This week it is Mental Health Awareness Week so to talk through his own journey, specifically his experience with psychosis, is actor, director and now author, David Harewood, best known for his roles as CIA Counterterrorism Director David Estes in Homeland.From Birmingham, born to parents from Barbados, David has had huge success on stage, in TV and in Hollywood. Yet, in his recent memoir ‘Maybe I Don’t Belong Here’, David details the racial abuse he suffered as a black British boy and man growing up in the UK, abuse which ultimately led to, as he describes, his “unravelling” and being sectioned under the Mental Health Act twice. His BAFTA nominated BBC documentary David Harewood: My Psychosis and Me is shocking and insightful particularly around the difference in psychiatric treatment of black people in hospitals. In this episode he talks through his life and experience, the things that led to his psychosis, the voices in his head, the contrasts between America and the UK and how he became a successful actor despite all of this psychological upheaval and racial abuse. His book Maybe I Don’t Belong Here is crucial reading. You can buy it here:https://linktr.ee/DavidHarewoodChanges is now a deaf friendly podcast. You can access transcripts here: https://www.anniemacmanus.com/changesContent references: racism, racist abuse, psychotic episodes. Should you be affected by any of the issues raised in this episode, in the UK, The Samaritans can be reached on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. Hotlines in other countries can be found here http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week is Deaf Awareness Week, so we welcome Eastenders actor and 2021 Strictly Come Dancing champion Rose Ayling Ellis to Changes, our first deaf guest. Rose has been deaf since birth and is a British Sign Language user, recently backing the campaign to make it a recognised language in England. This year, Rose received the Visionary Honours Award for Inspirational Person of the Year whilst her appearance on Strictly last year has significantly helped in changing people’s perceptions of deaf people and given confidence to the deaf community. Her Couple's Choice dance with her dance partner Giovanni Pernice featured a period of silence as a tribute to the deaf community and became an award winning TV Moment of the Year. Since her appearance on Strictly there has been a 4000 per cent increase in uptake of British Sign Language classes! Rose creates change just by being present, showing what she is capable of and breaking down barriers. She boldly seeks to change perceptions and the law to make life fairer for the deaf community. She’s also irresistibly charming.  We are delighted to say that Changes is now an accessible podcast for deaf people. You can find a transcript of this episode and all future episodes on the below website, please spread the word. https://www.anniemacmanus.com/changes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Changes Revisited is a chance to revisit some of our most compelling and entertaining episodes from the archives. This week we look back at highlights from two very different episodes and two very different people - Kelis and Dr Larch Maxey (a climate activist).Kelis, the multi-platinum, Grammy nominated artist, fashion icon, entrepreneur, mother, and now Cordon Bleu chef and farm owner, talks about these changes in her life including going from city life to tending to animals. She also shares her unique perspective on motherhood and the power of women. It’s a favourite on Changes!Dr Larch Maxey is a man who’s dedication to affecting change knows no boundaries. Larch is part of the Extinction Rebellion. We spoke to him in February 2021 from underground as he and a small group of other protesters occupied tunnels outside Euston station in London protesting against the high speed rail project HS2. Larch talked through fighting for what he believes in, his first experience of learning about climate change and the turning point that made him dedicate his life to activism. It was a rare, emotional and insightful conversation.Further reading https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-am-being-punished-for-peaceful-protest-before-appearing-in-court-k992m58l8https://juststopoil.org/https://www.hs2rebellion.earth/Listen to the full episodes here:Kelis:https://podfollow.com/changeswithanniemacmanus/episode/d002397ffc232691d2724ae61da43072b6f2dd1e/viewDr Larch Maxeyhttps://podfollow.com/changeswithanniemacmanus/episode/daf25c4b320565e72dd61d7fd2e190e0c07c1376/view Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's difficult not to divide Grace Spence Green's story into a before and after. The event that splits the two is one of the most dramatic instances of change that you can possible imagine: in 2018, Grace, then a 22 year-old medical student, was walking through a London shopping centre when a man jumped from a balcony, three storeys above, and landed on her. When she awoke, seven minutes later, surrounded by people, she realised she couldn't feel her legs. So began a painful process of coming to terms with the full extent of what had just happened – a process that, a few years later, is still in some sense on-going. Because while Grace quite quickly accepted the reality of her injury, and the implications it would have on her day-to-day, what she couldn't have predicted was the ways it would change her understanding of care, empathy and other people. This is a conversation about autonomy, quiet prejudice, and Grace's rejection of the expectations and limitations that society places on disabled people. It's also a powerful testament to something we all know, but avoid considering: unbelievable, uncontrollable changes can rear their heads at any ordinary instant. We may be powerless to stop them, but we can certainly control how we react to them. And in that way, Grace's story is profoundly inspiring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Douglas Stuart is the 2020 Booker Prize winning author. His story is one of survival, perseverance and defying people’s expectations. Douglas’ incredible debut novel Shuggie Bain was inspired by his upbringing in Glasgow, a time when he describes himself as a young queer son of a single mother struggling with addiction and poverty. Following his mother’s death, Douglas fended for himself and remarkably went on to study fashion at the Royal College of art in London where he was recognised and moved to New York to work for some of the biggest fashion brands in the world. He still lives in New York but now finally, after many rejections, as a writer, an acclaimed writer. Revisiting his past and putting pen to paper changed everything for him.  His writing is so immersive, due to his granular descriptions of the worlds his characters inhabit. They struggle against and around brutal violence and substance use and always with the backdrop of relentless poverty. His stories are sad, and frightening and viscerally told. His books take over your world and you can’t forget them. Here he shares the story of his life changes with Annie. Stuart’s second novel Young Mungo will be published this Thursday (14th April). You can pre order it here: https://www.douglasdstuart.com/books-1Should you be affected by any of the issues raised in this episode, in the UK, The Samaritans can be reached on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. Hotlines in other countries can be found here http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Ronson is one of the most celebrated and successful music producers around. Oscar, Golden Globes, Grammys, you name it he’s been awarded it for his services to era defining pop music. He’s made records with Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Queens Of The Stone Age, Bruno Mars, and the list goes on and on.  Annie has interviewed Mark Ronson countless times in her career, but this was a different flex of interview, where they were able to zoom out on his whole journey, and explore his processes of music production, growing older in the music game, a new template of success, a new marriage, and how all his big personal changes are rooted in his beloved New York City (Cue Odyssey - Native New Yorker!) Enjoy!Annie and Mark mention Yebba in this episode who you can listen back to on Changes here:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/changes-with-annie-macmanus/id1465937091?i=1000535968549 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we bring you a conversation with TV legend Scarlett Moffatt. Gogglebox legend, I’m A Celeb winner, Podcaster and now documentarian. Scarlett joined me to talk through her biggest changes, from road accidents to bell's palsy to bullying to TV stardom, to extreme celebrity to how she eventually found her way back to herself. Scarlett experienced brutal changes in her childhood and surreal and extreme changes in adulthood but none of them have held her back thank god. Talking to Scarlet was refreshing and uplifting and a total tonic. Hopefully listening to this will be the same for you. Scarlett Investigates... will be out on Channel 4 this Spring.You can listen to Scarlett's podcast here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08c6f5x/episodes/playerShould you be affected by bullying or any of the issues raised in this episode, in the UK, The Samaritans can be reached on 116 123. Hotlines in other countries can be found here http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.htmlIf you like this episode you may also be interested in listening to Lisa Nealan's story: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/lisa-nealan/id1465937091?i=1000538890862 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Danila Khomutovsky is a 38 year old Ukrainian man. He is a husband and a father to a 7 year old son, a voice artist, co-founder of the radio station Aristocrats and has lived in Kyiv for the last 10 years.  On 24th February 2022, his life and the lives of millions was upended when Russia invaded Ukraine. Despite peace talk efforts, Russian artillery and warplanes are continuing to pound cities and towns across Ukraine. More than three million people have now fled Ukraine since Russia began its invasion — a rate of more than a million per week, the International Organisation for Migration has said.  Danila is now taking shelter in the Ukrainian countryside and working for ICTV channel as a voice of the “Civil Defence” program, volunteering for state agencies and private studios, recording voice overs in four languages to help win the war. He reached out to Annie on instagram as a listener to Changes and they spoke on the morning of Friday 11th March 2022.  In this important and compelling listen, Danila tells his story and experience of life in Ukraine before the war and now.  You can find out all about Artistocrats here:https://aristocrats.fm/Danila can be found here:https://m.facebook.com/100000473788642/twitter.com/DanKhomutovskiy instagram.com/danila_onemoretimehttps://m.soundcloud.com/danila-khomutovskiy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the vast majority of the Irish Diaspora, St Patrick's Day offers a regularly scheduled opportunity to get in touch with all of those warm, fuzzy notions of Ireland and home. But what if your relationship to home is a little bit more complicated? Emma Dabiri is the best-selling author of Don't Touch My Hair and What White People Can Do Next – two monumentally important discussions about race that have offered vital nuance and context at a time where more and more people have become engaged with identity politics. She also happens to be Irish! In fact, there are plenty of parallels between her life and Annie's. She grew up in Dublin, walking the very same streets at the very same time. Then, like Annie, she moved to London and started a new life, and a family, away from Ireland. But unlike Annie, her nostalgia for Ireland will always be tempered by her memories of growing up black in the overwhelmingly white context of Dublin in the '80s and '90s. It's led her to have a more delicate, and less rose-tinted, understanding of Ireland than many of her compatriots – but it's also imbued her with a strong sense of potentiality for Ireland's future. This is an honest conversation about Ireland's past, but it's also an optimistic look at that future, and the ways in which a country that, until recently, has had little experience of diversity – might be able to start with a blank slate, and avoid some of the pitfalls that have dogged nations with long, tangled histories of systemic racism. But more broadly, it's a conversation about home, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For International Women's Day tomorrow, we wanted to highlight women who experience homelessness. The average age of death for women sleeping rough or in emergency accommodation is four years lower than a man at just 41 years old.  Women are at much greater risk of physical and sexual violence, and more likely to be struggling with complex trauma, mental health issues, physical health, domestic abuse and/or substance misuse and some are permanently separated from their children. These traumatic experiences make it harder for some women to trust support services and harder to reach to offer support. There also just isn’t enough specialist accommodation for women in England.Someone who has experienced and witnessed all of the above is Kerri Douglas. In this episode, she shares her heartbreaking and remarkable story. After spending years on the streets battling severe substance and physical abuse as well as losing custody of her first child, she has become a force for change helping to inspire and educate others. She is now a mother to two more children (twins) and a certified substance abuse counsellor, studying for a psychology degree. The big turning point for Kerri was when she met some brilliant outreach staff from a charity dedicated to helping people who experience homelessness, called St Mungo's. The fact that Kerri is alive and thriving today is testament to her herculean strength and determination. Content warning: references to drug abuse, suicide, sexual abuse, miscarriage and violence. You can buy Kerri’s book Gutter To Glory: From Pavements to Parliament and listen to her podcast Conversations with Kerri here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blessed-Assurance-Gutter-Kerri-Douglas-ebook/dp/B07P58CX7Xhttps://anchor.fm/conversationswithkerri/episodes/A-Driving-Force-For-Change-e1e8gbhhttps://dropthelabel.co.uk/the-blog/ You can also contact St Mungo’s or donate to the charity here:  www.mungos.org/annieShould you be affected by any of the issues raised in this episode, in the UK, The Samaritans can be reached on 116 123. Hotlines in other countries can be found http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.