Culture/ Place / Change
I have worked in the cultural and place sectors for over 25-years and in that time, there isn’t an artform that I haven’t worked with, and crafting an expertise in practices that are socially-engaged, community-led, and in embedded in place, whether that place be a team, a city park, a national museum or a rural town high street. My work is that of a Consultant, a Change Agent and as an academic through my Research and teaching and learning roles.
Culture and Place - my consultancy, practice and research has two tandem and intertwining strands, woven with a golden thread of change-making, transforming talent and organisations, connecting thinking and people, and working to help the cultural ecosystem thrive.
Spotlight.
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Place Partner.
Working with organisations to anchor and thrive in place and place partnerships.
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Radical Care.
Helping teams and organisations to put kindness and wellbeing at the forefront of their culture.
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Trauma-Informed Placemaking.
Pushing placemaking ethics and practices through a global community - project launched, website live, book to come.
Consultancy
I work with a multivariant roster of creative and cultural clients as a consultant-director, advising, devising and enabling across the full C-Suite, strategizing, nurturing partnerships, transforming policies & procedures, evaluating, capital & programme direction & project management, and critically, helping those I work with hold their accountability to social, spatial and environmental and ecological justice. Current clients include Turner Prize nominees gentle/radical, Winchester School of Art, University of Sussex and The Culture Capital Exchange.
Change Agent
Working as a Critical Friend with creatives, established & emerging leaders, academics and organisations to push at their practices, to think and think again about what they do, why, how, who with & for, to discover and live to purpose, and to foster healthy internal, programmatic and operational cultures. My practice here anchors in 1-2-1, group, team and organisation orientations and is concerned with how we work as much as how we are in our practices, from transforming governance, how we lead, and how we model radical care in the workplace. I also offer a Pay It Forward scheme to support our sector’s emerging talent and leaders.
Research
My research spans culture, place and organisational change and I have a significant lecturing, keynoting and publishing career. I have examined and assessed curriculum, supervised, and been Principle and Co-Investigator on a number of AHRC and ESRC projects. My current project is Trauma-Informed Placemaking, with Dr Anita McKeown, and the psychology of kindness and wellbeing in the workplace.
What People Are Saying
“One of the most brilliant placemakers and socially engaged practitioners I've had to pleasure to work with and learn from.”
— H, London
“Cara is an exceptionally natural leader, original thinker of real vision and someone ethically engaged in the making and maintaining of good working practice. Whilst she has the capacity to see the bigger situation, she is skilled also at holding intimate contact with the individuals on whose shoulders that picture has been built upon.”
— J, Brighton
“Cara has a motivation to further develop placemaking practice as an ethical compassionate approach that is both restorative and regenerative and a willingness and ability to collaborate and communicate effectively. Her approach to all that she does holds others in high regard with the relational process as important as effective delivery. ”
— A, Co. Kerry
Images across this website are all mine, unless stated otherwise, and from projects I have been involved in.