Simon Dancey reveals the people who have inspired him most

THE CLASH

Leaving school at 15 in the early 1980s with no qualifications and no job in industrial South Wales was not my smartest move. Punk Rock music was a salvation, especially the Clash, whose themes of working class empowerment, political engagement and internationalism directed me towards a 20-year career in the arts. They were the seminal artistic, moral and political experience that influenced my life. They made me pick up a guitar and form a band. Years later when I founded the first UK Community Music label, it was named after the Clash song ‘Complete Control’, highlighting complete artistic control for those on the label. Without the Clash I would be a different person.

EMYR AFAN

Emyr is a TV producer and co-owner of Avanti TV. I worked with him in the mid 1990s on a number of large events for the BBC, amongst others. He taught me to think big and to take risks. He was pretty fearless but always focused on the event. He directly influenced my thinking when I set up the Compass Point International Arts Festival in 2000. I’d moved to Community Music Wales and wanted to prove that community arts could do scale and high production values without compromising fundamental community arts principles of access and empowerment (echoes of the Clash’s agenda).

ULRICH HARDTT and YVETTE VAUGHN-JONES

Ulrich is an international activist and Director of Metropolis Theatre Berlin. Along with Yvette Vaughn-Jones of Wales Arts International (and now Visiting Arts) they provided me with the means and political and artistic framework to work internationally. Ulrich formed the European Arts Network Creative Co-operations, bringing more than 20 countries and arts organisations together to share international best practice. He inspired me to think globally. Yvette had the trust and vision to support this work, having the belief in projects that seemed initially crazy.

KEITH ELLIOT

Keith was my personal tutor at Trade Union College in Newport and was a fundamental catalyst in my life. Keith and the college gave me a life-long belief in supporting access to education and skills and provided a political and moral framework for the work I do now at Creative & Cultural skills. Keith managed to show how politics, art and culture collide. We studied everything from historical materialism and dialectics to gender politics and ethnicity to working class culture. Keith inspired me to go to university and now, 20 years later, is responsible for me still wanting to challenge myself as I start my PhD. I have always tried to stay true to the ideals and concept of a fair society and the beauty and worth of not just middle class art, but all art, that Keith promulgated.