I am part of the cultural ecosystem in Dudley with a background in architecture and participatory design. I am a PhD candidate undertaking a collaborative doctoral award with Birmingham City University, CoLab Dudley and CIVIC SQUARE, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through Midlands4Cities. My research explores the potential of co-creative architectural processes inviting collective imagination, learning and action towards regenerative futures within a social lab setting.

I’m part of CoLab Dudley – a social lab and place-based creative and participatory platform nurturing conditions for cultural and climate justice on Dudley High Street since 2016. 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 the 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.

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 Street Detectorism, an embodied sensing experience to connect with the High Street, and Stories of Place, a collective archive of place-based knowledge and regular gathering of curious people to explore and experiment with the stories that have been found and created on Dudley High Street.

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. I am 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.