DR NELLY BEN HAYOUNSTÉPANIAN

Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian is quite the force – just ask NASA. e multihyphenate is the founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, the world’s first to consist of space scientists. It’s just one of the many ventures led by her uncategorisable creativity.

Ben Hayoun-Stépanian started her creative journey at the age of 19, when she spent six months perfecting the traditional cra of Kimono-making in Japan and became fascinated with design. is, combined with her experience as a child of Armenian and Algerian immigrants in France – many of whom were prominent in politics and activism, advocating for the recognition of the Armenian genocide – shaped her approach to creativity.

After a BA in Textile Design, she secured an MA in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art. “ e course was about creating a movement in design that thought about things critically. We weren’t just making products, we were asking questions and building scenarios,” she says from her o ice, a former London Tube carriage on the roof of Village Underground, a nightlife venue in east London.

In the final episode of No Passengers, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian designs a limitededition Porsche Taycan wrapped in a fluoro colour pale e. e film follows her design process, from conceptualising an alternative world with an industryleading 3D artist in Unreal Engine to the grand finale, where she drives her custom Porsche through the dusty surface of the 3D world she has created.

The No Passengers project brings together Ben Hayoun-Stépanian’s experiences as both a student and company founder. While studying for her MA, she developed an interest in theatre. is led to a course at RADA, which in turn led to the birth of Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios –the design agency she launched in 2009: “I wanted to create design experiences that act as an entry point for audiences to critically reflect on the way they do things.”

Today, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian (who has since added a PhD in Political eory to her list of achievements) is not only an award-winning designer of experiences but a director and producer of films – eInternationalSpaceOrchestra, 2013; Disaster Playground, 2015; I am (not) a monster, 2019 – and the founder of the tuition-free University of the Underground, which includes Arjun Appadurai and Noam Chomsky as professors. “I started the University to create a space where we think and teach outside of the traditional box,” she says. “Society isn’t wired to open the minds of the public because there’s a power dynamic in place. We don’t activate our imaginations because we’re stuck in these ways of thinking. It’s time to change that.”

Sinéad Burke is a once-in-a-generation catalyst for change; an architect restructuring the operational foundations of the culture sector, from fashion’s fr ont rows to industry boardrooms. rough her company, Tilting the Lens, the Dublin-based, physically disabled activist is on a mission to remind us that visibility is just one step on the journey towards building equity for the 1 billion people living with a disability, as she explains here, in her own words.

“One of my strongest memories is being 12 years old and going shopping with my three sisters: all younger than me, and none of them were disabled. As the eldest, I thought it was my responsibility to show them the way in fashion. As a li le person, fashion was a visual methodology by which I could translate who I was. I wanted to extend this vocabulary to my sisters, not realising that as young, white, cisgendered, non-disabled women, their physical existence was cued to so many cultural signifiers of acceptance that they didn’t need fashion in the way that I did.

This humbling experience was a professional catalyst for me. I realised that not only was this a market that was neither considered nor catered for, it was a perspective and an expertise that was wholly invisible within the wider fashion system. I wanted to move the dial on how disability was framed and positioned within the industry.

As a physically disabled queer woman, I am driven by the mission of building and designing a more equitable and accessible world. My advocacy is rooted in my lived experience of disability – the mismatch between how the world is designed and my existence in a disabled body. Tilting the Lens was founded in the midst of a pandemic. Overnight, remote working became a possibility and through the prevalence of long Covid, more people were selfidentifying as and becoming disabled.

Yet as individuals, we developed a further complacency with the loss of disabled lives. In the UK, for example, six out of 10 deaths from Covid-19 were disabled people. Our lack of conscience was shrouded in language of ‘underlying conditions’ or ‘those who were vulnerable’. I couldn’t understand how our proximity to experiencing disability was more tangible, and yet the prioritisation of the non-disabled continued.

As someone who has the capacity, skills and a network that could create change, I felt that an organisation rooted in community was the most meaningful way to design new systems to support the delivery of equity, dignity, respect and interdependence.

Over the past year, the Tilting the Lens team has grown to five people, all of whom work remotely and the majority of whom identify as disabled. eir journey of self-identification and in

Le : In addition to her work as an advocate, educator and author, Burke is the founder of accessibility consultancy Tilting the Lens feeling comfort, pride and empowerment with the lexicon of disability has been very fulfilling and inspiring. As someone who was born with a congenital, physical and visible disability, being an observer to other people’s discovery of who they are is one of the greatest gi s.

My time in the fashion industry has taught me that change will only truly be embedded when disabled people are in decision-making positions. It’s vitally important that we continue to advocate for disabled people to be represented on runways and for adaptive clothing to continue to evolve, but I want disabled people in design rooms and boardrooms.

For example, we recently worked on a project supporting the development and design of an accessible playground. To ensure that we designed with disabled people, rather than for disabled people, we created focus groups with disabled parents across the spectrum of disability and identity. To learn about the ways in which access needs might support their children to play, imagine and explore was incredibly humbling and reinstated my desire to continuously reiterate the definition of accessibility.

Leaders need to understand that accessibility and disability justice are strategies that must be implemented by them, and that they must continuously ensure their teams and colleagues are accountable for their progress. Organisations need to see this work as an in vestment, not a cost. Visibility and representation cannot be limited to marketing. Eighty per cent of disabled women are outside of the labour market and the pay gap between non-disabled men and disabled women is 35%. Redesigning the employment process to be equitable and accessible is vital for systemic change. Awareness is a starting point, not a destination.”

Not content to simply ride the wave of Happy Valley’s success, the British star is embarking on his greatest acting challenge to date

By Hanna Flint

Photography by Edd Horder Styling

by Rose Forde i ing still for a long time is not something that comes easily to James Norton. e chipper British actor tells me as much at Shoreditch House on a late Tuesday a ernoon in spring. I’ve secured us a private table for two as you walk into the main bar on 5th floor. It’s a good spot for people-watching; the buzz of members taking meetings, catching up and enjoying an end-of-day glass or two of Picpoul vibrates around us. Norton, however, has sworn o alcohol since January, so we’re sipping on fresh lemon and ginger tea as he opens up about his deep-seated desire for exploration. “I love to travel,” he says. “I love jobs that get me around the world. I’ve had a nomadic thing forever.”

We’re about 45 minutes into our chat, so I’m impressed he hasn’t already skedaddled. Fortunately, he not only arrived 10 minutes early but he sticks around for an extra half an hour so we can talk in candid, sometimes earnest, detail about the career he’s steadily built over the last 15 years. It’s been a riveting journey.

On the small screen, Norton’s roles have ranged from a delightful sleuthing vicar in ITV’s Grantchester and a mournful prince in the BBC’s adaptation of War & Peace to a British-raised son of a Russian mafia boss in McMafia And, of course, there’s his chilling turn as the psychopathic killer Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley, the BBC’s celebrated crime series, which returned for a third and final season this year to huge acclaim and record viewing figures.

In film, he’s appeared in glossy Hollywood fares including Greta Gerwig’s Li le Women and the 2017 Flatliners remake. He also recently charmed in the intimate indie drama Nowhere Special. All the while, Norton’s maintained a love a air with theatre, which began a er leaving the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before graduating to star in the original 2010 production of Posh at the Royal Court eatre. He last trod the boards in 2018, garnering rave reviews for his perfor- mance in Belleville at the Donmar Warehouse opposite British actress Imogen Poots. Despite playing a newlywed American couple in trouble, they have been happily together ever since.

So far, Norton has plo ed significant points on his professional and personal map. But to be able to go to so many places – physically, emotionally and creatively – building a home has become a vital anchor. “Even if I’m never there, to know that it’s there is a big stabiliser for me,” he explains, pointing to his childhood experience at boarding school. “You have a very specific relationship with home and space. You go away from your home, and the stability of your family, to spaces which are quite hectic. For me now, when I go away on a job, I find myself doing coping mechanisms that I used to do when I was a teenager.”

Such as? “Telling a room that I’ll be back,” he o ers, slightly embarrassed, before deciding not to divulge any further “weird idiosyncrasies”, as he puts it. Luckily, Poots has no qualms with his quirks or nesting habits. “She lives more in a cerebral space,” Norton smiles. “She’s very happy with a book and I’m more in the physical space. I’m probably overly o icious when tidying up. It’s why we work so well together, because we come at life from slightly different spaces. As a result, I’m certainly house proud.”

As the floor lamp next to our table dims for the evening, the Soho House member says he’s enjoying the perks of having access to the Soho Home collection. “ ere is an amazing range of furniture – it’s f*****g great!” e couple were in the throes of renovating their Peckham property, but that has been put on hold for now as he embarks on his greatest acting challenge yet in the play adaptation of A Li le Life

When we meet, Norton is five weeks into rehearsals for Ivo van Hove’s latest stage adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s renowned bestselling novel. e actor takes the lead as troubled lawyer Jude St. Francis, and to say his protagonist is dealing with trauma would be a gross understatement. Life has, and continues to come at Jude hard, pounding him with physical, psychological and emotional abuse as he navigates work, relationships and personal demons alongside his college friends in New York. To prepare for the role, van Hove told Norton everything he needed was in Yanagihara’s 814-page novel, which was a small relief. “ e pressure isn’t so much about finding the character, writing the biography, going into the backstory and knowing what my bedroom smelled like or what my favourite colours are, all that s**t,” he says. “ e challenge is trying as much as I can to honour the character people have already fallen in love with.”

Norton took his time reading and digesting the story a er being cast in October 2022. It was a “profound experience” and he believes the story could only be successfully be adapted for the stage. “It’s so big and sprawling, and there are elements of abuse that I don’t think can be adapted with a child actor playing it,” he explains. “ e medium of theatre allows us a sort of abstraction. We have a string quartet playing the whole way through. It’s very nonlinear –it’s this wonderful, choreographed milieu with only specific sections [of the book] chosen. It’s 50 years of these people’s lives and you want to go on that journey.”

Having a safe space to go home to has never been more essential. For three hours and 40 minutes each night, over its nearly four-month run at the Harold Pinter eatre in London, he will have to shoulder the heavy burden of what that tormenting performance will require. He’s anxious.

“I’m going through it,” the actor admits. “I have to put an insane amount in every night; there’s sexual violence, there are beatings, there’s self-harm. I don’t know what the cost is going to be.” Yet Norton has long strived to draw a firm line between fiction and reality. “ ere’s an expectation that I’m going to go to hell and back in order to give this book its due justice,” he says. “I will be using all the tools available to me to get as close to it as I possibly can but I’m going to come o stage, grab a beer and I’m going to hug my friends and be James.”

Strange dreams are currently a byproduct of this theatrical endeavour – though it’s nothing new. While shooting Happy Valley, Norton’s sleep went to unusual places due to spending each day in the mindset of a murderous manipulator. Now, as he gets to grips with the play alongside castmates Luke ompson (Bridgerton), Omari Douglas (It’s A Sin) and Zach Wya ( e Witcher: Blood Origin), Jude is bleeding into his subconscious. But that’s the only way he will allow his characters to come home with him – especially when they are so dark and tortured. It’s why he’s not one for Method acting. “I’m not from that school,” he says. “I do not begrudge anyone if they want to do that. ere’s a line; this is as much as I can give and if I give more than that, then it starts to really hamper my own life and my relationships su er.” e antisocial element is also rather unappealing: “One of the best parts of a stage rehearsal process or film set is hanging out. e idea of spending every co ee break and every lunch on my own in character? F**k that!”

Managing his food intake is a major part of Norton’s creative process. He has Type 1 diabetes, which can complicate things when doing stage work especially, but he and the production team have a plan: sugar tablets and his insulin pens hidden onstage and his blood sugar levels monitored by a Bluetooth device a ached to his body that someone can track from his phone o stage. “We’re working in a way where we can have a cue light just in my eyeline, so if it goes red, it means one thing. If it goes green, it means another,” he says. “If I need to eat some sugar or to inject, I’ll just surreptitiously do it.” e subject reminds me of the diabetic drug Ozempic, which Hollywood types are using to stay slim. He whips out his phone and scrolls to a message from a friend with a link to a viral e Cut article on the topic. He’s not had time to read it yet, so I give him the bullet points about the massive expense to secure versions of the drug to stave o hunger, the high demand from non-diabetics and the problems this causes for those who actually need it. A perplexed look washes over his face. “I’d never heard of it and I don’t want to suppress my appetite,” he says. “I f*****g love eating and having a drink! Luckily my diabetes is well-controlled and totally manageable.”

His health condition has not prevented him freedom to work but in the past, he did worry that being typecast as a “privately educated, floppy-haired period drama guy” might limit his opportunities. “I don’t feel like I was born into some period drama but producers like to categorise people because it makes their life easy,” he says. “I don’t want to be that. If people think I’m that, then fine, but I’ll do everything I can to fight against it because it’s not as interesting as all the other roles out there.”

To be fair, he does have a great head of hair. And he was privately educated. Born in Lambeth, London, Norton’s teacher parents moved him and his sister to Malton in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire, where he a ended the fee-paying Ampleforth College with some financial support from his grandparents. “I feel very lucky,” he says. “My mum and dad worked hard and my grandparents worked hard, so I owe them a lot. But I’m aware that a lot of people work hard and can’t a ord private school.”

Peppered throughout our conversation is this selfconscious acknowledgement of his privilege. “It might appear to some people that I’m apologising for my past but I’d much rather run that risk than feeling like I was entitled,” he says.

“I guess it’s like, ‘Why me? Why do I deserve this?’ I don’t deserve it. I think what I do is far less than most people. I got lucky. People ask me for advice for young actors and that question is hard, because I didn’t do anything di erent from thousands of other actors who work hard. I got some great gigs early on, the right people saw me in the right role and that bred more work.”

H e also finds the negative framing of diversity as the industry “untangles ourselves from old a itudes and structures” reductive. “I do believe that all industries are massively benefited by listening and educating ourselves,” Norton says.

“Does every single role need to be played by someone who has lived that experience? No. But there are roles which do require [that]. It’s not about forcing tokenism on people. It’s about acknowledging that a role will be massively improved by someone who has lived that experience.”

Time, place and unconscious bias are important things to consider when looking at certain actors’ success stories, but there’s no denying that talent is a major factor in Norton’s case.

He’s a transformative performer who brings emotional intelligence and physical depth to his roles. During the season three finale of Happy Valley, I caught myself welling up as I watched his ill-fated monster deliver his final few words opposite Sarah Lancashire’s formidable police sergeant Catherine Cawood. He’s pleased to hear it. Tommy is a role he cherishes and the series represents a community he fondly remembers. “ ere’s a temperament and that world of endless cups of tea around kitchen tables was familiar to me – I grew up in that,” he says. “Although some people did get upset, saying I wasn’t a Yorkshireman, and reviewers said my accent was bad. I was like, ‘F**k o !’ I came from Yorkshire. I literally had the accent until I was about 13!”

Now 37 years old, the actor excitedly credits himself as a producer through Rabbit Track Pictures, which he co-founded with Ki y Kaletsky. eir first feature Rogue Agent, with Norton in the eponymous role, launched to acclaim on Ne lix in 2022 but it’s not “one of those vanity projects built around an actor”. Actually, he tells me, 70% of their current projects in development won’t feature him.

Norton’s not done with acting, of course. But after a growing awareness of the small part actors play in the grand scheme of filmmaking, he’s plo ed a new path to bring him closer to the world he loves. “I would arrive on a film set and so much of the creative process was all pre y much done, and I just had to facilitate someone else’s creative dream,” he says. “ is is definitely a much bigger contribution. I’ve learned a new skill set as a producer and, in development, script editing through Ki y and just being thrown in the deep end. ree years in, I love it.”

Max Richter is arguably the most popular classical musician of his generation. Here, the Soho Summit speaker talks creativity, soundtracks and social media