As Senior Academic Manager, I provide strategic leadership across Photography, Creative Writing, Visual Communications, Film & Media and Short Courses.
I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the Open University’s Sustainability Coordination group, and the Open Ecologies and Creative Interactions research groups. I am also an associate artist at Grizedale Arts and a Northern Writers Award winner.
With a background in specialist art education since 1997 and a diverse creative practice, I combine educational leadership with my work as a writer and artist. My Masters and PhD in the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, (both fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) focused on site-specific art practice as dialogue. This foundation in collaboration and creative process informs my situated approach. I am interested in ecology and creativity as tools for social change and am trained in carbon literacy and organizational design. I co-developed OCA’s Arts, Environment & Sustainability study visits and learning resources: free to all OCA students and staff, including access to Carbon Literacy Training.
My creative practice spans photography, writing, film, installation, drawing, sculpture, and sound. I have made work ‘in residence’ for various organizations and spaces, including nature reserves, art schools across the UK and Europe. My project Thinking Space for the North (2005) reimagined a derelict Lake District farmhouse, resulting in a functioning off grid eco residency.
I joined OCA in 2018 after two decades in FE and HE art education. At OCA, I have co-developed several degree curriculum and a short course Investigating Place with Psychogeography, and led Photography and Moving Image (2020-2025). Prior to this at Leeds Arts University, I led an interdisciplinary art & design degree, a practice-research cluster Crossing Borders and student-staff exchange projects across Europe, China and US. I co-founded Mud Office art agency (2007-15) with artist Charlie Jeffery making exhibitions, residencies and live performances in France. In 2017, my creative practice shifted focus to fiction writing and I studied MA Creative and Life Writing (Goldsmiths University, 2019). I have published short stories in This New North, Valley Press (2021) and was selected for Hospitalfield interdisciplinary residency (2024).
