I’m a West Midlands artist-practitioner with over twenty years’ experience working across schools, PRUs, alternative provision, prisons and community settings around the country and the world and I still find this self promotion stuff really hard.

I love what I do and am constantly learning about the energy and inspiration it can bring, but ask me to define it and I end up rambling. I’m working on that daily and I’m getting better, but still a long way to go.

But it works. It works to engage. It works to empower. It works to connect and share and learn and grow. And it works everywhere. Not because it is some kind of all knowing answer. Because it meets people where they are and asks only that they take a chance. When that happens, anything is possible.

See what I mean? I’m working on it. Check back for improvements 😉.

Alongside this educational work, I’m a published novelist, poet, screen writer and playwright, and I occasionally perform and write under the name Polarbear. (google will tell you more if you want)

My creative work has been award-winning and internationally recognised, but more importantly it has shaped how I think about voice, attention and participation.

That background informs the way I work in educational spaces — not as performance, but as practice. I’m interested in how stories are built collaboratively, how ideas emerge when pressure is reduced, how inclusion and value facilitate empowerment and how creativity can become a shared resource rather than something reserved for the confident or articulate.

The work I do in schools is practice-first and relational. It is grounded in care and in celebration of what happens in real rooms, with real people, bringing themselves and sharing.