Projects
Some of my highlights through the years and recent projects
Currently working on - Creative Barking and Dagenham
2024-Present
Creative Barking and Dagenham – a Creative People and Places project championing access to arts and culture for the borough.
I joined the organisation at a pivotal time where it was rebuilding with a completely new structure. We have rebuilt the organisation into a thriving arts and culture brand in the borough, engaging 20,000 people annually through serial creative programmes working with small local community groups, right up to large scale public performance and visual arts events.
There have been so many highlights over the last two years including huge light parades and installations, outdoor arts programmes and festivals, and producing community led co-creative projects building relationships between local artists and community groups.
Classbot450
2024 - 2026
I have been involved in the Classbot 450 project - a collaborative immersive theatre experience between Kit Theatre and Potential Difference - for the last three years as a creative project manager. This interactive adventure in schools is designed to inspire primary-aged pupils to learn computer programming using exciting live immersive drama and an accessible coding interface.
In addition to supporting pupils’ coding education, the project invites pupils to explore philosophical questions posed by advancements in Artificial Intelligence.
I am acting as the creative project manager for the initiative, which has secured funding to expand over the next three years.
Photos by Paul Cochrane, Costume Design by Lydia Reed
Playful Den
2024
After appearing on their podcast 'People Who Play', I partnered with Playful Den as a play consultant, working on developing activities for a new curriculum for a well known play brand, shaping core ideas and themes around imagination, creativity and seeing the world in new ways.
The Boathouse Studios - Trustee
2025-Present
After building a fantastic working relationship with The Boathouse Studios through my work with other organisations, I was invited to join the board as a trustee. Primarily reponsible for safeguarding, I am hugely passionate about this integral local arts space, and the community that thrives under its roof.
I am very proud to support The Boathouse and all the fantastic work it does to bring creativity into daily life in the area.
Circus Clubs and Summer Camps
2020-2023
I designed and developed the Skills Share Circus Club programme, delivering regular, long-term sessions and workshops tailored to groups including pupil referral units, adolescent mental health secure units, neurodivergent youth groups, and unaccompanied minors in the asylum system.
Through sharing regular, structured play sessions and workshops over a longer period, we saw improved mental health, confidence and participation among the children and young people we’ve worked with.
The Chuckles and Cheer Summer Camps projects I produced delivered full-week programmes of play, games and activities for children who are going through resettlement in the UK.
The difficulties these children face after experiencing forced displacement are made worse by the boredom, loneliness and frustration they experience during the long and uncertain process of resettlement. These problems become especially acute in summer holidays: many of the hotels housing refugees are very isolated, with little provision for children’s activities. These camps provided structure, stimulation and socialisation, and made a huge difference.
Laugh N Play UK
2020-2023
The need for play and energy is urgent across the UK. Isolation and insufficient access to positive childhood activities are a real problem, especially during school holidays.
Responding to this, I designed and delivered Laugh N Play UK – a multi-branch set of touring teams focused on delivering play across the holiday periods to temporary accommodation sites, playgrounds, community centres, hospices and public space.
We delivered urgently needed play and provide safe spaces for children to imagine and create across over a dozen holiday periods, reaching over 300 partners and 20,000 children.
Show and Share Fayre
2023
After 3 years building a successful national programme, I wanted to share our successes and connect all the different people involved in the programme, from funders and supporters, to crew and facilitators right through to the participants.
It was my aim to produce an event that could celebrate and evaluate the successes so far, while bringing the participants even more firmly into the conversation, and provide a platform for them to share ideas and for everyone involved to look to the future.
I designed and produced the Show and Share Fayre – an afternoon of talks, displays, panel discussions and networking to achieve this. Participant families were invited and speakers consulted in advance, I designed some interactive elements to capture thoughts and feedback centred around the event theme of ‘Play as a Rebellious Act’.
The event was very successful, with many funders remarking that it was the first chance they had had to truly connect with and understand the people these projects were developed for in the first place.
Get Up and Giggle – Family Fun Fests
2021-2022
I partnered with community organisations to produce Get Up and Giggle Family Fun Fests - a series of summer community festivals, free of charge and open to all.
I collaborated with partner organisations, community centres and refugee support groups to make sure that communities across the country who would not be able to access a commercial festival still enjoyed a happy and memorable day of games, play and friendship every summer.
Emergency Laughter Relief
2020-2023
After a large spike in numbers of displaced families in temporary accommodation across the UK I launched a program called Emergency Laughter Relief to share play and laughter sessions with children who’ve sought refuge in the UK.
The process of resettlement is long and difficult meaning that children, who’ve already experienced major upheaval and often severe trauma, are spending upwards of 18 months in temporary accommodation centres. These are isolating and empty places, with very little provision for education and children’s activities, which can cause lasting harm into adulthood.
In response, I was determined to make sure these children have a regular routine of rehabilitative childhood activities. Structured play and games can create a safe and happy place to recover a sense of normality and start rebuilding a childhood that’s been taken away by violence and displacement.
Over the years I expanded the project to offer safe and rehabilitative childhood activities for more children in urgent need. I collaborated with large networks of accommodation sites, local and national bodies and freelance artists and facilitators to create a comprehensive and adaptable project that was able to run across the span of many years and always respond to changes and evolving needs. It was one of my most successful projects, with amazing impact and feedback collected from the participants and partners.
Cirque du Samos
2019-2020
The Samos “hotspot” was one of the most notorious island refugee camps in Greece with upwards of 7,000 people – around 30% of them children. These child refugees lacked proper shelter, food, hygiene facilities, medical support, education and recreational activities.
I co-ordinated and managed the set up and delivery of our big top circus tent project on the edge of the informal camp known as “the jungle”. We ran a daily programme of games sessions, circus play workshops with a vast array of equipment, and put on evening entertainment in the form of shows, cinema nights and discos.
We collaborated with and hosted troupes of circus performers and artists from around the world, and together delivered an astonishing variety of shows and activities, from spectacular circus nights to beautiful arts and crafts sessions.
Laughter to Lebanon
2018-2019
I managed and delivered two summers of a show and workshop circus tour focused on Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. They are forced to live in temporary settlements, with extremely basic facilities, and a lack of access to educational and recreational activities. On top of this, many children are forced to work.
Across two summer periods we followed a tour-based model, visiting as many sites as possible, including camps, settlements, schools, orphanages and care homes. We mostly ran performance sessions, with newly-devised shows and changes in team and skillsets to keep the surprises flowing.
The shows and visits were met with huge enthusiasm, joy and welcoming energy at each site. Many communities fondly remembered our visits from the previous summer and were excited that we had returned.
Miles of Smiles
2017-2020
I produced, managed and delivered multiple tours across Europe through border transit zones, children’s hospitals and refugee camps after the 2016 EU-Turkey deal resulted in the refugee crisis. These tours were mobile show tours with a professional performance team, collaborating with international partners and locations.
There were drastic challenges facing children on the island “hotspots”, including a lack of education, recreation and access to other basic needs. Children who’ve been resettled elsewhere in Europe still faced long periods of uncertainty in temporary housing, with little access to education.
Their childhoods were on hold, delaying reintegration and rehabilitation. Creating a space that reliably provided positivity for children and their parents made a huge impact.
