Daniel Randall-Nason is a trustee of Stay Up Late and a member of the Storm and Thunder Team. He reports back on his day at our conference here

I was really pleased to take part in Stay Up Late’s conference in London as part of the Storm & Thunder team.

Tilley and Del from Heart n Soul did an amazing job as hosts for the day. I was also very impressed with Scott Watkins’ speech and I’d like to find out more about his organisation Seeability. I also really liked Daniels’s speech talking about the Mind The Gap Theatre group. Phillip Dyer was another good speaker. He wanted to get married and his support worker supported him to do it. Phillip and Alison make a lovely couple. I also loved the choir it would be great to do a Gig Buddies music session with the Include Choir.

The roving mics – we loved the roving mics! Chris Love and Andrew were running about all over when the audience were asking questions.

At lunchtime myself and Andrew and Chris Love along with Michael from Stay Up Late Scotland did a Jerry Springer-style chat show. We were talking about the work of Stay Up Late and listening to people’s ideas. People were making precise and clear points and not going off at tangents. People who came along were making the No Bedtimes point really clearly. It’s our choice because when we go out to gigs we want to stay for the whole thing not leave when the carer says it’s time to go.

This is the speech that I gave at the Stay Up Late campaign workshop we held at the conference

My name is Daniel. I’m one of the trustees at Stay Up Late and I am part of the Storm and Thunder Team – that’s a group of us who have a learning disability and we are the advisory group for Stay Up Late.

We are a charity that was formed eight years ago. It’s about staying up late, it’s about going to gigs, it’s about no bedtimes and it’s about making our own decisions.

The charity does two main things. One thing is the Gig Buddies project. The other thing is the campaign work. We launched our manifesto which Andrew will talk about.

If you like our manifesto we want to encourage people to become Stay Up Late campaign ambassadors and help us get the word out. We have flyers printed up that you can take away telling you how you can get involved.

Being with Stay Up Late has been really good for me. I’ve been to gigs, I’ve been to festivals, I’ve been to conferences and I’ve run a puppet show – all for the cause of Staying Up Late and No Bedtimes!