I’m an Associate Lecturer in the Media School at LCC, working mainly across several BA and MA degrees in the Journalism and Publishing department, and also in Media and Communications.
My career spans 30 years on national newspapers and magazines including The Times, the Guardian and Observer, The Independent and Prospect, primarily as a features editor and writer on staff, but also freelance. I love the scope and creativity of features specialising, but I’ve also specialised in lifestyle, consumer and health and wellbeing journalism. I wrote a healthy lifestyle book as a result of the latter, which was translated into seven languages. As journalism has migrated online, I have gone with it, learning to create digital content and use social media.
My father was an artist and I am particularly interested in 20th century British painting. I have also been lucky enough to meet and write about some of the leading female artists of that time. My father’s friendship with the poet Dylan Thomas inspired me to write two books about the poet, both published.
I started teaching at LCC seven years ago and enjoy it enormously. I love being with young people from such a diverse range of social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The UK media, which is still very white, male and middle class in its decision-making upper echelons, needs these young people badly if it is to properly reflect the multicultural society we now live in and appeal to younger generations. I’ve written about this in one of my blog posts. I’m hoping in doing the PG Cert to explore the kind of barriers to this both within the university and the industry, and how they might be dismantled.
One of the most enjoyable things about doing the PG Cert is meeting some amazing colleagues from different disciplines across UAL, some of which I know little about like game design or contour fashion. I enjoy all the sessions too, broadening the way I think and challenging me. Being a student is also reminding me why learning new ways of doing things like using WordPress and Workflow can be stressful – not to mention assessment deadlines. It really helps understand why the students I teach can feel the same way too – and why compassionate tutors and lecturers can make such a difference.