Ash Vinall

Trustee

Ash Vinall (she/her) is an artist/designer living in West Yorkshire, relocating to Hebden Bridge just over 18 months ago after a successful 30 year design and branding career in London. She worked in design agencies, publication agencies and for the last 20 years of her career led internal design teams in the world of retail design, 16 years of this being the Director of Design for Selfridges. Her creativity is now fuelled by the wonderful countryside around West Yorkshire and being part of the local, creative and diverse culture of Hebden Bridge. She now offers brands a creative consultancy service, mentoring advice and support to young design graduates about to embark on a career in design, as well as exploring various mediums as a creative artist and how to represent the wonderful community and countryside she lives in, in her art.

Barry Young

Trustee

Barry lives in the Calder Valley, and is actively involved in a number of local community initiatives, both volunteering and fundraising.

He worked in the voluntary sector for twenty years  in homelessness and mental health charities, as well as in Prisons and rough sleeping outreach across the country. 

He has been involved in national fundraising and awareness campaigns for rough sleeping and LGBT rights and has a commitment to advancing equality and inclusion for all.

He currently works in local government, delivering a project to increase the involvement and engagement of all parts of the community in the arts and cultural offer in the city.

In his spare time he can be found discussing  musical theatre, marathons , football and his prized allotment.

Chris Park

Volunteer Supervisor

Chris (he/him) is a Procurement Manager by day and a writer by night. He writes for Northern Soul and Canal St Online, covering things such as Manchester’s forthcoming LGBTQ+ retirement community to Bet Lynch opening a Stockport bathroom showroom. One day he was sent to the launch of Happy Valley Pride back in 2016. He fell in love with the town and moved here six months later.

He has volunteered for the festival since 2017 and is a Volunteer Supervisor. You will usually find him manning the merchandise stall where he seems to have found his calling.

Darren Spruce

General Manager

Darren Spruce (He/Him) is a freelance Creative Project Manager & Producer who primarily works with LGBTQIA+ arts organisations and independent radio production companies across the UK, whose clients include BBC & Audible. 

Darren began his career as an Executive Assistant & Office Manager for a leading substance misuse charity where he built his strong organisational skills and understanding of charity and not-for-profit governance. 

He co-founded Happy Valley Pride in 2015 and has helped to develop it into becoming one of the leading LGBTQIA+ Community Arts organisations in the region, leading on finance, fundraising and community engagement. 

Hannah Hull

Volunteer Coordinator

Hannah 'Hunter' Hull (they/them). Artist, musician and coach. Most often asked about socially-engaged art, disability and creative practice. Also: boat dweller, TEDx speaker, somatic meditator, Goldsmiths’ alum, intersectional feminist, queer person and recovering addict. hannahhull.substack.com 

Hannah has been volunteering for Happy Valley Pride since 2022 and is one of the members of our new Access Forum, helping to create an Access Manifesto for the charity.

Helen Baron

Operational Committee

Helen (She/Her) works at The Emily Davison Centre, an ending violence towards women and girls hub where she supports survivors of domestic abuse. She is also a dj of many years standing having played to audiences large and small. In the 1990s she was in demand in clubs across the UK and these days having failed to retire from djing plays at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge. 

Jenn Wilson

Chair

Jenn Wilson is Founder and Director of Irregular Arts, where she creates, produces and performs socially engaged arts projects, believing the arts can engage, challenge, delight and make change. She has often graced stages in the Calder Valley as drag character, Mysti Valentine. 

She founded the International Day of Consent and writes and coaches on consent and relationships at loveoffscript.co.uk . 

Queer, pan and bisexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist and single parent, she lives in Shipley, near Bradford Yorkshire, UK. Her other roles include an Activist Residency at Leeds Beckett University, with the SSSH! Stigmatised Sexualities and Sexual Harm Research Group, Dept of Psychology.

Joseph Hand

Volunteer Coordinator

Joe has been volunteering for Happy Valley Pride since 2023 and is our new Volunteer Coordinator, alongside Hannah Hull.

Lisa Tregellas

Volunteer Supervisor

Since 2017, Lisa has taken on many volunteer roles for Happy Valley Pride from flag holder to bingo caller but nowadays you will mainly find her organising our amazing volunteers in her current role as Volunteer Supervisor. 

Ruth Thompson Davies

Trustee

Ruth (she/her) is an experienced and enthusiastic project deliverer and Commissioning Officer. She has a proven track record in delivery and coordination of projects and events. Ensuring that they are delivered to the highest quality, meet targets, within budget and on time. Recent experience has included being part of Calderdale MBC’s Integrated Commissioning Team, as a Commissioning Officer responding to Covid-19 whilst continuing to commission adults and children’s social care across the borough. Also have over 15 years’ experience in project and event management and marketing across a number of other sectors including education and training, and finance. Joined the board of Happy Valley Pride May 2018, and has contributed to the staging of the festivals each year. This has included being the event manager of the outdoor events in 2019, where over 2000 people safely attended.

Terry Logan

Youth Engagement Manager

As the Happy Valley Pride Youth Engagement Manager, Terry (she/her) promotes equality and diversity within schools whilst celebrating LGBTQIA+ life in the valley and beyond. 

Terry also works in various other roles including being Head Mentor Tutor at Ryburn Valley Sixth Form where she helped create one of the first LGBTQIA+ support groups in Calderdale. 

The creation of this group has empowered students to run their own Pride week and present an LGBTQ+ musical theatre production. She also organised Calderdale’s very first Battle of the Bands competitions for all the sixth forms in the area.

Terry is also a singer and has performed at many Happy Valley Pride events.

Tim Whitehead

Artistic Director

Tim Whitehead (he/him) is a Producer and Agent, managing and developing the careers of internationally renowned LGBTQIA+ performers, taking their work worldwide to the stages of The Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall and the Southbank Centre among many others.

He began his career developing the comedy and cabaret programme for Soho Theatre in London, working alongside Executive Producer Mark Godfrey, and has worked extensively in the north, programming and producing for Manchester’s Queer Up North and Trans Vegas Festivals.Tim became a Director of Happy Valley Pride in 2017 and has lead the organisation as Chair during a period of growth, resulting in it being recognised as one of the leading LGBTQIA+ community arts organisations in the region, joining the Queer Arts North network.

Victoria Firth

Trustee

Victoria Firth is a theatre maker and independent producer based in West Yorkshire. She is a multi-skilled and experienced cultural producer having been Director of the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield for 12 years as well as being Interim Director of The Dukes in Lancaster, Associate Director of Xtrax and Company Manager for The Grief Series. 

Her own creative work is made from a queer perspective and exists across multiple platforms exploring empathy, embodiment and connection – getting under the skin of things that lots of us feel but often don't talk about. Her successful one woman show about childlessness and reinvention, 'How to be amazingly happy!', premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh festival Fringe before touring nationally and she is now making a new work about ageing and our need for wildness called 'Batty'. She also provides well-being support and mentoring to other artists, runs workshops on self-care for creatives and delivers 1-2-1 access support.

Emma Charleston

Designer

Emma (She/her) is a graphic designer and illustrator who has spent the last decade working from Hebden Bridge, Brighton and London. She currently lives with her partner and her dog in Battersea, where she’s working freelance and completing a design MA at the London College of Communication. In her spare time she likes hiking, vegan cooking, and making zines and prints to sell on her Etsy store. 

Horse McDonald

Patron

HORSE is an iconic and utterly unique singer/songwriter, her voice described as 'a finely honed instrument', together with 'breathtaking stagecraft'. Her music is both moving and uplifting, the audience are totally absorbed whenever she performs.

With a successful career expanding over three decades, she has opened and toured with various international artists, including Tina Turner, BB King, Bryan Ferry, Burt Bacarach. One of her best known songs Careful, was covered by Will Young. 

Jackie Kay

Patron

Jacqueline Margaret Kay, CBE, FRSE, FRSL, is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers, Trumpet and Red Dust Road. Kay has won many awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.

Kate O'Donnell

Kate O’Donnell (she/her) is a transgender performer, activist and theatre maker. In  2016 she founded Trans Creative arts company with the tagline “telling our own stories”. In 2017 she initiated Manchester's first trans arts festival Trans Vegas giving a platform to 300 trans voices and in 2020 the festival responded to COVID-19 by going digital for the first time. Her theatre work includes; the award-winning “Big Girl’s Blouse” & acclaimed one woman show ‘You've Changed’. She played Feste in Twelfth Night & Electra in Gypsy, both at the Royal Exchange. Kate has directed Transpose two years running and Not Dying, both at the Barbican, and regularly speaks on panels and made guest appearances on the Guilty Feminist podcast at the live shows. In 2018 she was nominated for the Gay Times Arts and Culture Award. 

Peter Tatchell

Peter Tatchell has campaigned for human rights for 54 years, since 1967. An activist in the Gay Liberation Front from 1971-74 and a founding member of OutRage! 1990 -2011, he helped organise the UK's first Pride in 1972 and has marched in every Pride London parade since then. In 1973, he staged the first LGBT+ protest in a communist country, East Germany. His international solidarity activism has resulted in him being beaten by President Mugabe's bodyguards in Brussels in 2001 and by Russian neo-Nazis in Moscow in 2007. He is Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.