I am a freelance writer and communications specialist in the environmental and cultural sectors. I was previously Digital Editor for Europe’s largest conservation charity, the National Trust, as well as Digital Lead for international climate solutions organisation, Ashden. My work has been featured in publications including The Ecologist and Reader’s Digest.

I have an academic background in arts and culture, hence where this blog originated (BA in English Literature & Linguistics, MA in Art, Aesthetics & Cultural Institutions). Within the arts and cultural space, I am interested in work and practices that are rooted in community and helping drive social and environmental justice. I’m also interested in identity, lived and embodied experiences of the world, in-between places. I’ve written for leading UK arts institutions, including Open Eye Gallery and FACT, and interviewed artists such as Bombay Bicycle Club and photographer Richard Ross.

Midtown Mocha was listed as one of Open The City magazine’s “best Liverpool-based blogs right now.”

After a tumultuous affair with visual art, a back and forth love-hate dash, here’s what I’ve come to understand about this form of expression:

Art, both past and present, can help us see more clearly the systems that shape our lives – when it’s not being reduced to, and locked within, commercial interests. It pushes us to reflect on what these systems are, how they impact us and others, how they influence who we think we are, and how they confuse and separate us from our true selves. In a world where spirituality is missing from many areas of life, art can be a powerful vehicle for reconnecting with something deeper within ourselves. This spiritual aspect is crucial to life and missing from every facet of our Western, globalised way of living (I’m also going to be exploring this idea within the context of our food systems here). Through self-reflection on our values, actions, and beliefs, we become better equipped to make positive, compassionate change.

Anais Nin says: “This is the rule of the artist: to seek to renew and resharpen our sense by a new vision of the familiar.”

Let’s connect on Twitter here.

“The path isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.” – Barry H. Gillespie

“A truth that is only my truth is therefore not the truth” – Julio Florencio Cortázar

“Candor ends paranoia” – Allen Ginsberg