about Eleanor

My profile at LinkedIn

Contact address – eleanor at connectculture.co.uk

I am starting as a social entrepreneurship in Connect Culture. Its main focus at the moment is getting an inclusive travel service up and running – launching in January. It was great to be given an award by UnLtd – the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs.

This travel service would be a 3 tiered service and advice and information on 3 cities – London, Paris and Strasbourg.

Why those 3 cities? I love them and I do not believe in specialising in places where I have not much experience of. I will research and have visited places and itineraries that I recommend. Each would have been user tested.

I believe in inclusive design and so other topics will also crop up which are not necessarily travel related.

A video of me in an interview with David Bancroft of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum

Short profile

I was born and bred Malaysian of Chinese ethnicity – thereby I was brought up in a multicultural neighbourhood in a country with a Muslim majority, and significant percentage of Hindus, Taists, Budhists and Christians. By faith I am a Catholic with Zen tendencies and a huge Anglican influence as a result of marriage. I speak four languages reasonably, my mother tongue is Cantonese, my working language is English and I have picked up Mandarin and French along the way.

I have lived in 3 continents of South East Asia, Europe and the USA, Lived and worked in Malaysia,  UK (Yorkshire, South east, West Midlands),  France (Strasbourg) and the United States (Texas and Massachusetts). I think this gives me the widest perspective culturally. I am not a tourist, I believe tourism is a form of consumerism but I believe in travel because it widens our horizons about different cultures and perspectives and make you open to opportunities and meeting people.

And I am disabled, I use a wheelchair. I need facilities to be accessible for me to be able to get there. I frequently travel on my own – I like traveling independently. I have to do a lot of rsearch before hand to make sure I can do that – however, there is always an element that you cannot completely prepare for and that is the challenge and adventure. I do not enjoy it when my battles is with people’s attitudes – that they have put barriers to stop me from functioning well. This can be their ignorance or  bureaucracy or by having physical barriers when they were not needed (such as steps or stairs)

I am a parent of two beautiful young people – I understand the joys and challenges of that. I am also a divorced woman and appreciate that journey and the inequalities that  still exist between man and woman.

Lastly, I am an information specialist as well as an access advisor – I believe in the power of good and accessible information. I have the paper qualifications for those roles. Currently I am a member of Equality 2025, West Midlands Access Association secretary , member on the British Council Disability Advisory Panel. I am also a member of the CEDAW working group for Women Policy Forum (W.A.I.T.S),  in Birmingham and Council of Disabled People in Coventry. Recently I have just become a Trustee at Artspace in Coventry.