Virginia Shaw, Housing Support Services

Virginia ‘Ginnie’ Shaw was initiator and foundermember of East Yorkshire Housing Association (EYHA) in Bridlington in 1980s, arising out of research carried out by the local Shelter group into the lack of housing with support for homeless young people. Its first project was to house homeless young people in supported housing in a street house […]

Janice Peggs, Childcare Campaigner

Janice Peggs is a social entrepreneur, policy reformer and successful campaigner for better childcare provision in York and nationally. In the late 1980s Janice resigned her well-paid management post with London Transport and moved back to York with her young son, Joseph, because she could not find suitable or secure childcare in the capital. As […]

Juliet Forster, Theatre Director

Juliet Forster became Associate Director of York Theatre Royal in 2007. She has a degree in Theatre from the University of Birmingham. At first she was more interested in the acting side but as she continued she found “the other side of things” more intriguing with directing the most enjoyable. She started as a lighting designer […]

Amy Tyro, Footballer

Amy was born in Sheffield in 1987 but from an early age was brought up in York. At a party she was playing football with her friends when the father of one of her friends, spotting her talent, suggested she play at Doncaster Belles. At that time women’s teams were few and far between, but […]

Yvie Holder, Founder, York Race Equality Network

Yvie has been promoting diversity and equality for over 30 years, in both a personal and a professional capacity. Born in London, to a Trinidadian father and English mother, and raised in Kingston Upon Hull, Yvie came to study at the University of York, where she graduated in 1976.  She became a teacher of English and […]

Rose Kent, Accessible Arts

Rose Kent – Creative Director of Accessible Arts & Media, Chair of Tang Hall Big Local, art & music lecturer, sculptor, community artist. Accessible Arts & Media (AAM) is an award-winning charity running arts and creative media learning projects since 1982, where the achievements and aspirations of everyone, regardless of their circumstances are celebrated. They […]

Joyce Pickard, Peace Campaigner

Joyce Pickard (1921- 2017), Quaker, peace campaigner, and educator, was born in Derby in 1921, and educated at the University of London Westfield College, taking a modern language degree and then a teaching certificate. She moved to York when she was appointed head teacher at the Mount School in 1960, the youngest ever, and she […]

Susan Blore, co-founder of York Rhematoid Arthritis Group

Susan (1957- ) was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, (RA), in 2001. During a York Hospital appointment in 2006, a health professional told her that York was ‘crying out’ for an RA support group. Susan discussed this with women who had attended a patient education course with her, and they decided to try and organise this. […]

Irene Faulkner, Educator, Councillor, Magistrate

Irene Faulkner [1918 – 2010], of South Bank, York, trained as a nursery teacher and later worked in further education.  A pioneer in the world of education, in the early 1950, when there was no nursery education available, in order to help working mothers with very small children, she set up a nursery school at […]