Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

Garry Sykes. Who passed away earlier this year.

He taught me on my Bachelors degree in art at Barnsley College.

Although it was a Bachelors degree, this wasn’t a university education. Barnsley is a post-industrial town, and certainly not a university town. I didn’t go to university in that respect.

However, what we had at Barnsley was special, and this was largely down to a people like Garry.

Whilst we lacked high-flying lecturers, and had to always have one foot grounded in day to day reality (with there being no university culture to immerse oneself into), we had teachers who were always there for us, who spent time trying to nurture both us and the future of people in the town they were also from.

Garry’s positive impact was special because it was collectively owned by a large sporadic group of people who were taught by him, and this made it have a stronger impact individually.

This collective impact was captured this month, when many of us attended his funeral to show our respects. His wife Linda died a month later – so they had a joint funeral. As tragic as they this may seem, there is also a romantic beauty there for two people who were with it each other since being kids.

Garry taught me to have the courage to keep going as an artist. He taught me that if one had the urge to create, they would create whatever their situation, and this urge wasn’t like a force of nature, it was a force of nature.

What a great bloke, with a a great mind, and great vision for his town, that will surely carry on.