Twentieth anniversary of The Michael Palin Centre

Saturday 2 March 2013 was a special date in the diary for The Michael Palin Centre. It marked the twentieth anniversary of its opening.

 

Twenty years – during which thousands of children who stammer have been helped, hundreds of therapists were trained to help more children who stammer, hundreds of funders supported the work with their generous donations and a good number of centre staff and charity trustees put their time and their talents into making the Michael Palin Centre an internationally renowned centre of excellence.
 

Maybe we should have guessed on that peculiar day 20 years ago that something special was to come of it. There was a media frenzy; outside broadcast vans filled the car park and surrounding streets, streaming live to the news and current affairs programmes on the television and radio. Journalists and photographers were everywhere. Such was the power of the name Michael Palin. A specialist clinic for stammering, run by Lena Rustin and supported by the Association for Research into Stammering in Childhood, a charity set up by Travers Reid, became the Michael Palin Centre, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Few days later, Tuesday 5 March 2013, was another special date. A twentieth birthday celebration for the Michael Palin Centre was held in the Speaker’s Residence at the House of Commons. This exquisite, unique and historic setting was generously made available by Mr Speaker, John Bercow MP. The party was attended by Michael Palin, Ed Balls MP, Robert Aitken, deputy chair of Whittington Health, children and adults who have attended the centre, past and present staff of the centre, past and present trustees of Action for Stammering Children, many funders, our NHS colleagues and other supporters of the centre’s work over the years.

 

The star of the show was Sean Ryan, aged 12 (pictured with Michael Palin), a young person who stammers, gave a speech standing on a chair addressing to the assembled 125 guests with a confidence and panache that brought the house down.

Sean demonstrated all that the centre seeks to achieve – that children who stammer have a voice, they have something to say and we are here to make that happen. It was wonderful to be able to celebrate that, and to thank so many people who have contributed to the centre’s first 20 years and to look forward to our future together.