Project Production & Development
I co-create projects with communities, organisations, businesses, and creative professionals. At the heart of my work are collaboration, storytelling, and engagement—bringing people together to explore shared histories, lived experiences, and creative expression. I work across diverse sectors, including heritage, arts, culture, education, and social impact.
I partner with others to bring ideas to life through engaging films, photography, exhibitions, events, publications, and digital experiences. My role spans the entire process—from research and concept development to hands-on production, training, and delivery.
Whether you’re an organisation looking to engage your audience, a business wanting to share its story, or a community group with an idea to develop, I’d love to hear from you.
The Living Memory Project
The Living Memory Project was a four-year initiative dedicated to recording and celebrating the life stories of individuals across the Black Country, focusing on their personal photography collections and family albums. This project explores the transition from traditional print photography to the digital age, highlighting the significance of family albums in preserving our shared histories.
I worked with the project team to conduct over 60 in-depth oral history interviews with participants who shared their life experiences through selected family photographs. We also digitized more than 5,000 photographs, collaborating with each individual to edit and share their stories on our website. These narratives were featured in 16 exhibitions and films and have been archived locally for future generations.
Engaging with communities across the Black Country, we hosted collection days, training sessions, and creative workshops. We commissioned five artists to create new works inspired by the project's themes and awarded six bursaries to emerging artists. The culmination of the project was a showcase exhibition at the New Art Gallery Walsall in 2021.
To commemorate the project, we published a full-color, 500-page book, which is available for purchase. The Living Memory Project is now a Community Interest Company (CIC), continuing to develop projects that emphasize the importance of community and belonging.
Our work has been generously supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, and Sandwell Borough Council.
Our Spake
Our Spake was a community-based project that celebrated the importance of dialect within our communities. celebrated dialect across the Black Country towns of Oldbury, Tipton, Cradley Heath and Gornal. It was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England. It explores everyday language and how it relates to the changing cultural landscape and our sense of identity. It was produced with historians, linguists, creative practitioners and community participants.
The identity of the Black Country was traditionally synonymous with industry and manufacturing. Since heavy industry has largely left the region, dialect claims a more significant role in defining its identity. We recorded seventy interviews with local people in which they talked about their use of dialect today and how it relates to their personal memories and experience. Using these recordings, we developed a wide range of community-based projects and commissions involving local volunteers, historians, filmmakers, photographers, poets, artists and performers.
We produced four films that combined the recollections and perspectives of the interviewees with a selection of archival and contemporary imagery. Ten practitioners developed their own creative responses to the project, including creative writing, song, publications, theatre, and bespoke objects and products.
We produced a hardback book which is on sale here.
City of Stories
City of Stories celebrates life stories of participants from residencial settings across Birmingham. Delivered in collaboration with artist and poet Mandy Ross.
In City of Stories, we meet Brummies born-and-bred, and adoptive Brummies who have settled here, bringing accents and culture from near and far. We hear stories of lives lived down the road and halfway around the world. It is rare to hear older people's voices like this. Contributors reflected on their whole lives, right up to the present moment, picking out the things that mattered. They recalled tough times and savoured happy memories. Together, these snippets and snapshots give a flavour of how life was really lived in distant decades. We see what children witnessed, how work and families have evolved, and how daily life has changed. Through these personal stories, we can glimpse national events and world history - and we can make sense of how we are living here, now, and in the present.
Cities of Stories resulted in a 118-page softbound book which is available here.
Life Stories and Bereavement
I am working with Birmingham Bereavment Services to work with a selection of clients to record and share the stories of loved ones who have passed away. Participants are supported to record, edit and publish the story they want to tell as a high-quality publication. You can find out more about this project here.
