Meet Lucy — Performing Arts Teacher in North Yorkshire
Lucy Barwick-Ward LAMDA (Gold, Hons)
- Founder
- Performing Arts Teacher
- SEND Specialist
- Qualified Teacher
Lucy is the founder of Lucy’s Aurora Arts and as a performing arts teacher in North Yorkshire, she brings something to every session that no qualification alone can produce: she has lived the experience of being different, of not fitting in, of finding her way through and of discovering that the performing arts can be the thing that makes the difference when everything else has failed to.
Her story is the reason this business exists. And it is worth knowing.
A Life in the Performing Arts — From Age Eight to the West End
Lucy’s relationship with the performing arts began at the age of eight, when she started training with Katrina Hughes Dancers in Harrogate — one of the region’s most respected performance training schools.
She trained there from 1988 to 1999, building her foundation across dance, drama, and singing, and completing the full suite of LAMDA examinations, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, from Grade 1 right through to the Gold Medal with Honours.
The LAMDA Gold Medal is the highest accolade the institution awards. Very few practitioners hold one.
In 1999, she was accepted into the London Studio Centre — one of the UK’s leading conservatoire-style institutions for dance and musical theatre, and in Lucy’s own words, a fame school.
The training was intense by design: back-to-back dance, drama, and singing classes, combined with degree-level lectures, gruelling from the start and built to produce performers ready to audition for the West End, professional ballet companies, contemporary and jazz companies.
She struggled in her first year. By the end of the course, she had risen to the top — graduating in 2003 with a BA (Hons) in Theatre Dance, and stepping out into a professional career that took her across the world.
From Performer to Specialist — Building Something That Matters
When Lucy recovered, she did not return to the stage. Instead, she combined her performing arts background with her personal experience of mental health and neurodivergence and retrained as a creative support worker.
She worked with people who had fallen through the cracks of mainstream provision, helping them find their way back into creativity, expression, and themselves.
She joined Tang Hall Smart, a specialist SEND music school in York, where she works to this day. It was there, supported by an organisation that understood what she was doing and why, that she developed into a fully qualified teacher.
That experience, working every day alongside children and young people with complex and additional needs inside a setting that genuinely specialises in them, is what makes Lucy a SEND performing arts specialist Yorkshire families and professionals actively seek out, not just a performing arts teacher who happens to work with SEND learners.
Lucy’s Aurora Arts is the culmination of all of it. The professional training. The international career. The lived experience of neurodivergence. The years of specialist SEND teaching. The compassion that comes from having genuinely been there.
North Yorkshire — Home, Community and Where Lucy Belongs
Lucy has lived in Thirsk for over fifteen years. She moved from London originally to be with her father when he was diagnosed with cancer.
He passed away in 2017. North Yorkshire is not just where she works, it is her home, her community, and the place she chose to build something permanent and meaningful.
She is, in her own words, a country girl at heart. She has loved living in the city. She has loved travelling and performing abroad. But North Yorkshire, the open spaces, the fields, the landscape that has nothing to do with performance anxiety or the politics of the stage, is where she belongs.
She lives here with her two dogs. It grounds her. It informs the kind of environment she tries to create in every session.
As an inclusive arts teacher Thirsk-based, she travels up to 50 miles across the region to bring sessions to participants who need them. Distance is rarely a barrier.
The Values Behind Every Session
What Matters Most When Someone Walks In
Lucy is clear about what matters most the moment a participant arrives — and it has nothing to do with what they can perform or what level they’re working at.
They need to feel safe. They need to feel accepted exactly as they are. They need to walk into a space of positive, welcoming energy — where kindness, compassion, and genuine understanding are not an afterthought but the foundation that everything else is built on. They need to feel seen. They need to feel heard.
That is the starting point of every single session at Lucy’s Aurora Arts. Everything else — the dance, the drama, the singing, the storytelling — comes after.
Smashing the Box — Person-Centred, Always
Lucy struggled enormously in mainstream education. She was forced into boxes that were never built for the way she thinks, moves, and engages with the world. She understands, from the inside, what it feels like to be squeezed into a shape that was never meant for you.
Which is why Lucy’s Aurora Arts has one central, non-negotiable principle: nobody should have to fit into a box. Here, we smash the box entirely and build something better in its place.
Sessions are person-centred, led by the individual, for the individual. Together, Lucy and each participant weave what she describes as a tapestry of creativity, built from what brings them joy, designed to empower them, help them grow, and support them in finding their own light within themselves.
Not everybody likes boxes. Lucy personally prefers fields and open free spaces, places where creativity can run wild, where people can paint their own canvas and build their own dreams. That is the energy she brings into every session.
As a neurodivergent performing arts mentor who is herself neurodivergent, she has enormous compassion and empathy for those who don’t fit in and who find things difficult. She understands it. She has lived it. And she has built a space for it.
Lucy's Approach in Practice
How Sessions Are Shaped Before They Begin
Before a first session, Lucy takes time to understand who she will be working with. This means a proper conversation with the participant themselves, with parents or carers where that is appropriate, and sometimes with schools, support workers, or other professionals already involved in that person’s care.
She wants to know what has worked before and what hasn’t. What environments feel comfortable. What the person’s creative interests are, even if they are vague or unexplored.
What they are hoping to get from the sessions, and what their concerns might be about starting. That information shapes the initial session structure, not as a rigid plan, but as a considered starting point, in the same way it’s outlined on the How It Works page.
How Lucy Adapts in the Room
Even the most carefully prepared session changes on the day. A participant might arrive carrying a difficult morning. An activity that landed brilliantly last week might feel completely wrong today. The energy in the room shifts, and what is needed shifts with it.
Lucy reads those shifts with attention and experience. She knows when to gently extend a challenge and when to step back entirely. She knows when to introduce structure and when to follow where a participant’s interest naturally leads. And she knows that the sessions that look, from the outside, like they went slightly sideways are sometimes the most valuable ones of all.
Training, Experience and a Career Built Around Inclusion
Performing Arts Background and Formal Training
HM Government · 2025
Prevent refresher awareness
20 February 2025
Lucy’s performing arts credentials are not a line on a form, they represent a career built from the ground up through some of the most rigorous training institutions in the UK.
She began her formal training at LAMDA, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art achieving her Grade Four Acting certificate with Honours in 1993. Four years later, in 1997, she was awarded the LAMDA Gold Medal for Acting with Honours, the highest accolade LAMDA bestows, and one of the most prestigious recognitions available in UK performing arts training at examination level.
The LAMDA Gold Medal is awarded to the highest-performing candidate across all examination entries at that level. Very few practitioners hold one. It is not a participation award — it is a standard of measurable, examined excellence.
Lucy went on to complete a BA (Hons) in Theatre Dance at the London Studio Centre, validated by Middlesex University, graduating in 2002. The London Studio Centre is one of the UK’s leading conservatoire-style dance and theatre institutions, the degree covered theatre dance, performance, choreography, and the full breadth of the performing arts disciplines she now teaches.
Her professional career followed across stage, screen, and international touring:
This is the foundation that underpins every session Lucy delivers as a performing arts teacher in North Yorkshire. The craft is real, the training is exceptional, and the experience of performing professionally across multiple disciplines is something no short course or weekend qualification can replicate.
Specialist Experience with SEND and Complex Needs
As a SEND performing arts specialist Yorkshire families turn to for genuine expertise, Lucy brings more than creative skill to her sessions.
She has worked directly and extensively with children and adults carrying a wide range of needs including those with learning disabilities, physical support requirements, complex and multiple needs, and individuals who are non-verbal or have limited communication.
That experience has taught her that expertise in a creative discipline is only half of what is required. The other half is the ability to be present with someone whose experience of the world is fundamentally different from the majority and to meet them there with patience, adaptability, and genuine knowledge rather than good intentions alone.
It is this dual grounding that defines her as a SEND performing arts specialist Yorkshire-wide families and professionals refer to directly.
Working with Neurodivergent Children, Young People and Adults
As a neurodivergent performing arts mentor, Lucy’s approach is never about redirecting or correcting the way someone engages with the world.
It is about creating conditions where a person’s natural way of thinking, moving, and expressing themselves becomes a creative strength rather than something to manage around.
She has particular experience working with autistic young people and adults, those with ADHD, and others who identify as neurodivergent.
Sessions are sensory-aware, predictable in structure where that helps, and flexible enough to shift in real time when something is not working.
The consistency is in the relationship and the approach as a neurodivergent performing arts mentor, not in a rigid plan that gets followed regardless.
Explore the dedicated Neurodivergent Support page to understand how this looks in practice.
What Do Parents and Participants Say About Lucy’s Aurora Arts Sessions?
Ready to Work With Lucy?
If reading this has given you a clearer picture of who Lucy is and why she does this work — the next step is simply a conversation. No formal referral. No lengthy assessment. No pressure of any kind. Just a relaxed, no-obligation chat to talk through what you are looking for and whether Lucy’s Aurora Arts feels like the right fit.
Lucy works with children, young people, and adults across Thirsk and the wider North Yorkshire area. If you’re unsure whether she covers your location, ask — she will always do her best to find a way.
Call Lucy now on +44 7494 072612 or use the Get In Touch form to send her a message directly. She aims to respond to every enquiry within 24 hours.