I am learning through doing in Dudley with CoLab Dudley - a social lab creating conditions for collective imagination and cultural action towards flourishing / regenerative futures.
Our role names constantly morph to what's needed in our context, but I'm currently the Regenerative Research Steward. When I joined the team in 2020, we wanted to explore how a better understanding of place could help our collective learning and inform how we co-create interventions on the High Street. This has since evolved into Place Detectorism, an embodied sensing experience with more-than-human lenses to connect with the High Street... which led to... Stories of Place, a regular gathering of curious people to collectively understand place, imagine futures in which all life can flourish, and experiment with ways to bring us closer to those futures... which is rooted in... Dudley Time Portal, a collective archive of place-based knowledge, imaginings and experiments... and all of this is part of Dudley People's School for Climate Justice.
The learning behind these is so deep, we got funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council through Midlands4Cities, in collaboration with Birmingham City University and CIVIC SQUARE, for me to do a collaborative PhD around how regenerative praxis (learning and doing) within social infrastructure (CoLab Dudley) might invite regenerative cultures.
In autumn 2020 the CoLab Dudley team began bringing Time Rebels of Dudley together to develop long-term thinking and collective imagination capabilities and practices in our communities. Dudley's Time Rebels are currently stewarding Dudley Creates: a 100 year cultural strategy in action for Dudley Borough, and are co-designing Dudley People's School for Climate Justice: co-created infrastructure for transition creating the conditions for community-led peer learning. CoLab Dudley is among the Emerging Futures Pathfinders which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation are working with.
I was previously Associate Director and architect at APEC Architects, a Birmingham-based practice specialising in community architecture and participatory design. I was also a Visiting Tutor at Birmingham School of Architecture and Design prior to joining social lab, Wolverhampton for Everyone, as Evaluation Lead. I have previously worked with BPN Architects and BDP on arts and education projects, and was a member of the RIBA Validation Panel for schools of architecture across the UK.
My previous research has included studio culture, entrepreneurialism, bridging academia and practice, participatory and regenerative design. I co-founded an experimental micro-practice called SWOT[studio] which was awarded the Deutsche Bank 2013 Award for Creative and Cultural Practice. I was part of the 2022 Doughnut Economics Learning Journey with Doughnut Economics Action Lab, Huddlecraft and CIVIC SQUARE, as well as Huddlecraft’s first Birmingham-based Learning Journey in 2018.
