BAFTA award-winning Winchester actor Tommy Jessop is looking to kick the stigma surrounding life with learning disabilities through a new role at a leading UK charity.

Tommy has teamed up with Mencap, the learning disability charity, which has welcomed a whopping 18 new ambassadors from the learning disability community.

This ‘extraordinary’ group of people called ‘The Myth Busters’ are all living life with a learning disability and through their work with Mencap will be helping to challenge wider stigmas and societal misconceptions about what living life with a learning disability looks like.

Speaking about being a Mencap Myth Buster and a person living with a learning disability, Tommy says: “‘I am proud to be working with Mencap because I want to get rid of the label that people with a learning disability cannot do things in life.”

Tommy Jessop is a multi-award-winning British actor, best known for his portrayal of Terry Boyle in BBC 1 Drama Line of Duty. Tommy has also appeared in the likes of Holby City, Casualty and Doctors.

He was selected for the prestigious BAFTA Elevate programme and was the first actor with Down's Syndrome to be cast in the lead role of the touring production of Hamlet.

A host of other familiar and famous faces will join Tommy in the Myth Busters. They include Michael Beynon – the first man in Wales with Down’s syndrome to run a marathon, who also set-up his own successful business producing the best Welsh cakes in the country, Sophie Potter – a self-identified ‘Party girl’ who loves Sex and the City and going dancing on nights out with her sister, and Ellie Goldstein – face of Gucci and Glamour Magazine’s ‘Gamechanging Model of the Year’.

Alongside them are also celebrities such as George Webster who took CBeebies by storm as their first children’s TV presenter with Down’s syndrome, actor Sarah Gordy, OBE, and singer songwriter Daniel Wakeford.

Late last year, Mencap released some statistics which revealed that two thirds of people in the UK cannot correctly identify a learning disability as a reduced intellectual ability, with 40 per cent of people thinking it’s dyslexia and 28 per cent believing it to relate to a mental health issue.

The survey also revealed two in five people (42 per cent) had not seen someone with a learning disability in the media in the past year, with a third (33 per cent) saying they would feel more comfortable talking to someone with a learning disability if they saw them featured more often in the media.

Edel Harris, chief executive of the learning disability charity Mencap, said: “Each and every one of these Myth Busters are amazing and I can’t thank them enough for joining the Mencap family. To have this diverse group of unique, talented, interesting, energetic, and fun people on board to help us shatter misconceptions, reduce stigma and campaign for societal change and greater inclusion of people with a learning disability is a real pleasure and privilege. We want the UK to be the best place in the world for people with a learning disability to live happy and healthy lives and I’m delighted the Myth Busters are helping us to make this a reality.”

For more information on the launch of The Myth Busters, including a chance to see the portraits by India Wiley-Morton and behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot, visit: mencap.org.uk/mythbusters.

 

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