There is a version of the access conversation that focuses entirely on the individual — on resilience, on grit, on finding a way through regardless of the obstacles. I understand that framing. I have lived it.
But there is another conversation worth having: about the rooms themselves. About who designs them, who controls entry, and what is lost when the same kinds of people keep walking through the same doors.
Talent is not concentrated in any one postcode, school or background. It is distributed far more widely than our institutions tend to reflect. The gap between potential and opportunity is not a personal failing — it is a structural one.
The organisations that understand this — that actively seek out perspectives and people they would not otherwise encounter — tend to make better decisions. Not because diversity is a box to tick, but because the quality of thinking improves when the range of experience in the room is genuinely broad.
Access is not charity. It is intelligence.