The Gift by Mandy Sprague – Hello, From Friday 31st March 2023, Breaking Barriers Community Arts will cease to trade. This decision was not made lightly, but in the interest of the business and its clients. It is the right but difficult decision to make. We would like to give a big thank you to everyone who has worked with us over the years. In the 23 years we have been running, as a project and later as a social enterprise, we’ve been proud to have offered people some wonderful opportunities. We’re also glad to have facilitated and recorded some amazing and important stories, on the individual storytellers’ own terms. Thank you for letting us help you tell your amazing stories. In the future, for creative services and the story archive, you can reach out to Head4Arts via http://head4arts.org.uk/contact/ Many thanks, Breaking Barriers Community Arts

Digital Story Transcript

My life has been anything but normal. How do I condense the complicated and somewhat bizarre story into 2 minutes? I don’t have time include the romantic Parisian love story of my grandparents, their deaths and how my mother and her identical twin were left as war orphans. So I will tell a simpler story of my first few years. My mother was Marie Langton, a Catholic, with an engaging French accent. When she fell pregnant with me, she was enjoying living and working in West London. My mother was extremely fortunate and found a job as a nanny where they also allowed me to live in. Our life for a while was good. I’ve not yet uncovered the secret of the important man who was my father other than she met him at a party and she knew what she was doing. Sadly, when I was 18 months old she lost that job and consequently her home. Thankfully she met Susanne Rose who ran a home. It was the first of it’s kind where single mothers could live with their children. Through all of this Marie continued to struggle with the guilt and responsibility of raising a child as a single Catholic mother and finally agreed it would be best for me to be adopted by the Sprague family. Ken an artist, Sheila a potter and my brother Sam who was 4 years older than me and always one step ahead. This time was the most secure and happiest of my childhood and life as a Sprague was never dull. I went on to have a successful career backstage in theatre, film and TV. My only regret is that Marie died in 1969 and never had the opportunity to meet me as an adult to see that her gift of adoption did give me the family and opportunities she’d wished for me. So I would like to dedicate my BAFTA award to her as my way of saying thank you.