2024 in review

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What a year! From our coffee shop campaign to our STAMMAFest conference, read all about our eventful 2024. Plus, a thought to the members we've sadly lost this year.

January

We had a fantastic start to the year, with STAMMA Trustee and former Vice Chair Deborah Johnston being included on the New Year's honours list and awarded an MBE for her work supporting students who stammer. 

February

Hopes that a new year might bring better things for the stammering community proved unfounded when news broke about Lib Dem candidate Chris Nelson. Chris spoke out to the media after withdrawing his candidacy to become MP for Kettering due to hateful comments about his stammer from colleagues, sparking our petition to make Parliament more inclusive for people who stammer.

June

While the Spring months saw us knuckling down in preparation for STAMMAFest, our Campaigns & Communities Manager Vee was organising our main fundraising event of the year, 'It's How We Walk'. Based on an idea by Trustee Dean Ridge (cleverly adapting the name of our 2022 'It's How We Talk' campaign), we called on STAMMA supporters to go for a walk, or run, or roll, for a day or throughout the month of June. Thank you to everyone who took part and raised money for our support services.

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Deborah, Bhupinder & Nic's It's How We Walk Strava screens

July

A little earlier in the year that usual, we held our Trustee election. This is where STAMMA members get to vote in who they want to steer our charity. (What? You're not yet a member? Well, fear not — sign up to become a STAMMA for free and you can vote in next year's election).

Results were announced in July, with you, our members, electing Lucy Weldon and Oliver Wills to the Board.

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Lucy & Oliver

In July we also kicked off our campaign to make coffee shops inclusive. More on that later. 

August

The undeniable highlight of the year was STAMMAFest, our national conference. Our last one in 2022 was going to be hard to live up to, but thanks to the dedicated organising committee; our team of outstanding volunteers; the engaging, interesting and informative speakers; and, of course, every one of you who attended, it was an absolute triumph. The Family Day on Saturday was a high point, not least due to the packed out crowd at Daniele Rossi's comic-drawing workshop. 

• "STAMMAFest was the highlight of my year": Read John's article

Peruse the picture gallery below (click/tap on the left and right of the picture to flick through the pics).  If you missed it all, make sure you come to our next one in 2026.

Also in August, we appointed three new Trustees Cate Birch, Fiona Stewart and Penny East. Read about all three.

Thanks to a legacy left to us by STAMMA member Owen Simon, we were able to fund a group of young people to go on the Erasmus+ Youth Exchange event in the Netherlands that month too. Read all about it and find out how you can apply for next year's event.

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Attendees at the Youth Exchange 2024 (courtesy of Stamily)

September

Our Advocacy, Employment and Helpline Support Services have achieved great things this year, including getting stammering a mention on UCAS forms and training several organisations to become stammer-inclusive. We've added a new section 'Making an Impact' to this site so you can read all about our achievements. Take a look! A huge thank you to all the volunteers who have given their time to support these important services.

October

With the excitement of STAMMAFest over, it was time to concentrate on our 'Space to Stammer' campaign, with a focus on making coffee shops more inclusive for people who stammer. This was in response to members telling us about how challenging they can be.

For the campaign, we produced a stammering guide tailored to those in the industry and distributed it to all the coffee shop chains, with a really positive response. That is, apart from Starbucks who were, let's just say, rather uninterested. That was until the 22^nd October, when we took full advantage of International Stammering Awareness Day to urge the coffee shop giant to take notice, urging our supporters to give our open letter to their local branches. Thanks to members like Sarah Ellison, and the organisers of the Starbuck's Day of Action, the chain budged and got in touch with us to start the conversation. Result!

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Laura (left), Patrick (third from left), Naheem (third from right) and others outside a Starbucks in London

Other autumn highlights included Kirsten, our deputy CEO's appearance on the BBC Breakfast sofa to raise stammering awareness, which you can watch below. It also featured the brilliant Nicole.

We also used our voice to raise awareness with the Government over several issues, firstly highlighting our concerns over the plan for a focus on oracy in schools. And then to a modernisation committee tasked with improving the way parliamentary debates are conducted.

We welcomed Roger Pim, who officially became our new Chair. Roger took over from Paul Fix, who stepped in to fill the role when Joanna Gaukroger stepped down due to health. Thank you to Paul for your dedication.

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Roger Pim, STAMMA Chair

December

A fantastic piece of news to end the year. We're utterly delighted that the National Lottery has just agreed a three-year grant to help us create institutional and cultural change for people who stammer!

Other highlights

New groups

It was great to see new stammering groups being created and revived this year. These included:

• The Men who Stammer Online Group and
• The South Wales Stammering Group, which is now back up and running.

For the full list of in-person and online meetups, see our Communities & Groups page.

Books

Thank you very much to our team of volunteer reviewers, who gave up their time to read new books this year and share their views. Head to our Reviews section for the full list, which includes Hanan Hurwitz's 'Stuttering: From Shame & Anxiety to Confident Authenticity', strongly suggested for anyone battling to accept stammering. There are also titles by acclaimed author Maggie O'Farrell and our former librarian John Ford.

Your Voice articles

As ever, our Your Voice writers have been outstanding, contributing no less that 60 articles over the year. If you haven't read them, head to our Your Voice section right now and check them out. 

There are too many highlights to mention, so here are some taken at random:

• Inspiring others with my stammering TikToks, by Sam 
• Stammering & parenthood: it's all about perspective, by David 
• My recent stammering win, by Claire
• Sasha, stammering & skateboarding, by Mum Dima
• All we need is some patience, by Karabo
• The impact of burnout on my stammer, by Liv
• My TEDx talk: let's change the stammering framework, by Tom 
• The elephant in the room, by Becca
• Scatman John's friendship saved my life, by Gina
• Isabelle's school presentation, by Isabelle

If you would like to share your story, experiences, opinions, poems, music, art or whatever, in 2025, see Submit Something For The Site for details.

In memorium

It is with great sadness that we have had to say goodbye to several members of the STAMMA community this year. 

In January we lost former Trustee Pete Hancock, who was instrumental in setting up our former branch in Scotland. Former staff member and Pete's friend Frank Geoghégán-Quinn wrote this touching obituary about Pete.

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Pete Hancock

In August we were deeply saddened to hear that John Carling passed away. John was a regular at our conferences and open days, and would drop off Christmas cards in-person to our office every year. He was a gentle and kind soul, who was unfortunate to have had to face numerous health and mental health challenges in his life, as he explained in the two articles he contributed for our site, which you can read 'How psychological therapies help with my stammer' and 'Being mocked in public because I stammer'. Mercifully, John spent his final years in a happier and more peaceful place on the south coast.

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John Carling

We were lucky enough to have received several legacies throughout the year. Dr. James Visick sadly died in September, with his wife Kirsty telling us "Your charity was immensely helpful to us when our son developed a severe stammer aged 7. He still has his stammer but it has not held him back in life".

We also said goodbye to STAMMA members Charles Barker, Avril Brown, Avril Kennard, Michael Leek and Arnold Marks, whose kind legacies will help us to carry on supporting people who stammer and their allies.

Our deepest condolences to the families of those we have lost, in what is most likely a very difficult time of year.