I'm Nadia, founder of Mermaids & Bubbles, mum to twin girls, and a scuba diver since the age of ten. I still remember my first experience of being completely immersed in an underwater world — the reef, the turtles, the rays, the sheer wonder of it all. I wanted my daughters to have that same connection to the ocean. Not just to be safe in water, but to truly belong in it.

But as a mum, I also saw how many children simply don't fit the mould of traditional swimming lessons — the noise, the rigid structure, the large classes. I saw this particularly clearly with neurodivergent children, who often struggle to access conventional swim settings despite being perfectly capable, curious, and wonderfully creative learners.

So I trained as a swimming teacher and built something different.

At Mermaids & Bubbles, we don't teach strokes for competition. We teach children to move through water with intuition, balance, and confidence. We tap into the incredible power of play-based learning — because there's a small and precious window of time when a child's imagination is their greatest teacher, and we believe every lesson should make the most of it.

Last spring we celebrated the girls' tenth birthday in Egypt, swimming together on a reef in our mermaid tails. They dived down to see sea creatures up close, raced through the waves, and came face to face with an octopus. They had the strength, the buoyancy control, the breathing, and the confidence to truly explore.

That's what we're building here. One fin at a time.