The topic of my Fellowship in 1979 was Dance Training for Gymnastics. In the late 1970s, the critical impact of amateur versus professional status for those involved in sport was at a very different stage compared to today. As a qualified teacher of dance working in mainstream education, I had embarked on a gymnastics summer course at Loughborough University to further widen my qualifications when moving to a new school. There, by chance, I was offered work (on a voluntary basis, as was the norm, with travel expenses and accommodation) with the GB artistic gymnastics squads.

Dance teachers and choreographers working alongside highly qualified gymnastics coaches was pretty new in the West compared to the approach used in the so-called Eastern Bloc. This led to my Fellowship to learn from the practice of those working in this field in the then USSR and Romania.

What followed, alongside my continued dance teaching and choreography with British Gymnastics for some 14 years, covering three Olympic cycles, was a successful teaching career, MEd degree and work as an associate tutor at Liverpool John Moores University.

Although now retired, I am project lead on an innovative Hull-based Dance for Parkinson's programme.