the Wordsworth Trust and most recently, the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for Harewood House, writing in response to its exhibition about Jane Austen & JMW Turner.

Rommi is a librettist and collaborates with the composer Roderick Williams. Their works include: Cusp (premiered at The Southbank Centre), The Blacke Songs (premiered at The Tower of London) and Three Dimensions (commissioned by and premiered at St Paul’s Cathedral).

Rommi was commissioned by Lubaina Himid and The ICA to create Tracing the Thin Black Line (a new performance work marking the 40th anniversary of the exhibition The Thin Black Line). The work premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 2025.

Rommi’s academic scholarship centres jazz and blues women and civil rights. She is honoured to have interviewed leading contemporary musicians, from Dr. Dianne Reeves to Dr. Esperanza Spalding, Professor Terri Lyne Carrington to Cassandra Wilson, as part her academic research. Rommi’s work is published by, amongst others, Routledge and New York University Press.

Rommi has written and presents the celebrated BBC series Full Moon on Progress St, inspired by her academic research. Both of the current series of the programme are available on BBC iPlayer. The series was selected by The Radio Times as a Highlight.

A collection of poems inspired by her research is forthcoming.

Nick Ahad

Nick Ahad is a multiple award-winning writer and broadcaster working across TV, theatre and radio.

Plays include: The Boy at the Back of the Class (Rose Theatre, Kingston, national tour 2024); Glory (Dukes Theatre, Red Ladder, Tamasha, national tour, 2019).

TV writing includes: Better, Emmerdale and an original series developed by BBC Drama.

Radio work includes: Umbreen’s Junction (2021); Partition (2017).

He has broadcast thousands of hours of live radio for the BBC, presenting the Nick Ahad Show for BBC Radio Leeds for over a decade.

In 2020 he joined Radio 4’s Front Row presenting team.