Project Portfolio
A snapshot of some of the stuff I've been up to
To find out about my work with schools, museums and other sites click on the relevant tabs in the header at the top of the page. Below you can see a slightly more detailed look at some of the projects I've worked on. It is by no mean an exhaustive list - rather a snapshot of some of my work. Contact me to find out more, or to explore a commission - I'm more than happy to meet up in person, or virtually, to discuss possibilities - I just require a mug of milky tea and maybe a biscuit!
Kirkleatham Museum - Tales to Take You Away
In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kirkleatham Museum wanted to provide digital content to reach out to the community who were unable to visit the museum because it was closed during lockdown. I was commissioned to write, and record, a series of stories for families for a section called Tales to Take You Away. The stories focussed on the museum's collection, as well as the area surrounding Kirkleatham. You can watch some of the stories below.
Kirkleatham Museum - Tales to Take You Away
The Pease family were hugely important in the history of the North East. The museum asked me to create a story about Saltburn-by-the-Sea, a coastal town close to Kirkleatham. I researched the history of the town and the role of Henry Pease in its foundation. This is the story of Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
Kirkleatham Museum - Tales to Take You Away
The area around Kirkleatham in the Cleveland Hills was mined for ironstone and the museum wanted a story that reflected this area of local history. I created a story about a young boy, a "Trappy Lad", who goes to work in the mine when he leaves school aged 14.
Kirkleatham Museum - Tales to Take You Away
In 2005 archaeologists excavated a site at a place called Streethouse, near Loftus in Cleveland. They made an extraordinary discovery: an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, including the burial mound of what they believed to be an Anglo-Saxon princess. The archaeological finds included beautiful brooches and other gold jewellery. The artefacts are all displayed in the museum in an exhibition devoted to the story of the dig and the princess.
My story uses historical research to imagine what life might have been like in that royal household 1,400 years ago, particularly the life of the princess's handmaid, Eanswith.
Other story videos
Mary's Tin - a WWI story
This story is one of several WWI stories I have written. This one was recorded for Kirkleatham Museum's Tales to Take You Away series, but I have also written WWI stories for Preston Park Museum, the Rothbury Trenches Project, and for my own use in schools.
This video tells the story behind the Princess Mary tins.
Tees Valley Museums - Museum in Your Classroom Project
Museums in the Tees Valley loan a range of artefacts for schools to use as a cross-curricular stimulus, culminating in the creation of an exhibition in school. I was one of a group of writers commissioned to further enhance this project as writers in the classroom and worked with two schools and two museums: one in Middlesbrough, alongside The Captain Cook Birthplace Museum; and one in Brotton, alongside Kirkleatham Museum. The project with the Brotton school focussed on the Anglo-Saxon collection at the museum and, working with 3 classes of Y3 & 4 pupils over several weeks, I delivered a range of creative writing workshops. We created amazing object labels for artefacts from the museum's loans boxes, which we then developed into stories and playscripts. Pupils worked with a digital consultant to record the playscripts as videos. We explored poetry and kennings, a popular form of poetry in Anglo-Saxon times, which pupils then transcribed onto helmets they had made at the museum and also recorded as audio files. We also considered museum interpretation during a museum visit and used that to create artefact descriptions for the class museum.
Images from the exhibition are below and the video is a story inspired by one of the artefacts.
