research
In the book Sites of Transformation: Applied and Socially Engaged Scenogrphy in Rural Landscapes, I examine the expanding field of socially engaged scenography and the development of scenography as a distinctive type of applied art and performance practice that seeks tangible, therapeutic, and transformative real-world outcomes.It is what Christopher Baugh calls ‘scenography with purpose’.
I have published books, book chapters, e-publications and journal articles. My book Sites of Transformation was published on 24th February 2022 by Bloomsbury Methuen and is due out in paperback on 24 August 2023. It was shorlisted for the prestigous Prague Quadrennail Best Book Awards 2023.
My article 'Dorothy Wordsworth and her Female Contemporaries’ Legacy: A feminine ‘material’ sublime approach to the creation of walking-performance in mountainous landscapes' was published in (eds.) Jonathan Pitches and David Shearing Performance Research: On Mountains (2019), 24: 2.
In 2016 I was awarded a PhD in Theatre Studies from Lancaster Institute of the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University. The title of my written thesis is: Emplacing, Re-Imaging and Transforming ‘Missing’ Life-Events: A Feminine Sublime Approach to the Creation of Socially Engaged Scenography in Site-Specific Walking-Performance in Rural Landscapes.
Through my practice and research, and a close study of Dorothy Wordsworth and her female comtemporaries approach to, and way of engaging with landscape, I has developed 'Seven Scenographic Principles'. These principles apply the concept of the feminine 'material' sublime, which offers a counterpoint to the ‘masculine’ or ‘transcendent sublime’.
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I regularly exhibit my practice and research often curating my site-specific walking-performance works into galleries sapced where objects, sound, film and performance elements are distilled into installations. Most recently in Decemember 2021 when I exhibted Tell it to the Bees at the Maketank Gallery in Exeter.
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I regularly talk about and present my practice and research at conferences and symposiums as well as in the press, media and on radio broadcasts.
During lockdown I was unable to deliver a talk at the British Library, instead the library recorded a blog in which I discuss the Dorothy's Room installation and my Walks to Remember memory-walk project both of which were inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth’s 'menory-walking' and her Rydal Journals.
