Paul Roberts, Chair of the STAMMAFest 2024 Organising Committee, on how your unique and diverse will be welcomed and embraced in Nottingham this August.

We are part of a diverse community of stammering and stuttering voices. We each experience blocks, hesitations and repetitions colourful and unique to each of us. My stammer to me is not what you might feel about your speech, and how I view my beautiful, disfluent gift of a voice may be the opposite to how you feel about yours. At STAMMAFest 2024 you’ll discover the many different opinions and emotions people have about stammering.

*Come to STAMMAFest 2024! For details, see Event Overview and Book your tickets.

How we feel about ourselves and our speech is often influenced by our interactions with families, friends, communities, work and study places, as well as those we choose to speak to on a daily basis. More often than not, those conversations are with more naturally fluent people, those who have a bias towards perceived ‘perfect’ speech. Their reactions to our speech differences, however minor or well-meant, can subconsciously and over many years get inside our heads and make us feel less able to communicate, or as in my case, they made me feel like what I had to say was not worth listening to. So, often my contribution to any conversation was stifled and held back by me, leaving me frustrated.

These feelings can be built up and reinforced time and again by others mocking us, by impatient listeners and by overconfident speakers who are quick to talk over others.

At STAMMAFest you will find hundreds of different voices, some fluent, but most not. They won’t sound like you; they won’t stammer like you: you and they are unique. But the person behind the stammer will have time for your words. They will understand your need to be listened to and really heard. The fluent voices in Nottingham will be our allies. They understand our need for a little more time to speak out our important and valuable words. Everyone will understand how precious and important each and every one of our b--------locked, re-re-repeated and explosive words are to us and how keen we are to speak them out.

Come to Nottingham with an open mind. Be ready to listen to others and expect to be listened to, I mean REALLY listened to. What we say is important, both to us, and for others to hear. Come to STAMMAFest to speak your words with your voice.

The STAMMAFest organisers and team are looking forward to seeing you in August, and not being able to hear ourselves think over the cacophony of chatter, laughter and joyous conversational freedom.

Paul Roberts

Proud Lifelong Stammerer and Chair of STAMMAFest 2024 Organising Committee.

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