Collaborations

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.

Find out more about the Jane Austen’s House Creatives in Residence programme here. Click on the following links to see the three biscuit artworks created during the 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, and is currently being hosted (temporarily) by Southwark Cathedral. The statue is due to be installed permanently near the archaeological remains of The Theatre in Shoreditch, where The Theatre Courtyard Gallery is located.

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.