Arts & Parts celebrates and works actively with women and gender non-conforming people in all facets of its operation and output. Across the past few years, we have collaborated across the spectrum of the arts on an array of projects and initiatives that have a basis in music and sound art.

UK based broadcaster, curator, writer and speaker Fiona Talkington made us very happy when she agreed to write an essay about Finding Our Voice.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist John Surman is a key figure in a generation of European musicians who crucially expanded the international horizons of jazz during the last decades of the twentieth century. Long acknowledged for the exquisite lyricism and richly textured sound of his music — and intense, full-bodied improvisation — he is a stalwart of the ECM record label, and the recipient of many accolades, including the golden key from Novara Jazz and the prestigious Ivor Novello Jazz Award.

Many years ago, I worked with an impressive young Australian arts worker of Teo Chew Chinese-Cambodian descent, who had a broad range of creative, intellectual and social passions and was exploring life in London. After a few years developing and delivering the creative learning programme at our workplace, she went left us to go travelling and to continue her education.