Title : Finding Voice, Making Community
Research Questions
- How can co-created learning challenge hierarchies and put student voice at the heart of the curriculum?
- How do we create an inclusive community that brings multiple knowledges into dialogue?
- What role do I have in the creation of peer learning, and how do I step aside?
- What methods and tools will support engagement from a diversity of participants?
- What would a peer-led learning community look like to the students, and what do they want from peer learning?
I am the Stage 1 Lead on the BA Textile Design course at Chelsea College, leading a cohort of 80–100 students. My current focus is on Year 1, while I also run extra-curricular interventions with other year groups and graduates. Throughout my teaching career, I have taught across FE, BA, and MA levels within UAL. I began teaching on Foundation courses in 1998. After graduating in Fashion at Central Saint Martins, I worked as an associate lecturer in Fashion Textiles alongside my own creative practice as a designer-maker. I have also worked as an agent, mentoring emerging fashion brands showing at London Fashion Week.
As Year 1 Lead, I support students’ transition into higher education, creating curricula and learning environments that help them develop agency, build community, and find their creative direction while gaining essential skills to progress. My teaching has always been naturally peer-centred and informed by a compassionate pedagogy, with pastoral care central to my role.
I have two neurodiverse children and am closely involved in supporting their individual learning journeys. Alongside this, I have my own lived experience of neurodivergence and significant learning differences, not learning to read or write until the age of nine. These experiences have profoundly shaped how I understand learning, creativity, and care, and they continue to inform my practice as both a creative practitioner and educator.
I found my own creative voice and sense of community during my BA in Fashion, where embracing mistakes and the unexpected became central to my practice. This ethos now underpins my teaching. I aim to design curricula, environments, and learning experiences that are dialogical and responsive, allowing room for spontaneity, experimentation, and difference.
I see myself as a facilitator and mediator, creating space for students to develop confidence, agency, and connection with one another. Through this, I aim to help them find their own sense of creative belonging and community.