People at MFMC

Hugh Thomas - Director

Hugh has run an Arts Company touring performance work across UK and Europe; worked in secondary school leadership; established community projects and charities and run public arts events. He was the leader of Teaching and Learning in the Bristol Education Action Zone, a UK Government project aimed at tackling young people’s underachievement in Inner City Bristol. He has since expanded this work across the UK, focusing on engaging different industry sectors and universities in helping transform education to meet the needs of young people.

He is the co- creator of multidisciplinary educational programmes working with MFMC associates. All these education programmes boost confidence, inspire young people to think about their future, and enable them to form loose ties to people and places they may not normally access.

Polly Barnes - Director of Education

Polly is our education specialist with a national profile for 'Futures' and 'Financial Education'. Having spent her teaching career working in low–income communities, she has a passion for brokering and managing relationships between education sectors, museums, cultural venues and businesses, driven by the positive impact that such experiences can have on the social mobility of the young people. Experienced as a teacher in schools and a lecturer in education at universities, Polly has worked as a consultant for Healthy Schools, Young Enterprise and Director of Education for the national financial education programme for ages 16-18, 'Blackbullion Futures'.  She has managed a diversity of projects including the designing and manufacturing of education resources and books and is frequently employed to speak at conferences. With a highly successful background in the arts and PSHE she is also on a mission to encourage teachers and young people to leave their comfort zones to discover the fun and excitement of the possible futures in science and engineering.

Rosie Thomas - Project Manager 

Rosie is a trained counsellor and works part time with My Future My Choice as a project manager. 

Gvantsa Parulava - Project Manager for Curious about Law and Finance

Gvantsa wants to be a Lawyer! As Project Manager she's enjoying building on her understanding of the legal profession as well as gaining new insights into the financial world.  She joined My Future My Choice when she was a student as part of the World of Work Speakers’ Fest and proved such a great networker, organizer and interviewer that she was the perfect fit to manage Curious About Law and Finance part-time while she continues her studies.  

Bandele Iyapo - Artist, story-teller, anthropologist and historian

Bandele brings a personal and global narrative to his work with the public and the young people. He has used his exhibition, 'The True History of Carnival'  on our the ship the MV Balmoral with school visitors to help them explore the story of the Windrush Pioneers and migration. His work is in the Bristol M Shed Museum and in galleries around the world. With 50 plus years as a self taught professional artist Bandele has been able to make impressive work in quite a few practices in the arts. Notable creative endeavours have been the 21ft batik mural for Bermuda I.U., his first solo show at Trinidad Hilton that bought together the islands top artist and clothing designers. Immigrating to the UK in 1988 he opened his batik painting exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute in London, while that was happening another collection of work was being prepared for a commissioned uk tour for Amnesty International addressing the apartheid situation in South Africa, this exhibition opened at the prestigious Kings College Chapel Cambridge. Over the years he has been involved in numerous creative ventures in Bristol and can boast that he has been involved with every major institution in the city over the years. Presently he is completing a body of over 100 pieces of work including textile, oil paintings, photography, a 10ft mahogany sculpture completed during his lockdown in Trinidad, installations and film for a world tour.

Henrik G Dahle - Film maker, creative solutions and new concepts for learning

Henrik is a creative practitioner who works across many art forms. Now focusing his attention on writing, developing inspirational interactive web based projects and creating books for adults and children. Social and ecological consciousness is threaded through all his work.
He has a background in documentary film and radio, community arts, theatre, web development, music, set design and carpentry. 
 
He has managed creative education programmes, events and performances.

Henrik is one of our workshop leaders and a consultant on our learning resources. He is also the go to person when a professional filmmaker is needed 

To find out more about why we work with Henrik look up his book - The Art of Climbing Trees 

Ali Vowles  - Broadcaster and presenter

Ali is running a series of Chat-Show style events called  'Incredible Harbour' on our ship MV Balmoral in Bristol's Heritage Harbour and helps train work experience students as interviewers for the annual World of Work Speakers Festival.

We work with many freelancers, consultants and pro-bono support from skilled professionals

If you would like to help raise young people's aspirations