When her words started slurring and she complained she wasn’t feeling well Micaela Tuckwell’s mother initially thought the 16-year-old was drunk.

In fact, her daughter was having a stroke caused by a brain haemorrhage that would leave her paralysed in her right hand and facing two years of rehabilitation to relearn how to walk.

Ms Tuckwell, who 15 years later is now the new head of Cowley Road Carnival, said: “I remember it was at night and I felt drowsy and that my hand wasn’t working.”

When she then couldn’t stand up, her mother realised something serious was wrong.

During her long recovery, which involved missing two years of school, the impact on her ability to enjoy her passion for music was something she became frustratingly aware of.

The 31-year-old said it was an experience that ‘opened her eyes’ to the problems faced by disabled people trying to both enjoy art and be involved in it.

“I played the piano and recorder before, so music was a very big part of my life and my identity,” she explained.

“Then I had the stroke which paralysed my right hand and obviously as a recorder player that was a really big issue.

“I found that trying to get back to playing the recorder or really any music was really difficult.

"I tried to join a choir and I just didn’t have the confidence to do that and didn’t feel supported to do that.”

Going to see music live proved just as much of an issue.

She said: “One of the main things I remember, because I loved going to see music and going to concerts for them, was my dad taking me to see Bob Dylan at the Brixton Academy.

“I was in a wheelchair and I was having to sit in a bad seat, I was squashed up, I wasn’t in the crowd. It was a shameful experience.

“That’s why I feel really passionate about trying to give people in Oxfordshire access to high quality performance opportunities no matter what disability you have.

“I want to make sure anyone who goes and sees art and music and dance and anything like that, if they have any kind of disability they are prioritised and one of the crowd.

“Whether it is physical or mental it shouldn’t matter if people want to participate in the arts.”

As the head of Oxford’s biggest street party, as well as associated charity Cowley Road Works (CRW), Ms Tuckwell will be using her position to do just that.

Though she has seen a marked improvement in disability access in the arts over the last five years, she said she believed the carnival can act as a ‘lynch pin’ for work already being done in the city.

She explained: “There’s lots of good work but it tends to be in silos, so the idea is we can connect all of that because we come into contact with so many organisations.”

The ambition was given a boost this month when CRW won an £86,000 grant from the Arts Council to fund an extensive programme of opportunities for arts training, participation and performance for disabled young people in Oxford.

Running until next winter, the work aims to address the lack of training and career opportunities for disabled artists in Oxfordshire.

It will also see the charity working in a major new partnership with the Ark T centre in Cowley, which already runs the ROAR disabled art festival.

Ark T and CRW will be collaborating with a group of local, national and international arts partners including New Carnival Company, Embaixadores de Alegria (the world’s biggest carnival project with disabled people), mental health charity Mind, Oxford University’s Pembroke College, the Pegasus Theatre, Mizeke Afropean Singers and Gloucester Carnival.

Ms Tuckwell said: “I’ve only been in the job three months so the bid was already in before I arrived but I am so glad to be picking this up and running with it.”

Originally from Woking, the carnival head has now been in Oxford for 12 years.

It was the consequences of the stroke that first brought her to the city as she needed to have one-to-one tuition.

From there she went on to Oxford Brookes University, where she completed a degree in English Literature over six years.

She said: “I was really grateful for their support and giving me more time. That’s why I stayed in Oxford, I wanted to give back to the city.”

This started during her time at Brookes, when she volunteered with Jacari, a charity that provides tutors for children with English as a second language, eventually running it between 2013 and 2015.

Followed by two years as fundraising manager for Oxford’s Story Museum, her skills made her ideally suited to take on the Cowley carnival top job when the position opened up earlier this year.

There are now just days to go until paintings spill from the canvas as the colourful celebration returns on Sunday, July 1, with ‘Icons of Art’ announced as this year’s theme.

Revellers will don costumes and man floats inspired by famous artists for the fiesta, which last year attracted crowds of 50,000.

For Ms Tuckwell, who is supported by an organising committee with more than 40 years experience of putting on major festivals, it will also be a chance launch the disability art programme.

She said: “We are going to be using it as a platform for establishing this new programme.

“We are going to be producing a new Oxford-based samba band, disability-led spoken word and music programme and people will be able to see some of these performers at this year’s carnival.”

She added: “We hope we will be leading the way forward in Oxford with this.

“I know there are a few festivals in the UK that are focusing on this issue of accessibility for people with disabilities not only coming to the carnival but participating as well.

“The lack of disability-led organisations is a real shame for this country and I want to be one of those people who stands up for disability-led organisations and hopefully there will be more in the future.”

To volunteer at this year’s carnival or for a full rundown visit cowleyroadcarnival.co.uk