Little Big Man

Product Information

To embrace the warrior and the humility side of ourselves that is within us all. Learning to love you for who are and not what others perception of you is or what they may want you to be. Stanley also remembers receiving parcels from his mum's great great aunt in Jamaica which would consist of fresh mint to make mint tea, or cocoa to make hot chocolate. His mum would often make hot chocolate from the pure cocoa, grating it and adding nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon and condensed milk. Graeae is a world renowned innovator in theatre and its productions place creative access at their heart. This play will feature a creative use of captioning and will have audio description on offer at every performance (ask the Box Office for details).

My own interests and experiences also weave into my stories so that readers can get an insight into my South Asian heritage, as you can see from this story about Karak Chai which I'm ever so passionate about! Because her care experience happened so early – she was in and out of a foster home in east London until the age of five – Siroun Button never really thought of herself as somebody who’d been in care. “Now I’m starting to realise that it did really have an impact on me,” she says. To help others like her, Button has co-founded calling4gr8ness.org, a programme supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. Lennox Cato DL Today we are living in an era where these topics are no longer taboo. It seems we are all open to having the uncomfortable conversations we once avoided and learning from each other’s life experiences. I also love supporting ethnic minority owned businesses and finding out about owners' own experiences and inspirations behind their menus, for example the story of this Chinese bakery. I came into care when I was 13, due to being homeless,” says Sanna Mahmood. Her care experience in West Yorkshire “was reasonably positive, partly because I was just happy to have a home. Someone gave me a fish-finger sandwich and I was like, I’ve made it.” Leaving care was harder: “The social housing that I got put into was not the best – there were needles all over the floor and blood on the wall – and the support wasn’t always the greatest.” Support for care leavers has since improved, Mahmood says, thanks to new policies from her local authority in Kirklees. Jenny Bagchi

Shenagh Govan

From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changed when his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. What I learnt about myself is the realisation that I have actually survived my trauma. I already knew how far I had come, but I almost belittled the trauma over the years because of my successes. Writing this memoir emphasised why I felt compelled to share my story with others in the first place. It’s also a book about belonging and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery.

I remember the photographer who turned up at my mothers house that day, a complete stranger to me who didn't belong in our house," Stanley recalls. "He'd been brought over to take some pictures of my mum, but suggested at the end of the shoot to do a couple of us kids standing together... I felt extra protective over my sisters then." Donna Ludford applied to become lord mayor of the City of Manchester “to raise aspirations for young people in the care system”. She had a deeply unsettled childhood, moving between foster families and children’s homes from the age of six months, after her parents were badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Ludford began as a cleaner at Manchester city council before working her way up, earlier this year, to lord mayor. But success is “not about being the lord mayor,” she told a group of care leavers recently. “It’s about thriving in life and doing what makes you happy.” Zarina BhimjiSonny and Christine want to escape. They have a night to remember but underneath the surface things aren’t what they seem. Cyrus is frantically trying to piece together the truth about that night. Unexpectedly a tragedy is about to unite them all… Natalie Hirst spent eight years living in foster care in Greater Manchester and had a mixed experience, but her resilience helped her to develop the strength and skills to overcome many challenges. “My experience has taught me the importance of having kind, supportive adults in the lives of children in care to help them feel safe, cared for and treated like one of the family,” she says. “These experiences have shaped who I am today, an independent woman, passionate about my career and working with local authorities in Greater Manchester to ensure every young person has a voice, choice and control over decisions made about them.” Michelle Brown

I’m hopeful that attitudes towards those in care are changing,” says Meera Mistry, who was in foster care in London for most of her teens. “The care-experienced movement is shaping some of the thinking – that people in care are talented and have so much potential. We can go on to do better if we’re just given the same life chances as other people. I am mightily proud of being care-experienced as it’s made me who I am today. Although it’s going to take time to shift the stigma and change the system, I believe it will happen.” Bruce Oldfield OBE Browne's success at Yalisombo became internationally known, and the eminent leprologist Robert Cochrane, while visiting the Congo, encouraged Browne to leave behind his interest in general tropical medicine and focus entirely on leprosy studies. In 1963 Browne produced a "Report of a Study Tour of Leprosy Research Centres in India and the East". He mentions visiting Buluba Leprosarium (30 miles from Jinja), where there were 23,000 registered leprosy cases.Because of it, he has to adopt the mantle of ‘man of the house’. Forced to scavenge for food and miss school to care for his baby brother, his life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system. An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley begins a descent into crime, heroin addiction and gang life. It is only when he is sent to a young offender’s institution that he slowly begins to turn his life around." A decade ago, Clare Gorham was “very much pro” transracial adoption. “I would have said that the only thing a child needs is love,” she says, reflecting on her own experience of being happily adopted by her white family in Wimbledon in 1966. “Now my mindset is slightly different. I still think love is the most important thing. But it’s a bit of a B-movie of an existence. My parents were amazing, but their colour-blind approach wasn’t representative of society’s view of me.” Sylvan Baker

An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley descends into a life of crime and drug abuse. During his time spent in various young offender's institutions and prisons he battles with addiction and slowly begins to turn his life around. Complex and darkly satisfying, One Under proves that when drama moves beyond formula, anything can happen.' Spy In The Stalls In a sea of brilliantly coloured fabrics – never has clothing seemed more important to the story we tell of ourselves – TV producer and editor Janet Lee looks particularly confident in jazzy reds, hot oranges and cheeky pinks. But don’t be fooled, she says. “If we spent long enough with each other, we’d probably all start crying. Fortunately we’re all busy people, so we have to rush off.” And suddenly they’re all gone, a fleeting crowd of one-offs, whose generosity with their time and their stories has created an indelible image. Born into a Jamaican family in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age.Stanley J. Browne: This memoir touches on many topics that are significant in today’s society mental health, depression, addiction, incarceration, racism, loneliness, recovery, redemption and belonging. I think of my life in two parts: before I traced my birth family and after,” says former Guardian journalist Hannah-Azieb Pool, who detailed the journey in her memoir My Fathers’ Daughter (republished this year). Pool was adopted from an Eritrean orphanage and lived in Sudan and Norway before coming to the UK aged six. Reconnecting with her birth family in Eritrea in her late 20s “allowed me to realise the multiplicities of who I am, to make connections around inter-country adoption, and the idea that you can belong in multiple places and with multiple families. It’s radically changed who I am.” Lucy Reynolds I was fostered till the age of one and then placed with my adoptive family,” says Annalisa Toccara. “Through my lived experience of being adopted, I co-founded a mental-health organisation called Adoptee Futures, which is led by adoptees and which centres adoptees. We look at reclaiming the adoption narrative and reframing the world’s view on adoption, and also helping adult adoptees heal from their trauma.” Louise Wallwein MBE Stanley J. Browne is an actor, and he has been an actor all his life. Born to a Jamaican mother in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changes when his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. It destroys you as a person, the amount of anxiety you develop from always expecting something to go wrong in your life,” says Tarell Mcintosh, who became homeless after two local authorities in south London failed to properly care for him. Mcintosh managed to make it to university and now runs a Caribbean restaurant, Sugarcane London, in Wandsworth, but he remains scarred by his experiences. “You just get used to battling with everybody all the time, and you always have your guard up. It’s really horrible.” Siroun Button