PROFESSOR WARREN MANNING: Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, High Sheriff, Honoured guests, Graduands of 2023 and all our guests here today, it gives me enormous pleasure to be presenting Martin Austin MBE for the award of Honorary Master of the University.
Martin is the Managing Director and Founder of Nimbus Disability and is the leading light in the accessibility and para-sports. He's made an outstanding contribution to the lives of people with disabilities and access needs within Derby and at a national and international level.
Martin has been an amputee since his diagnosis of cancer as a teenager. He grew up in Mansfield and moved to Derby in 2021. In 2006, he founded Nimbus Disability, a pioneering Derby-based social enterprise which helps companies and service providers meet their legal obligations for people with disabilities. Nimbus was granted The Queen's Award for Innovation in 2022 in recognition of the positive impact its Access Card has had on enabling tens of thousands of disabled people to have better access to entertainment venues. The Access Card scheme, the first of its kind in the UK, offers a universal way to communicate needs to providers quickly and discreetly. Many UK arenas, theatres, football clubs, ticket retailers, festivals and clubs are now benefiting from the scheme, which uses symbols to highlight a person's particular requirements. All those involved in administering the scheme have lived experience of disability and have a genuine understanding of the needs of applicants.
The organisation is also one of the UK's leading providers of disability-related training and consultancy. It is the creator of CredAbility, a quality assurance programme supporting businesses to showcase their ability to work with disabled people and to become a provider and employer of choice. In October 2021, Martin received an MBE for his services to accessibility in the tourism and entertainment sectors.
In is spare time, Martin is an accomplished para-athlete, having competed and coached in wheelchair basketball and represented Great Britain in sledge hockey. For a number of years, he has run the Derby Wheelblazers, a local wheelchair basketball club offering sporting opportunities to all and he coaches Nottingham University Wheelchair Basketball.
For over 15 years, Martin has actively supported teaching sessions in the University's Occupational Therapy programme. He has facilitated experiential learning in wheelchair basketball and shares his professional and personal experiences to challenge and inspire students to bring about positive change for people with disabilities.
Martin's dedication, determination, and optimism have had a huge impact on accessibility and inclusivity, and his innovation has brought about real-world change. We are delighted that Martin joins us today in celebration with his wife, Sally, and parents Diane and Graham.
Chancellor, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to disability rights and advocacy both locally and nationally, we are delighted to award Martin Austin the Honorary Degree of Master of the University.
MARTIN AUSTIN MBE: Can't tell you quite how surreal it is to hear all of that out loud in one sentence. Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, High Sheriff, Honoured guests, Graduands of 2023 and all of our guests here today, I'm genuinely humbled to be standing here before you today as I accept this honour. I'm blessed in the past and most recently to have been recognised for the organisation's successes over the years, most recently sharing the stage only a few months ago with the Lord Lieutenant while we were being awarded our Queen's Award for Innovation. It's amazing to receive recognition like this but I'm sure as all of you know only too well that recognition like this comes after years of hard work, determination, uncertainty, doubt and it's a nice punctuation but it's a comma as opposed to a full stop.
Prior to losing my leg as was mentioned, I was a keen sportsman for a long time but after my treatments I got caught up in all of the excesses of growing up, went to University and just left sport behind me all together and found the love of live music and then eventually I ended up here in Derby working for a local charity called Disability Direct.
My professional journey really started with an idea that took place where all great ideas happen, in the middle of a field with a beer in my hand watching Metallica, and I had the idea of the way that ticketing purchases work for disabled people wasn't working and it came to me that there was a better solution for that. Over the years of very hard work and trying to infiltrate the entire music industry, ticketing industry, sporting industry, convincing them that there was a problem that needed solving and that we had a solution, it was a long journey and it's only the last two years where it's really, really come to fruition but that's eight years' worth of incredibly hard work and self-doubt and doubt from others about what what was possible.
Now, as was mentioned I'm thrilled to say that we've got clients as diverse as Glastonbury Festival and Peppa Pig World. We've got card holders from Chaddesden in Derby to Christ-Church in New Zealand and the scheme's only getting stronger and stronger.
But today's recognition came about because of a different passion and as I said I left sport behind me when I was younger, but at 30 I was convinced to try wheelchair basketball. I wasn't particularly bothered about it, I played proper basketball as I used to call it and wheelchair basketball was a very different beast but it opened my eyes to possibility, the companionship, the competition, the camaraderie, cooperation and what it meant to work hard at something that didn't seem to be paying off, to be at matches where we lost every single game to the point where my wife stopped coming to watch.
But then I got into coaching and I got to see first-hand the impact that sport can have on an individual. I got to see the look in people's eyes, disabled and non-disabled, when they realise that they were strong and they were capable and they were independent with the right set of circumstances and support in front of them doesn't matter what life had thrown at them before. And more recently, I was lucky enough to share this passion with a brand new audience after being approached by Karen Newbury who lectures in the Occupational Therapy team here. So, we'd share our stories of what sport meant to us and not just me, my teammates, and eventually the students would come and actually play a game of wheelchair basketball with us and see what it meant to have equal opportunity and see the power of sport in front of them, Therapy could be more than the standard provision and that there was a dynamic way to thinking about how to meet disabled people's needs.
Basketball has been my teacher, it's taught me everything that I need to know about business, about teamwork, about perseverance, about taking time to enjoy the moment, the highs and the lows and the power that a shared goal has to inspire a team and motivate them even through the bad times. So, for that my honour is shared with those that I can proudly call teammates, those that are here, those we've said goodbye to, the teammates that are on the court, off the court, in the family, I dedicate this to them. Thank You.