WHO was WHO in

Sue Clifford (Director)
Sue, with Angela King, founded Common Ground in 1983. She has worked as a planner and as a lecturer in environmental planning latterly at University College London. With Angela, she has written and edited a variety of books to help people be more expressive about and more active within their own locality; she has lectured widely for Common Ground.

Angela King (Director)
Angela grew up in Poole, and has lived in and around the Stour Valley for much of her life, bar half a decade in New York and as Friends of the Earth's very first wild-life campaigner in London in the early 1970s. With others, she began work on the plight of the otter in 1975, walking many of the west country's rivers. Out of that pioneering work has grown the positive work on habitat which is helping otter populations to re-establish themselves. She helped found Common Ground.

Helen E. Porter (Music Animateur)
On graduating from Bristol University in 1985, Helen co-founded Public Parts Theatre Company, and worked for ten years as company composer and musical director. Alongside the shows, Helen often toured the SW region giving music workshops to schools, youth clubs and community centres. During this period she also worked as a freelance musical director with theatre companies from the Orkney Islands to the Channel Islands, composing music and running music/singing workshops for people of all ages and abilities. In 1993 she moved to the Netherlands, where she founded her own music theatre company 'Counterparts', and combined the roles of director and composer. She also lead a variety of music and theatre groups and choirs, as well as working as voice tutor for theatre and music students, both amateur and professional, including work as assistant director at the Netherlands Opera. Helen has now returned to live and work permanently in the UK and works with her husband Peter Ursem, having revived the company name of Counterparts.

Karen Wimhurst (Composer in Residence)
As a composer, Karen Wimhurst has worked in a variety of settings ranging from music theatre (Communicado Theatre Company; the RSC), opera (commissioned works include Black Diamonds and Avenues of Childhood), orchestral and other works (commissioned works include Dragon Pageant, Bournemouth Sinfonietta; Pois Chiches, Scottish Chamber Orchestra) and cross art forms (Songs for a Fallen Angel). In 1990 she founded the Cauld Blast Orchestra, a successful eight piece band combining jazz, Scottish traditional and classical musicians. In 1992 she became director of the Westminster Opera Team at English National Opera, initiating several community-based projects in London. She has completed 'Whistling in the Wind', two experimental programmes commissioned by BBC Radio Four, and was Composer in Residence with Common Ground between 1998 and 2001 for Confluence. Follow her work on her web-site.

Darren Giddings (Development Officer)
Darren was born and raised in North Wiltshire. He is a graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and worked with Common Ground on Confluence between 1998 and 2001. The following year he returned to Common Ground to contribute to research and promotion of the book England in Particular, creating the project's web site www.england-in-particular.info

Kate O'Farrell (Adminstrator)
Kate was born in Portsmouth, and studied archaeology at Reading University, later working for Oxford Archaeological Unit and the Trust for Wessex Archaeology.

People who have worked with Confluence include:

James Crowden (writer and poet)
James has travelled widely in the Middle East and spent a winter in the Himalayas on his own. After a brief spell studying civil engineering and anthropology he settled in Dorset where he took up sheep shearing, lambing, forestry and cidermaking as a way of life. He moved to Somerset in 1986. His first book of poetry 'Blood, Earth and Medicine', highlighting the year of a casual agricultural labourer, was published in 1991. This was adapted for performance and radio. His other books include 'In Time of Flood' and 'Working Women of Somerset'. He acted as honorary poet laureate to Confluence, producing many poems in response to concerts down the valley. Read more (and buy books) on his web-site.

Nick Crump (musician and inventor!)
Nick lives in Shaftesbury and his principal occupation is gardening at Grove Farm House, Melbury Abbas. Music is an essential part of his life, and keeps him very busy. He is a founder member of the Hambledon Hopstep Band, plays trumpet in Shaftesbury Orchestra and St Bartholemew's Brass ensemble. He also visits primary schools as a 'music man', playing and talking about many instruments and music-making, to enthuse and inspire children's interest in music. He also plays the Serpent. He has been involved in several Confluence activities, including the Cutwater Band and Pipeworks, and has written music for Watershed. Find out his latest news on his web-site.

Chas Dickie (musician)
Chas plays across a wide spectrum of musical disciplines and participated in Confluence as part of the instrumental trio Watershed. He works with Bournemouth Orchestras, has played with Van Der Graff, PJ Harvey and was a featured soloist in Mike Leigh's film Secrets and Lies. Recently he has put out his own CD 9 Stones on the Polymuse Label.

Belinda Evans (singer)
Belinda studied for a music degree at Bath Spa University. She received much praise for her solo work in Otter - Lutra lutra on the Stour, in Wimborne Minster and has subsequently embarked on singing training and an operatic career. Originally from Yeovil, Belinda has performed with many choirs in and around Somerset.

Paul Hyland (writer and poet)
Paul is a writer and poet and has also written for stage, music theatre and radio. He works nationally: his residencies local to Confluence included Write Up Your Street (Dorset Arts and Libraries 1999) and The Wall of Words (Dorset County Hospital 2000). His books include Purbeck: The Ingrained Island (Sunday Times Books of the Year), Indian Balm: Travels in the Southern Subcontinent (Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year) and Backwards Out of the Big World: A Voyage into Portugal (Guardian and Sunday Times Books of the Year).

Tim Laycock (musician)
Tim lives in Shaftesbury, and has twenty years of experience as a folk singer, concertina player and actor. He has been a member of the Hambledon Hopstep Band, and more recently formed the New Scorpion Band, who released a CD entitled 'Wings on the Wind'. West Country material features strongly in his repertoire,including his own compositions.

David V. Miles (musician)
David and participated in Confluence as part of the instrumental trio Watershed. He graduated from playing all sorts of instruments in rock bands in the early 1970s to jobs as diverse as lead guitar for Helen Shapiro and bass guitarist for the premiere and first season of Sir Michael Tippett's opera 'The Ice Break' at the Royal Opera House. As well as jazz freelancing in London, he has played in Tony Roberts' raga/jazz fusion band Nada and Afro-Peruvian group Suenos Festejes, with whom he produced a CD in Lima.

Howard Nelson (conductor and musician)
Formerly director of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta Wind Ensemble, Howard became leader of the group Prevailing Winds, a performing ensemble who also give education presentations and workshops for young wind players.

Frank Perry (musician)
Frank brought his evocative purcussion to Confluence's Well Being concert. He has worked extensively as a percussionist since the 1960s, initially in blues, (playing alongside Paul Kossof, later of rock band Free) then avant garde free-form jazz (including work with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker), and expanding into sound healing and multi media works since the early 1970s. He has used Tibetan Ritual instruments since 1973, and is also active as an inventor of percussion instruments such as the Spirotapetals and the Petalumines. Frank is greatly in demand as a performer and lecturer. See Frank's web site for more information.

Mark Pritchard (musician)
Mark was born in London and lives in Pulham, Dorset. He is active in writing and performing songs, and contributed significantly to Confluence's Open the Flood Gates, the Rain Cabaret, and Otter - Lutra lutra on the Stour as well as establishing and being instrumental in running the Confluence Music Club. Mark's work is profiled on his web-site.

Peter Ursem (artist)
Netherlands born artist and print-maker who has worked with Confluence on set design and publicity. In 2000 he received a "Year of the Artist" award to produce 'Reflections', a unique book of linocuts showing aspects of the River Stour which was displayed across the catchment. Peter is married to Helen Porter and together they form the arts and performance company Counterparts.

Ron Vint (percussionist)
Ron Vint actively performs and teaches in various aspects of music involving percussion. After a successful musical career in the Band of the Grenadier Guards he moved west to Dorset to take up the post of Head of Percussion for the Dorset Music Service. In addition to teaching full time in schools throughout the county he is responsible for the percussion requirements for all county groups including the Dorset Youth Orchestra. He is the director of the Dorset Youth Percussion Ensemble and has directed and conducted various county groups. He is an active performer in many styles, playing a wide range of percussion instruments from classical to Latin American. He is the leader of the Bournemouth School of Samba and took them to perform at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall this year. He has played with the Bournemouth Orchestras and worked on their education programme.

Helen Weinstein (oral historian)
Helen Weinstein has a deep interest in the history of English ballads and oral culture. She spent four years as a research fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, researching and writing about the biggest surviving collection of early ballads, thousands of which were pasted into scrapbooks by the infamous 17th century diarist, Samuel Pepys. In collaboration with the performance group, The City Waites, the ballads were recorded for two CDs. Helen presented the BBC Radio series 'Two Handfuls Long Sir', and also produces and presents BBC Radio 4's history series 'Document' , which uses oral histories to recover the meaning behind documents. She is currently co-producing a BBC 2 documentary film on the first women to go to University in the UK, called 'As Is Your Due'.