Experience

THE ARTS COUNCIL OF ENGLAND

• Hospitals and Health Care
• 1 - 100 Employee

• AQA Assessor

  • Apr 2019 - Present



Middlesex University

• United Kingdom
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Senior lecturer

  • Feb 2020 - Present

  Critical and Contextual Studies - MA Fine Art, Photography and Print-making

• Module leader, Critical and Contextual Studies, Design Craft BA

  • Oct 2016 - Present

  Critical and Contextual Studies BA Design Crafts



The Craft Study Centre

• Board Trustee

  • Aug 2018 - Present

  The Crafts Study Centre is a specialist university museum open to the public as well as a research centre and home to internationally renowned collections of modern British craft. The Centre's collections include modern and contemporary calligraphy, ceramics, textiles, furniture and wood as well as diaries, working notes and photographs of makers of the 20th and 21st centuries. We host inspiring exhibitions by leading artist-makers, lectures, symposiums and open days. We foster scholarship and writing about modern and contemporary craft and publish new books and monographs.



London Metropolitan University

• United Kingdom
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Dissertation studio leader - Meaningful work

  • Oct 2014 - Present

  This studio considers the value of making - in itself, independent of the product or outcome, exploring the idea of craft as meaningful work. Craft is considered not as a category of commodity or luxury object, or as a discrete set of practices, but as a particular approach to making things and a kind of experience. Making will be examined as a form of meaning-making in which meaning is understood as situated, embodied and evolving.The studio will introduce contemporary discourses that examine the nature of craft knowledge and that support an understanding of making as a human activity which is both intrinsically rewarding and outwardly directed. These ideas will be given a historical context in the theoretical and ideological writings of William Morris who celebrated craft making as socially useful and individually fulfilling creative work, a politicized form of work which was proposed as part of an alternative to industrial capitalism.

• Visiting lecturer

  • 2005 - Present



Freelance

• Writer

  • 2003 - Present

  Recent work includes contributing to The 21st Century Art Book, published by Phaidon.

• Consultant

  • Nov 2014 - Apr 2016

  Working with Swindon Artsite on their organisational development.

• Researcher

  • Jan 2014 - Apr 2014

  The value of money: professional visual artists decisions around income - conducting first phase research (literature review and focus group), which is intended to inform a wider study into visual artists attitudes to income in relation to their practice.Professional artists operate in a complex and little understood economic context, often equated to that of small businesses. In reality, policy makers and funders struggle to fit artists within received economic models that rarely match their wider social status, how money circulates through the art world, the specific operation of reputation, and the value given to different forms of income that obtain in the different markets in which artists operate. Though very few artists earn much money from the results of their studio practice, this is considered the sine qua non of an artist’s income; activity required to earn money through part- or full-time work figures as a distraction or necessary evil. Artists have a complicated relationship with money that has been poorly analysed.Little evidence exists on how artists culturally and practically value different sources of money: a reputable prize may mean critical validation but little money; working in an art school provides regular income but cuts time available to make work; commercial success can bring financial rewards but stymie risk-taking in the work that a market will accept. Artists operate in a multifaceted system of reputation, value, exchange, gift and money that resists much standard economic modelling and makes it hard to clarify what services, support and forms of money visual artists actually need. Artquest plans to undertake in-depth research into artists livelihoods and the value attached by visual artists to different forms of money inside and outside of their practice – exhibition payments, fees for commissions, sales commission, gallery education, teaching, subletting of studio space, savings and investments, non-arts-related jobs.



Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen

• Committee Chair

  • Feb 2020 - Apr 2021



Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust

• Vice-chair

  • 2011 - Oct 2018

• Chair

  • 2003 - 2011



ALIAS ARTS C.I.C

• United Kingdom
• Retail Art Supplies

• Director

  • Jun 2003 - Apr 2014

  Alias is a platform built by artists for artists for the support and development of artist led groups in the South West of England (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire).Our overarching aim is to nurture artist led activity by providing a critical context, resources and advice to artist led groups through an advisory service, a website – www.aliasarts.org – and a series of seminars; thus fostering the creation of an organic community where collaborative projects can thrive.



Gloucester City Council

• Visual Arts Officer

  • 2000 - 2002