During his teenage years Tom and his friends were avid skateboarders, travelling the length and breadth of the country (courtesy of Dads cabs!) to find good places to skate. Him and his friends dreamt of having somewhere local to skate, so in 2003 Tom managed to rally his friends to convince the local council to create a skate park near their high school in Cheadle. He and his friends enjoyed this park for many years and Tom receive an Outstanding Youth Achievement award for his efforts and the park remains thriving until this day.

As a young adult Tom went on to study Graphic Design in college and then on to Leeds University. Throughout his life he had a unique ability to never follow the rules or the conventional route, but to still always somehow manage to get unbelievable results, and a perfect example of this (and a story he was very proud of) took place in 2012 during his final university year. Similarly to most degrees, after three years of studying, the final stage was to submit a ten-thousand-word dissertation, but given that he had been fully embracing the university lifestyle and night life, this was proving to be quite the hurdle for him. Just like a true creative, he spent months and months putting off doing his dissertation and procrastinating, and then right at the last minute, he decided to stay up for almost 48 hours straight across an entire weekend in order to get it done. This was supposed to be ten-thousand words about the work he had been doing in Graphic Design throughout his course. But for Tom, that would have been far too conventional, so instead he decided to write about  what was on his mind at the time, which was: Love, What it means to matter as an artist, and Self-reflection about his own ‘Lightbulb’ – which was a really poetic metaphor that he had come up with the year prior, to describe having a creative mind and the positive and negative repercussions that come with it. So, playing by his own rules and doing it his way, he handed in his dissertation just before the deadline and then a few months later was suddenly called into a very formal hearing with the education board. They sat Tom down and explained to him that what he had handed in was not appropriate for a degree about Graphic design, that he hadn’t followed the guidelines set out as part of the curriculum and that what he had done was barely linked to what they had been teaching for the last three years. However, they also said that what he had written had completely blown them away and was written to a PHD level standard and that because of this, they had no choice but to award him with a first-class honours degree and the highest grade in the year!

After finishing University, Tom started to monetize his creativity and writing skills by joining the creative team of a Leeds based advertising agency. Quickly he began to be recognised for his talents, this is what his old boss had to say about him after learning of his passing: “He was a big presence in our agency from the day he came for his interview. My wife Jayne, who worked with Tom also, remembered how he arrived at our office but had to walk across to Bowcliffe Hall where we were doing the interviews. She said she felt for him as he was really nervous but pushed himself to get through it. In walked this tall guy in a full-length leather coat with a portfolio and a laptop. He was really nervous but read us a poem where he drew on glass to bring it to life. We had no idea where we would fit him in, but we were going to find a place for him. We are all so pleased we did. Not only was he a creative talent but he was a gentle, funny and intelligent man – a real pleasure to have around. It was Tom having to catch two buses to get to work each day that made us reflect that moving to Leeds city centre would be better for us if we wanted to attract more talent like him. We have since found out how rare his talent was. Tom created so many pieces of work he and we were so proud of – Absolut Originality, Spin Art concept that went into dozens of major global airports was one of his first projects in his first month. That put us on the map with Pernod. However, Lawler Duffy shoes was I think his finest work for us – it was where his love of music and creativity came together – he shone in front of the client, he loved every minute of it!”