Hey there!

From a young age I've had a passion for creativity and performance. I spent a lot of my youth writing short stories set in imaginative worlds. Many of these could now be considered "fan-fics" as they tended to be focused on video games and TV shows I watched and loved while growing up. Throughout my life music has also held a particular importance, with me learning to play piano between the ages of 5 and 14 and more recently, developing my voice through studying musical theatre singing. This creativity served me well during the 10 years I spent working in varying roles in education (spanning teaching assistant roles through to being a head of drama for 2 years) where I was able to take what could be seen as more mundane topics and set them against an interesting backdrop, such as using a video game narrative to teach cyclical structures in drama or exploring how lyrics in songs can be used as a better storytelling tool that a conventional monologue. In 2017 I also set up Xpress Theatre Productions with a colleague where we planned to create a range of social driven plays that could be performed to young people, focussing on aspects of social and emotional eduction, one of these (Cupcake) can be viewed on this portfolio website. Unfortunately, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Xpress was shut down. Follwoing 8 years working as a teacher of science, drama and computing I decided to undertake a masters degree at Kingston University in Game Development (Design). This decision came about as a result of me reflecting on how my creative mind was not being used to its fullest as a teacher, and I am now looking to move into the gaming industry where I plan to use my creative mind and love of effective story telling to be able to tell intereseting and thought provoking stories much in the same way that I approached the writing of Cupcake. My love of gaming has also been at the centre of my work at Robot Republic where I currently spend time interviewing indie developers on their exciting and innovative games that are further fuelling my passion for being able to use games as a means of telling thought provoking and interesting stories. In my spare time I tend to either practice musical theatre singing, play a wide variety of video games, enjoying 'DnD' nights with a group of friends, or spending time with my 2 chinchilla's (who have been inspiration for some mechanics in one of my masters game projects) and walking my dogs.