“I worked on Wall Street for five years. I enjoyed the work,...

“I worked on Wall Street for five years.  I enjoyed the work, but always had the feeling I could do something more meaningful.  So I moved back to London and tried to set up a theater company.  I wanted to find a way to help marginalized people tell their stories.  But I didn’t get very far.  Because after six months of planning, I got a call from an old classmate.  I hadn’t spoken to him in sixteen years.  He told me that his company had won a bid to produce the Special Olympics opening ceremony.  His vision was to allow people with intellectual disabilities to design the ceremony themselves.  And he asked me to be involved.  It was a dream job.  I went to work immediately.  We reached out to special education centers around the UAE.  We asked the teachers for advice.  We led workshops with the students, asking them: ‘What excites you?’, ‘What are your challenges?’ , ‘What would you like to tell the world?’  Then we took those ideas to professional choreographers, and refined them into a performance.  We brought the results back to the students, and asked: ‘Is this your vision?  What would you change?’  When the students finally recognized the work as their own, we knew our job was finished.”
(Special Olympics World Games, Abu Dhabi, UAE)