Search Results

Radio & Podcast Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller - Broadway and me Jeffrey Seller 2021 An adoptee, in this interview with Richard Fidler, Jeffrey Sellers talks about growing up in Detroit where he was well loved and supported in his interest in musical theatre. After he moved to New York, Seller worked as a booking agent and also produced a number of successful musicals. Most recently he has produced Hamilton and taken that to Australia where 250,000 tickets were sold out before the first preview of the show. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Three Blind Mice Agatha Christie 1952 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1950. Three Blind Mice took at its heart the true story of the horrific abuse of two young orphan boys, one of whom really was murdered by foster parents who were supposed to protect and look after them whilst World War Two was raging throughout Europe: ‘Terence O'Neill and his brother, Dennis, were taken to a foster home in 1945 on the Shropshire, England farm of Reginald and Esther Gough. The two suffered from beating and neglect, and later that year, Dennis died at the age of 12 from injuries he had sustained.' External Website

Radio & Podcast Rhys Stephenson and Esther Manito A Good Read 2023 There are 2 (of 3) books with Care Experienced characters being discussed on this podcast. The first is Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing (2018), which we’ve mentioned before, https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/where-the-crawdads-sing-(novel) The other is Stepping Up (2022) is a debut novel by Sarah Turner. It’s the story of Beth who finds herself with a totally different life to the one she lives (or has planned) when she – as the result of a tragedy – becomes the guardian for her niece and nephew. External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp Something Dark (Play) Lemn Sissay 2017 Something Dark tells the true story of Lemn Sissay who as a baby was given up by his Ethiopian mother in the 1960s. He was renamed Norman Greenwood and nicknamed Chalky White throughout his turbulent childhood in care, only to find out his real name at the age of 18. No longer the possession of the social services, he left the brutal suburbs of Lancashire for the bright lights of Manchester where he became a celebrated performance poet. Aged 21 Lemn left for Gambia in search of his mother and the truth about his father. Something Dark is now a set text on Edexcel's Contemporary Black British Literature: A Guide. External Website

Radio & Podcast My long-lost sister was a surrogate mother to my twins BBC Outlook 2022 Canadian adoptee Mark MacDonald found out as an adult and after a happy childhood that his 16year old birth mother went on to marry his biological father and have 3 more children. More than that, his only recently found sister, Rachel Elliott (who lives in the US) offered to be a surrogate for Mark and his partner, for whom having children was medically problematic. External Website

Radio & Podcast How Superman Defeated the KKK (in Real Life): Hear the World Changing 1946 Radio Drama Open Culture ​ Open Culture has some post WWII posters and radio dramas which feature Superman combatting discrimination and the KKK. Membership in the Ku Klux Klan had begun to rise in 1946 and Stetson Kennedy, a human rights activist, comes up with an idea to combat their influence. From the Open Culture website:: "The 16-episode [radio] series, “The Clan of the Fiery Cross,” aired in June, 1946 and effectively chipped away at the Klan’s mystique, gradually revealing their secret codewords and rituals." External Website

Sport Richie Bray Richie Bray ​ Aboriginal Australian footballer Richie Bray (c. 1938 - 2017) was a member of the Stolen Generations, Richie Bray lived in a group home, St Francis House, at Semaphore in South Australia. He went on to play Australian Rules Football for the Port Adelaide football club, in the state competition between 1959 and 1965. External Website

Non Fiction The Big Issue Big Issue 2021 The Big Issue is a street newspaper founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991 and published in four continents. John Anthony Bird, Baron Bird, (born 30 January 1946) is a British social entrepreneur and life peer. Bird was born in a Notting Hill slum to a poor London Irish family. He became homeless at the age of five, resided in an orphanage between the ages of seven and ten, and was often excluded from school. He became a butcher's boy after leaving the orphanage, and supplemented his income by stealing. Between work, he spent several spells in prison during his teens and twenties where he learnt to read, write and the basics of printing. Bird attended Chelsea School of Art, but was homeless again by 1967, sleeping rough in Edinburgh while being sought by the police for petty offences. In the early 1970s, he started to build upon his prison education and set up a small-scale printing and publishing business in London. For two weeks in 1970, he worked as a dishwasher in the Houses of Parliament canteen, an institution he would later return to as a life peer. He is best known as the co-founder of The Big Issue, a magazine that is edited by professional journalists and sold by street vendors who are homeless or vulnerably-housed. Bird sits as an independent Crossbencher member of the House of Lords. External Website

Radio & Podcast A mother I never knew — the secret of Peter Papathanasiou Peter Papathanasiou 2019 In this conversation, Peter Papathanasiou tells the story of how he was given by his mother in Greece to be raised by his aunt in Australia. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Sir Mo Farah reveals he was trafficked to the UK as a child BBC News 2022 According to thuis BBC story, Hussein Abdi Kahin - now Sir Mo Farrah - was 9 when he was flown from the Republic of Djibouti to the UK - ostensibly to live with his relatives - and then made him do housework and look after her children. Mo didn't attend school until he was 12, and then it was athletics he enjoyed the most and a teacher who organised a foster family for him. Mo Farah has won numerous athletics awards and was knighted in 2017. External Website

Poets Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift ​ Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift". Swift's father died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born.He died of syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town. At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his wet nurse to her hometown of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. He said that there he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three. His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift (1628–1695), he sent the younger Swift to Kilkenny College age six, Swift graduated in 1682, when he was 15. External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp Miss Saigon Clade-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil 1989 A principal character in the stage musical, Miss Saigon (1989), Kim, is an orphan. Miss Saigon opens with Kim, 17 years old and from a rural area, beginning her first day as a bar girl. She is taunted by the other girls and women because she is inexperienced. A US soldier, Chris, falls in love with Kim—and she with him—but Chris returns to the US without her. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Songwriter: Willie Nelson American Masters ​ Willie Nelson (b. 1933) is a superstar of country music (“Red Headed Stranger,” “Shotgun Willie,” “Stardust”). His mother left soon after he was born, and his father remarried and also moved away, leaving Nelson and his sister Bobbie to be raised by their grandparents, who taught singing back in Arkansas and started their grandchildren in music. Nelson reinvented the country music as one of the founding fathers of outlaw country, forging a style of music that went against the convention of its time. Filmmaker Steven Cantor sat down with Willie to talk about how he got his start in this 2002 interview. External Website

Poets Banjo Paterson Banjo Paterson ​ Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (1864 – 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Barty went to Sydney Grammar School in 1874. While at school he lived with his grandmother, Emily May Barton, in suburban Gladesville. Emily encouraged her grandson to read and write poetry. When he was sixteen, Paterson began work as an articled clerk for a solicitor; he practiced as a lawyer until 1900, then worked as a journalist, contributing articles for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Argus during the Boer War and Boxer Rebellion. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), widely considered Australia's unofficial national anthem. External Website

Radio & Podcast Jenni Fagan 12 Podcast Episodes Jenni Fagan ​ 12 Podcast episodes featuring Jenni Fagan including: Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden in conversation with Adam Biles - Shakespeare and Company; Jenni Fagan: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 62 Granta; Episode 595: Luckenbooth. Jenni Fagan - The Avid Reader Show. External Website

Authors O Michael Oher ➝ Back to Top

Authors Y The Gift of Experience ➝ Back to Top

Performing Arts Professor Green Professor Green ​ Stephen Paul Manderson (born 27 November 1983), better known by his stage name Professor Green or simply Pro Green, is a British rapper, songwriter and television personality from London. Growing up on a council estate in east London, Stephen was raised by his grandmother, great-grandmother and uncles. Green went on to become a multi-platinum artist, with 3.5 million combined sales in the UK. He is the former co-host of Lip Sync Battle UK on Channel 5. His autobiography featured on the Times bestseller list, and he is the patron of the suicide prevention charity Calm. External Website

Radio & Podcast Dr Johnson's Black Heir Empire 2023 In this episode of the Empire podcast (there are 2 parts), historian Peter Moore recounts the story of how a Jamaican slave ended up living in England with the eccentric writer, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). The young Quashey (thought to be the original name) was legally owned by a Colonel Richard Bathurst and about 8 years of age when he was trafficked to England, baptised and renamed Francis Barber. He was initially sent to a boarding school in Yorkshire before being ‘gifted’ to Samuel Johnson. Francis Barber was ‘granted’ his freedom by Richard Bathurst in around 1754 after which the boy went to work for a pharmacist before joining the navy. He later returned to work for Samuel Johnson. External Website

Radio & Podcast JRR Tolkien's religious legacy God Forbid 2023 In this discussion, it's the influence of JRR Tolkien's religious convictions that are under discussion. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and a ward of a priest when he was a child..The Lord of the Kings is embedded throughout with Christian symbolism. However, this is much pagan symbolism in his work as well. External Website