Collaborations

British Library

I worked with the British Library to create a biscuit set in celebration of their 50th birthday.

Each biscuit depicts an item from one of the British Library’s six core collection areas: stamps, newspapers, manuscripts, printed materials, maps, and sounds.

You can see the biscuit set in full here. Find out more about the collection items featured in the set here.

Milton’s Cottage

Milton’s Cottage is the house in Chalfont St Giles where John Milton completed Paradise Lost.

I was invited by Milton’s Cottage to make a set of biscuits inspired by some of the rare books and artefacts in their extensive collections. For National Biscuit Day 2023, I spent an afternoon in Chalfont St Giles showing visitors how to create biscuit art inspired by collection items.

You can find my Milton’s Cottage biscuit set here.

Crawford Art Gallery: Meat and Potatoes

I completed a 3-day residency at Crawford Art Gallery (Cork) in July 2022 as part of an exhibition titled Meat and Potatoes. During my time at the gallery, I created a set of biscuits inspired by artworks featuring in the exhibition.

The biscuits remained on display as an exhibit in Meat and Potatoes, which ran from 16 July until 6 November 2022. You can see photographs of the biscuits here.

National Biscuit Day

To mark National Biscuit Day in 2022, I led a series of workshops at Reading Museum and at The MERL. These family-friendly events invited attendees to create their own edible art inspired by Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin designs.

Part of a programme of events and activities that celebrated 200 years of biscuit heritage in the town of Reading. Visit this page to find out more about the Biscuit Town: 200 Years of Huntley & Palmers in Reading exhibition at The MERL. 

David Parr House

David Parr was a working-class Victorian decorative artist who painted the walls of his modest terraced home with intricate Arts & Crafts patterns.

I worked with the David Parr House to design a biscuit set inspired by the interiors of the artist’s home, and ran related biscuit-decorating workshops on Zoom.

You can find the biscuit set here and a narrated video of the making process here.

Jane Austen’s House: Creatives in Residence

Between October and December 2021, I was Artist in Residence at Jane Austen’s House. This project involved creating a series of biscuit artworks inspired by Jane Austen’s life, works, and legacy.

Click on the following links to see the three biscuit artworks created during this residency: October, November, December.

Shakespeare Statue

In 2018, I consulted on the clothing design for a new statue of William Shakespeare, sculpted by Raphael Maklouf and Hayley Gibbs. The statue was commissioned by The Courtyard Theatre Gallery, Shoreditch. It is due to be installed permanently near the archaeological remains of The Theatre in Shoreditch, where The Theatre Courtyard Gallery is located.

The Theatre Courtyard Gallery

Between 2017 and 2020, I worked with the Victoria & Albert Museum and The Theatre Courtyard Gallery, Shoreditch, on the development of a major new exhibition. The exhibition preserves and interprets the material remains of The Theatre, the Elizabethan playhouse for which Shakespeare wrote several of his early plays.

My role in this project was to research the stories of people and objects associated with Elizabethan Shoreditch, and to act as an academic advisor to the exhibition team. I also helped to organise Shake It Up! A Shakespeare Festival for Shoreditch in August 2019.

Victoria & Albert Museum: Tours

I designed and led several ticketed tours for V&A Members during my time at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Titled Shakespeare and the Evolution of Elizabethan Costume, the tours travelled through the V&A’s Fashion and Theatre & Performance galleries, spotlighting star museum items representative of key developments in the history of Shakespearean costuming practices.

The Shakespeare and the Evolution of Elizabethan Costume tours were designed to shine new light on extant garments and objects in the V&A’s Collections for museum visitors.

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

In 2017, I spent several months exploring the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Library, Archive, and Museum Collections. My task as Research Advocate was to find new ways to share stories and objects from the Trust’s Collections with a wider audience. I created a YouTube series (The Shakespeare Vaults) from the Trust’s strongrooms, published a series of blog posts about individual objects, created content for social media, and gave a public lecture titled Design for Shakespeare across the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Collections.

Online Exhibition: Shakespeare Connected

I created a digital exhibition titled Costuming Shakespeare: Elizabethan Dress through the Centuries as part of Shakespeare Connected, a project led by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and funded by the Museums and Universities Partnership Initiative. The exhibition presents ten images (paintings, engravings, costume designs, and photographs) relating to major movements in design for Shakespeare over four centuries of art and performance.

Royal Shakespeare Company

In the months preceding the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2017 ‘Rome’ season, I advised directors Angus Jackson, Iqbal Khan, and Blanche McIntyre on the performance histories of Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus. The annotated scripts I produced were used in the rehearsal room to help each production’s cast and creative team decide how best to cut the text for performance.

Dash Arts

My time with Dash Arts was spent curating an archive that documents the company’s first decade in operation. Over the course of a year (2014­–15), I worked closely with Dash Arts’ artistic directors and producers to rehouse documents from past projects, to create searchable finding aids, and to tell the story of the company’s history.