JOANNE CUTTS

JO CUTTS: Former stylist

National and International publications. Stage work at Salon International London

We trained together. We were inseparable. Before either of us knew what the rest of our lives would look like, we were two young women at Daisy's Hair Shop in Nuneaton, working in a trade and loving what we did.

Jo Cutts was a wizard with the razor and scissors. That's not just a nice thing to say about an old friend for old times' sake — it's the truth, and it's provable. In national hairdressing magazine features one particular style on mid-length hair, sitting in the same spread as McMillan of Lanarkshire, Goldwell-sponsored stylists, and Wella's biggest names, there's a credit that reads simply: Daisy's Hair Shop, Nuneaton. A small salon in a Warwickshire market town, holding its own page-for-page against the industry's biggest names. That's what Jo's hands were capable of.

We don't need to tell that story to make this one matter. This isn't about us. This is about where Jo went next, and what she's built since.

Jo's path away from hairdressing wasn't really a path away from skill — it was the same skill, redirected. The patience to really look at someone before you touch a single hair. The instinct for knowing exactly what someone needs, even when they can't say it themselves. The steadiness to keep working through something difficult until it comes right. Those aren't just hairdressing skills. They're the exact skills Jo now uses every day at Expert Citizens in Stoke-on-Trent, where she works with people facing some of the hardest circumstances life can hand someone.

Jo came to Expert Citizens herself first as someone who needed it — after time spent in a women's refuge, rebuilding a life from very little. She started volunteering in 2014. By 2018 she'd moved into paid work as a Project Assistant with Housing First. Since then, she's recruited and trained volunteer peer mentors — eleven of them under her wing so far, two of whom now work in paid roles within the very service that once helped her. In 2024, she partnered with Orchid Women's Service to launch Loose Women, a peer-led space for women facing homelessness and multiple disadvantage. She's spoken on BBC Radio 5 Live about the barriers homeless people face just trying to register with a GP, following the 2016 Gatekeepers report — a piece of research she helped bring to life with Expert Citizens, VOICES, and Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent.

People who meet Jo don't always know about the razor, the magazines or the stagework. Although I'm reliably informed Jo still has that magic touch.They certainly know a woman who shows up, who trains the next person, who builds something steady out of her own hardest years. But we know where that steadiness came from. We watched it being built, one client, one cut, one quiet afternoon at Daisy's at a time.

Some people are wizards once and never again. Jo just changed what she was casting.

Go and think for yourself. The world has enough copies.