Pride of Britain winner Joanne Harris: ‘I could not believe the impact that we had’
In October 2025, Joanne Harris won UTV’s Pride Of Britain Fundraiser of the Year for the work she does with Knitted Knockers Northern Ireland (KKNI). The charity provides free hand-knitted breast prosthetics to women who have undergone a mastectomy. She talks to Ciaran Brennan about KKNI’s story so far, the “surreal” awards ceremony, and her ambitions for the future.
In 2016, Joanne Harris’s friend, Linda Ferguson, had undergone a mastectomy but was struggling with her heavy and cumbersome prosthetic. To help her, Harris researched ‘lightweight alternatives’ and discovered Knitted Knockers, a US-based charity founded in 2011.
Harris contacted the organisation to buy a prosthetic and connected with the charity’s founder Barbara Demorest. She encouraged Joanne to knit her own prosthetic and consider setting up a Knitted Knockers branch in Northern Ireland. Once Harris saw Ferguson’s reaction to the knitted prosthetic, she decided to act on Demorest’s encouragement.
“It was the first time that she felt normal from her operation,” explains Harris. “I thought: ‘Other people need to have this’.
“We put a paragraph in the Portadown Times looking for knitters; just a small paragraph. I reserved a room for 16 people and about 170 turned up on the night.”
“To be able to bring it home to Northern Ireland was amazing. The whole experience was like another world.”
Joanne Harris, founder, KKNI
Harris, along with over 70 knitters, began work in August 2016 and had delivered 100 prosthetics by December 2016. The branch delivered 2,000 during 2017, its first full year in operation. KKNI now delivers around 5,000 prosthetics a year and has a partnership with Gordon’s Chemist which helps deliver them. KKNI also produces cushions, drain bags, and a swimming prosthetic.
Pride of Britain
When asked about her reflections on winning the Pride of Britain, Harris says: “Whenever I looked at the other 17 regional winners… that blew me away the morning we arrived.
“They showed everyone’s story and I just thought there is a room full of amazing projects and really brave, courageous people. To win at that level was really overwhelming, very, very surreal.”
During the event, Harris also met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer MP. She took this chance to raise concern of Northern Ireland’s waiting times and the prospect of another diagnostic team being created to relieve pressure on the sector. Harris indicates her determination to follow through with the Prime Minister on this.
On being the first person from Northern Ireland to win the award she says: “To be able to bring it home to Northern Ireland was amazing. The whole experience was like another world.”
She says the “most overwhelming” part was reading the comments of people on social media after the event which she said was “extremely emotional”. “I ended up sitting crying because I could not believe the impact that we had,” she says.
Lobbying and emotional support
Lobbying is a critical part of KKNI’s operations and Harris recounts one of the charity’s success stories. In 2019, the Department of Health (DoH) assessed the possible closure of the Craigavon and Belfast City Hospital breast cancer assessment centres.
KKNI mobilised people to fill out a public consultation on the matter and connected with MLAs who ran clinics to help people complete them. Harris and her team compiled the responses and created a lobbying document which they presented to then-Attorney General John Larkin.
Harris explains: “If they had closed down Craigavon, then the whole Southern Trust would not have had a local clinic like the rest of the trusts in Northern Ireland. If they closed down the city, we would have been the only city in the UK that did not have a breast clinic attached to their cancer centre.
“That was a violation of human rights as well. We were successful; they kept them open. We had 120,000 signatures backing the lobby document.”
The most impactful element of KKNI is the emotional support it offers people. Harris states that this is what sets the branch apart and pins it as the reason for her success at the Pride of Britain awards. She explains that breast cancer patients are “constantly running to the hospital”, but when they finish their treatment, “all of a sudden there is nothing”.
“When they are given the all clear, the family totally relax and go back to their normal lives pre-cancer. At that time, the women can feel extremely isolated and that is where we come in.”
Expanding activities
The branch has expanded beyond the prosthetics to offer classes, wellness days, book clubs, and the Breast Friends Clubhouse which was set up in 2017. It is a “social and creative space” for women with breast cancer.
Harris explains why she decided to set up the clubhouse: “Linda was getting support from another cancer group, but she found she did not feel comfortable talking about her breast cancer in those groups because they were mixed groups with men and women and different cancers.”
KKNI is not without its challenges and fundraising is chief amongst them, Harris indicates. “We are all volunteers so there is no paid staff. If we had sponsorship it would be great to get a project manager that would deal with advertising etc,” she says.
“If we were able to get some kind of sponsorship; if a local business could help us out that would be amazing.”
Scan the QR code below to sponsor KKNI or make a donation
