I’m a Liverpool based choreographer/workshop leader with Quadriplegia Cerebral Palsy and no verbal communication. I choreograph using the Simpson Board, an inexpensive but priceless tool that enables disabled people to choreograph their own work. The board was created by choreographer Adam Benjamin, Co-founder of CandoCo Dance Company, author of “Making An Entrance” and Senior Lecturer in Dance at University of Plymouth where he is helping build an intergrated degree programme. See link to Adam's website www.adambenjamin.co.uk

In the autumn of 1995, I choreographed a ten minute integrated piece that was performed at Coventry University for Performing Arts and Hereward College in Coventry.

The following two summers, I teamed up with Midlands-based Independent Dance Artist, Louise Katerega to work on the dance summer schools at Theatr Clwyd, North Wales and was a huge hit with the children who learnt to use the Simpson Board as well as dance.

After I studied BTEC ND in Performing Arts, I diverged to obtain a degree in Surface Pattern Design at the University of Huddersfield. My return to dance came in February 2009, when I was approached by Louise Katerega, by then Creative Director of FOOT IN HAND Dance Company, to team up with her to assist a member of Cut Dance in Suffolk with cerebral palsy and limited verbal communication in choreographing for the first time. It was so inspiring to watch her developing into a choreographer, who by the end of the three days was deciding everything from the positions her dancers were in, to the type of music that captured the right mood of her piece.

Since then, I have set up a social enterprise called Lisa Simpson Inclusive Dance Ltd; teaching people how to use the Simpson Board as I strongly believe there are other prospective choreographers with no, or limited verbal communication, who have not had the opportunity to realize their true potential.