I am a Writer
I write about art, culture and travel, often from a working-class perspective because this gets left out so often. My work includes fiction and creative nonfiction and I have been published in academic publications and online. I am trying to share more, hence the website, and am open to new opportunities to collaborate.
An Academic Writer
I have a PhD focused on technology and social justice, on making learning and teaching accessible to all. I am a university lecturer in Higher Education with programme leader roles on Education Studies BA (hons). I also work on a teacher training PGCE post-compulsory programme, teaching Action Research observing art-based practitioners. I have external examiner roles for universities in the UK on programmes that include BA Education, MA Education and PGCEs with English and Literacy specialisms.
Currently I am collaborating on writing a BA in Fine Art and Social Practice and I have previously written degrees in Education, Coaching and Mentoring and Community Education. In research and in practice I explore the ways we can blend creativity, technology, and pedagogy with social justice, art, and education.
Finding the flow and beauty of our work is both practical and supported through theory and other thinkers. I am interested in very many but do return to themes around the influences on education, working-class identities in academia and the arts, post-human pedagogies, social practice (art and education in community), and informal and non-institutional education.
My academic publications include work on social justice, technology, post-human education and art as a pedagogical approach for social justice. I was founder of the International Working-Class Academics Conference that began in 2020 and that ran again in 2021. I am also the founder of the Community Open Online Courses (COOCs.org) education platform for community, informal and activist educators. I hope to share spaces on here for collaborative and meaningful, powerful, non-institutional learning. I am an ambassador for the Worker’s Education Association and a fellow of the RSA (when I can afford the fees). In 2019 I won the Social Impact Award at the National Festival of Learning for my work with community digital learning.
I make film, Art and Sound
I paint and scrawl using acrylic and mixed media to explore how I might create and engage outside my own head, with others. My explorations also include exhibiting work as film, sound and through paintings. I am currently experimenting with recording my written work, and enhancing that experience through the addition of soundscapes and film. I am in the process of editing CollaborArt Blackburn, a brilliant project where we took 70 people from Blackburn to galleries and cultural spaces around the north west of England. My work in this area uses AI, my own creations, experiments with image, film, sound and words to develop approaches to creative and academic writing and also my work as an educator in Higher Education and community education.