#101 'My ADHD inspired me to want to help young people', Charlotte Nightingale co founder of Glass Ceiling Arts Collective

<p>Charlotte Nightingale joins Purposely to share her founder story starting the Glass Ceiling Arts Collective. An Auckland based charity which supports people from marginalised communities, especially young people with disabilities.</p> <p>Charlotte is the co-founder and inaugural artistic director of the collective an inclusive arts provider willing young people with disabilities to ‘smash the glass ceiling that has been unfairly set in the arts world’.</p> <p>A teacher and actor by trade she overcame ‘crippling anxiety and a chromosome disorder’ to take roles on the stage and on television.</p> <p>Charlotte has a passion for diversity and inclusion describes how her lived experience of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) transformed her life and gave her a real purpose, ‘my diagnosis with ADHD in my thirties fuelled my passion to want to help others, it went from being a negative thing at the start of my life to bringing lots of positivity’.</p> <p>A wide-ranging career with a multitude of different experiences from studying, acting, teaching, retail, recruitment, and radio Charlotte points to her ADHD as a factor to trying so many different roles and experiences. &nbsp;She also talks about it being a superpower enabling her to focus intensely on the task at hand the challenge ‘was obsessed over at the time’.</p> <p>As well as her own experience of ADHD she sites her families experience of disability, her son’s autism, and her grandparents who both had a disability and suffered bigotry because of their differences.</p> <p>Born in the UK Charlotte migrated to New Zealand in 2009 and worked initially as a drama teacher and then set up her own agency directing theatre productions in local schools. Charlotte announced herself onto the New Zealand television scene with a role on 'Shortland Street', a popular medical drama, playing a high-profile defence lawyer. She also had a part in longstanding and high-profile in a local ad campaign for a national supermarket. On the stage she performed a lead role i