TEAM
Lucinda Jarrett
Creative Director of Rosetta Life
is a writer, independent dance artist, and performance maker who co-founded Rosetta Life in 1997. She currently leads a 3 year creatve intervention in the stroke community, Stroke Odysseys, www.strokeodysseys.org She also leads Dream a Difference www.dreamadifference.art - a poetry and songmaking project building awareness of social justice and peace across ten countries where children are living with conflict
Chris Rawlence
Executive and Media Director of Rosetta Life
is a Film Maker, Writer, Librettist. As TV Director he has made TV series with some of the world’s leading neurologists, including Oliver Sacks (The Mind Traveller) and V.S.Ramachandran. He has written opera librettos for Michael Nyman and Michael Torke, including the renowned The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. He has made more than 200 short films for Rosetta Life with people living with people living with life-limiting illness, many of which can be viewed on this site.
Jennie Surmeli
Executive Producer
After her drama studies and time spent as performer, teacher, theatre in education practitioner, programmer and community artist in UK and Turkey, Jennie began her career in arts management with a keen focus on community engagement, outreach and social marketing. Previous roles include Creative Partnerships London; Development Manager of UK's First Deaf Cultural Centre, Head of Community Engagement for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission during the centenary of WWI and theatre (venue and festival) management. Jennie has worked with Rosetta Life since 2009 in a number of roles.
Karen Warner
Finance and Operations manager
Karen has been working in the voluntary sector as a finance manager for over 20 years. Primarily working with charities with a speciality in dementia.Joining Rosetta Life in January 2022 Karen aims to bring her skills and experience to ensure good financial management within the charity.
Mairéad Ruane
Ambassadors' Support Co-ordinator
ASSOCIATE ARTISTS
Orlando Gough
writes music mostly for the theater - operas, plays, dance pieces, music-theater - and creates large-scale site-specific work. Recent work includes the opera Imago, for Glyndebourne; the opera Road Rage, for Garsington Opera; the site-specific piece Foghorn Requiem, for ships' horns, brass bands and the foghorn of the Souter Lighthouse, South Shields; the large-scale choral piece Stemmer for the Bergen Festival; the music for King John (Globe Theater), for The Bacchae (Almeida Theater), and for As You Collaborate with Rosetta Life on a number of projects since 2005.
Melanie Pappenheim
is a singer, performer, improviser and voice coach. Always interested in combining music with visual art, she has devised work with numerous leading multimedia groups including DV8 Physical Theatre, Lumiere & Son, Clod Ensemble and The Shout. Melanie first worked with Rosetta Life in 2006 (The Mariners) and for the past two years has been involved with the Stroke Odysseys project, creating music and performance with stroke survivors both in the community and in hospital settings.
Elizabeth Mansfield
trained at the Elmhurst Ballet School, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and later classical singing at the City of Leeds College of Music. She has played many leading roles in plays and music theatre in UK regional theatres and the West End, winning an Olivier nomination for 'Best Actress in a Musical' in 'MARIE', and 'Best Actress' for the Sony Radio Awards, when working for the BBC Radio Drama Company. In 2001, she founded Ensemble with her partner Steve Trafford and now devotes most of her time to writing, producing and performing for the company. She first worked with Rosetta Life on the 'Book of the Dead' project.
Louise Klarnett
Louise Klarnett is a dance artist who has developed an extensive dance and movement practice over the last 19 years working with young babies to the elderly. She leads projects, workshops and CPD training in children’s centres, nurseries, community settings, schools, colleges, day centres, sheltered housing, hospices and hospitals as well as for dance, music and arts organisations.
Pedro Douglass-Kirk
is undertaking a PhD researching musical aids for stroke rehabilitation and recently achieved a First in MSc Music Mind and Brain at Goldsmiths University of London. He has worked within a highly interdisciplinary group between the Psychology and Computing Departments at Goldsmiths developing and evaluating digital musical approaches for stroke rehabilitation. The project received international recognition by being awarded first prize in the student research competition at the CHI 2015 human-computer interaction (HCI) conference in Seoul, Korea.
CO-FOUNDERS AND AMBASSADORS - BRAIN ODYSSEYS
Jawad
I was a lecturer in a school of nursing-Iraq.
I was the Founder and Secretary General of the Iraqi Centre for Transparency & Anti corruption (ICTAC). I stood as a candidate as MP for the first post-2003 parliamentary Election in Iraq .
In 2007, I was shot in the stomach by militia in Baghdad. My friend was killed instantly . I survived but was pursued for my academic work related to corruption and anticorruption measures. In the same year, I became aware of CARA (Council for Assisting Refugee Academics) I volunteered for them and went on to become a member of the steering committee at the organisation.
Lil
I am a double award-winning artist from the South West of Ireland. I have a 2:1 in sculpture and one in fine Art printing. I got a distinction and I was given an award for further studies from the Irish American fund for further studies. I went to London and I got an MA in fine Art printing from the Wimbledon School of Art. I have toured performances with the Odysseys projects, to Derry, the International Beckett Festival amongst others as a singer and performer.
TRUSTEES
Pauline
Hi my name is Pauline. I was a nurse before I had my stroke. I live in London. I thought I had lost everything when I had a Stroke but thanks to Odysseys and Rosetta Life who made me useful again by dancing, doing more exercise that I thought I couldn’t do – it gave me back my memory because most of the shows we perform are from the memory and head no writing or scripts, you must remember things. I have performed in many shows and toured the UK as a performer and Ambassador with this project. Now I’ve gained my confidence and freedom back thanks to taking part.
Gareth Jones
After school Gareth became a gardener for Haringey borough council, and then Glendale, the company that had the grounds maintenance contract for St James/Green Park where he was cleared to work in Downing Street garden. In 1994 he gave up being a gardener to become a bus driver. He sat on his union branch committee 1/232 TGWU/UNITE. Then in July 2010 Gareth had a series of strokes which forced him to give up work. Since then he has taken up drawing and painting, and is very keen on art. He used to be a member of Connect until its demise, and was replaced with a new charity called Aphasia-Reconnect. He is a very active member of Aphasia-Reconnect. Before the demise of Connect he became involved with Stroke Odysseys with whom he has done several performances and helped with numerous workshops, which has helped with his confidence and mental wellbeing. He is very proud to be an Ambassador for the Odysseys project.
Karen Di Lorenzo
Karen Di Lorenzo is a qualified accountant with experience of financial management in several small and specialist institutions in the higher education sector as well as the arts world, including the Royal Opera House and Battersea Arts Centre. After her undergraduate degree in Classics at Cambridge, she gained her accountancy qualification and an MBA. She moved to the not-for-profit sector after a successful senior career as a senior civil servant in several different government departments, where highlights included the introduction of the Human Rights Act into UK courts. She is currently Director of Finance at the Royal Academy of Music. Outside work, Karen is also a trustee of her local arts centre, Streatham Space Project, and has been a long serving school governor at her local primary school. She is a keen audience member for music, dance and theatre performances.
Nick Ward
Nick Ward is a Professor of Clinical Neurology & Neurorehabilitation at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square. He is lead of the first dedicated upper limb neurorehabilitation programme in the UK and his research tries to help understand how people recover movement after stroke. Nick is Co-editor of the Oxford Textbook of Neurorehabilitation and is Associate Editor of both the Journal for Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry and Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair.
Olivia Dix
Olivia Dix’s career has been in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). She has worked locally, nationally and internationally as a senior manager and CEO. organisations, from an East End Community Centre to a national cancer advice and counselling organisation to a Brusssels-based NGO and a major grant-making trust funding in the UK and Africa. Since 1998 she has worked, on a salaried and free-lance basis, for grant-making foundations and charities in the field of health, particularly palliative care.
Sarah Bazin OBE FCSP
Sarah is a Chartered Physiotherapist, a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) a former Chair of the CSP Council, and immediate past Chair of the European Region of the World Physiotherapy. She was the Allied Health Professions and Health Care Scientists Leadership Lead for the West Midlands and the Head of Therapy Services at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust. She is Chair of Trustees of Rosetta Life, a Trustee of the College of Medicine and Church Warden at St. Nicholas Church, Warwick.
Jasmine Wilson
Jasmine has worked in contemporary dance as a performer, teacher and manager for over 20 years. She is Director of Learning and Engagement at Studio Wayne McGregor, having set up the company learning department in 1999. She has developed innovative learning projects with a wide variety of participants, in a diverse range of locations across the UK and internationally such as Canary Wharf tube station, Goresbrook Housing Estate and Trafalgar Square. Jasmine managed both of the company’s children’s projects, digit01 and Alpha and also performed in digit01. Jasmine was a Clore Cultural Fellow in 2009/10.