Re-activating my blogging

It’s been 15 months since I last wrote a blog – and that’s partly because I’ve been very busy setting up an international alliance of NGOs that want to turn the campaign for Face Equality started by Changing Faces in 2008 into a global movement. It’s called Face Equality International and here’s the link: http://www.faceequalityinternational.org.

#WhereIsDisfigurement? Two classic examples

I fear we at Changing Faces* are going to have say this loudly and regularly: Barely a month passes without a government department, executive agency, public body, company or charity publishing a report or new policy on equality, human rights and/or disability and yet the issue of disfigurement is often ignored, excluded or otherwise forgotten.

Celebrating excellence in diversity practice

I was delighted to have been asked to speak and give the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Excellence in Diversity Awards in Leeds last week – what a great celebration it was! Congratulations to everyone who was nominated – and the winners should be very proud… and especially to Karin Woodley, Chief Executive of Cambridge House

Fashion, faces and the future

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Danka Tamburic, Professor in Cosmetic Science at the London College of Fashion because she is hosting a fascinating Symposium in April, Skin: The ultimate interface, to which I will be contributing with Henrietta Spalding. Our title is ‘Changing Faces: from stigma to face equality’. The meeting

New year, old stereotypes

Happy New Year everyone – and I’d like to start on an upbeat note … but sadly not. ‘The Undateables’ returns to Channel 4 for a new series on Monday night. For the last four years, this series has brought together people who have medical conditions, disabilities and disfigurements with others with similar conditions (and

World AIDS Day

Charlie Sheen’s recent ‘coming out’ as living with HIV shone a much-needed light on the stigma that still surrounds HIV and AIDS, and set me thinking about parallels with disfigurement. It’s more than thirty years since HIV was discovered, and more than twenty-five years since we lost some high profile names to the condition, such

Doing good

A great evening at the Oxford Union last week! So fascinating to be part of an ancient debating tradition that goes back to Gladstone who was President of the Union in 1830. I stood at the despatch box – opposing the motion – on the same boards as many giants of the political world and

Revealing the Lion Faced Man

James is away … Henrietta Spalding, Head of Advocacy at Changing Faces, writes a guest blog After a recent chance meeting with the mezzo opera singer, Alison Wells, last weekend I found myself going along to see a unique opera first at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival at Kings Place in London. It was

‘Ugly’ is offensive and facist, and should be banned

I have been greatly saddened this week to see a word which I consider to be so offensive that it should be consigned to the dustbin of history, ‘ugly’, being used in two mainstream contexts. First, repeating the howler it had first committed in 2011, the TV company Betty, has persuaded BBC3 to broadcast a

From isolated recluse to respected citizen – a tale of two people

I was so delighted to be invited to comment last week on the extraordinary meeting of Richard Norris, a face transplant patient, with his donor’s sister, on the BBC and a number of other news outlets. (You can watch me on the Victoria Derbyshire Show on BBC Two from 31m 35s here.) Here was a