With 30 years experience, 20 of them as a freelance, I have a proven talent for finding the most interesting projects and practitioners responding to the social, economic and cultural issues of the day. To this end, I have identified pioneers in environmentally and socially sustainable practice, challenged outdated and exclusionary models of arts education, examined planning policy behind successful culturally-led regeneration initiatives (in Bilbao, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Helsinki and elsewhere) and showcased enlightened models of housing (eg co-design and co-operative living).
 

Experience:
  2000 – 2023:

Freelance writer, editor, curator, speaker.
 Writing for: Studio International, Damn, FX Magazine, the Bartlett Review, Blueprint magazine, The Guardian, Architectural Review, Icon. As Blueprint’s senior contributing editor from 2010 to 2020 (when the magazine folded under pandemic pressure), my investigations have covered every aspect of architecture and visual arts education and practice. I conducted interviews with the leading figures of the day, from Jean Nouvel to Liz Diller. I have also championed emerging architects, artists and creatives making waves in socially and environmentally progressive arenas, for Blueprint and also FX magazine, for whom I have written a monthly column, Brief Encounters, since 2012. For visual arts magazine Studio International, since 2016, I have been the interviewer of choice for multiple major and emerging artists, both in words and on film, and been the magazine’s sole representative at the Venice Art Biennales of 2017, 2019 and 2022 and the Architecture Biennales of 2016, 2018 and 2023. I have consistently chosen to foreground work of geographically diverse and female artists.
 

Talks: I am a popular speaker and curator of talks, from interviews and onstage debates at the Surface Design Shows (2019, 2020 and 2023) to exhibitions investigating local co-design and placemaking for the London Festival of Architecture (2015, and 16).
 

Consultancy: in 2019, I was sought out and employed as a communications consultant on three new masterplanning and placemaking proposals. Gomm Valley, a project steered by Jonathan Smales of Human Nature (formerly MD of Greenpeace), aims to create a highly sustainable, contemporary and community-centric new village in Buckinghamshire. It is currently in planning. I worked with Periscope architects to develop the priorities, language and visuals around their proposal for Enfield Borough Council’s Meridien Water, a new edge-of-borough quarter mixing light industry with wild nature and a progressive mix of live/work and family residential. Also consulted on communication strategy for a sensitively designed residential addition to the existing artist/maker community at Dartington Estates.
 

Online publishing: In 2008, together with friend and PR professional Caroline Collett, we launched an online magazine called Magnificent Me, aimed at women of all ages. intended to showcase the talents of women artists, designers, writers and thinkers, and the pleasures of small things, at a time when the mainstream women’s media seemed entirely focused on celebrities and extravagant living. It ran, quarterly, for four issues, garnering over 30,000 visits per issue, but was shelved in 2009, when the economic crisis indicated that further sponsorship and funding would be hard to find.

1996-1999: managing editor, Frontier magazine and International Marketing, producing two market leading monthly publications with a team of six journalists, for the then emerging sector of travel retail, promoting excellence in design at all levels, from product to retail presentation.


1986-1996: freelance music, food and travel journalist, writing for GQ, Sunday Times Style Supplement, Living Etc, Time Out, The Wire and roving reporter for FX.

Additional courses: December 2019: Centre for Alternative Technology, Zero Carbon Britain, two day course. 2019-2021 two year Vajrasati Yoga teacher training course.

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Qualifications: 2009-2010: MSc Environmental Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford. 1986: Diploma in Periodical Journalism, at London College of Printing 1981-84: BA Hons Psychology, II i, University of Manchester. 1980-81: one year Art Foundation Course at Herefordshire College of Art and Design.

Interests: film, art, music, food, photography, literature, yoga, cycling.