Founder and Director of Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC
Dr Violet Cannon is a Yorkshire-born Romani Gypsy woman, community leader, researcher, advocate, author and facilitator.
Her career began in community work in the 1990s and has now spanned close to three decades. Across that time she has worked with Gypsy and Traveller people on research, planning and accommodation, health inequalities, education, policy, cultural heritage, advocacy and organisational change.
Her work is rooted in a simple principle: lived experience should not be invited into a room simply to decorate decisions that have already been made.
Rooted in community
Violet was raised in a traditional Romani Gypsy family and spent much of her formative childhood living roadside.
Moving into bricks and mortar did not end her family’s ethnicity, culture or relationship with travelling. That experience continues to shape one of the arguments running through her work today: accommodation does not define ethnicity.
She trained as a youth worker and moved into Gypsy and Traveller-specific community roles, becoming involved in research, youth work, advocacy and regional organising. The University of York records her as the inaugural chair of the Northern Network of Travelling People.
From individual experience to structural change
Violet’s work has moved between direct support with families and the systems that shape what happens to them.
Community research
Violet has worked in community and peer-led research since the mid-2000s, including early Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment work in Yorkshire and the Humber and later research across health, mental health, suicide prevention, cancer, heritage and public services.
Planning & welfare
Her planning work combines community knowledge with formal understanding of site design, planning policy and culturally informed welfare evidence. She has supported families, trained professionals and contributed community evidence to planning-policy discussions.
Policy & public evidence
Violet has taken community evidence into local and national policy spaces, including parliamentary discussions on legislation affecting roadside Gypsy and Traveller families.
Dialogue & facilitation
She is a Council of Europe-trained Intercultural Mediator and an experienced safer-space and Deep Democracy facilitator, working with groups where racism, conflict, power and difficult questions need to be discussed rather than avoided.
Leadership
Violet led York Travellers Trust as Chief Executive for more than eight years, concluding that role in September 2026. Her work there included community advocacy, health, education, accommodation, research, policy, organisational development and partnership building.
She is Founder and Director of Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC and Chair of Moving for Change, a national network bringing together organisations working with Gypsy and Traveller communities.
Her leadership style combines community accountability with an interest in systems change, trauma-informed practice, dialogue and organisational cultures that share power rather than simply talk about inclusion.
Health, mental health and community-led research
Violet has worked with university and health partners on research into some of the most serious inequalities affecting Gypsy and Traveller people.
She has been a co-investigator on University of York research exploring suicide prevention and the co-design of mental-health support with Gypsy and Traveller communities, and has contributed to collaborative work examining historical trauma, community health and cancer inequalities.
Across this work, she has argued for research that starts with the questions communities identify as important and treats community members as partners in interpretation, not simply as participants.
Professional knowledge
- Council of Europe-trained Intercultural Mediator
- Experienced safer-space and Deep Democracy facilitator
- Train-the-Trainer qualification through the University of Derby
- Chartered Institute of Housing Level 3 training in Gypsy and Traveller site management and design
- Community-led and qualitative research
- Planning and culturally informed welfare assessment
- Organisational leadership, governance and systems change
- Health inequalities and mental-health research
- Heritage, oral history and archival research
- Community-led exhibition and creative-project development
Honorary degree and public recognition
In 2022, the University of York awarded Violet an honorary degree. The University recognised her as a Yorkshire-born Romani Gypsy community leader whose work had grown through youth work, research, authorship and Gypsy and Traveller organising.
For Violet, the significance of that recognition sits alongside a wider question: whose knowledge is treated as expertise, and why community knowledge so often has to be validated by institutions before it is taken seriously.
Writing, heritage and creative work
Violet is the author of Gypsy Princess, a memoir of growing up in a Romani Gypsy family. She also writes extensively about identity, racism, history, planning, health, community power and the way public narratives shape people’s lives.
Her creative and heritage work has included youth media, photography, oral history, exhibitions, public storytelling and nationally recognised work shown at Tate Modern.
For Violet, storytelling is not separate from advocacy. The stories society repeats about a community influence whose children are believed, whose families are trusted and which inequalities are tolerated.
Selected public and research work
- Hidden Troubles: suicide risk and suicide prevention with Gypsy and Traveller communities — University of York
- Crossing Boundaries: co-designing mental-health support — University of York
- Chair — Moving for Change
- Parliamentary discussion on legislation affecting Gypsy and Traveller encampments
Her approach
Violet does not believe that bringing a Gypsy or Traveller person into the room automatically creates equality.
Representation without influence can still be tokenism.
Her work repeatedly asks: Who decided the priorities? Who controls the resources? Whose evidence is believed? Who interprets what communities say? Who receives the credit? And what will actually change afterwards?
Conversation matters. The purpose is change.
Work with Violet through PGT
Violet undertakes selected speaking, research, policy, facilitated-dialogue, training, planning and welfare, heritage and strategic partnership work through Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC.
All professional enquiries should come through PGT.