about
As a consultant, Richard works with individuals and organisations to achieve goals and evolve practice in the arts, heritage and urban planning sectors. This includes business development and strategic planning as well as developing strategic initiatives for specific objectives. Richard also mentors leaders, senior management, producers and artists. Drawing on over 30 years of international experience, he helps partners achieve organisational and personal aspirations. More about consultancy here…
As a Creative Producer, Richard collaborates with architects, planners, artists, technologists, serious games developers, communities and audiences to make engaging and impactful experiences in the public realm designed to inform decision-making in urban design programmes and in policy. These experiences make temporary changes to the managed environment, urban and rural, to challenge understandings and expectations about what we can do and what we can affect in local neighbourhoods and gathering places. They aspire to effect permanent change in how we think about living together.
Richard works across the social change, urban development, cultural, heritage and land management sectors.
Richard holds a Masters by research in interdisciplinary urban design (distinction) from UCL University College London Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, where he focussed on the creation of spaces of change for citizen participation in smart urbanism (embedded technologies and data analysis for urban management and city development). He is currently exploring modes of disruptive innovation by citizens in the development of the urban form. Richard is also tutor and coordinator for UCL Bartlett’s School of Planning’s Urbanism Theory & Critiques module, exploring methodologies and theory in urban design research. Richard was a Visiting Research Fellow in the University of Leeds School of Performance and Cultural Industries in the Faculty of Performance, Visual Arts and Communications from August 2013 to August 2017.
Richard is interested in:
what we learn about ourselves, our world and the environment around us through playful encounters in the public sphere;
physical world experiences where people work/play together in endeavours that make a difference to the individuals coming together and those around them;
how we inhabit the virtual and physical worlds simultaneously - a transreality - and yet are still working out the implications of this;
what it means when we can no longer access or engage with the physical world without a virtual overlay - and what this means for being human;
and how we use this to look afresh at natural and managed environments; and how we understand and inhabit with them.
In addition to collaborative projects, Richard is researching the process of co-creating tactical interventions as a means to secure or maintain agency in relation to place-shaping, urban design and policy processes. He works on initiatives internationally and has a workspace In Shefford, UK. He is a member of:
the UK’s Urban Design Group, a membership charity open to all who care about the quality of life in our cities, towns and villages and believe that raising standards of urban design is central to its improvement (student member).
The Academy of Urbanism, a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation that brings together both the current and next generation of urban leaders, thinkers and practitioners
ACAVA (Association for Cultural Advancement through Visual Art UK)
and of Axisweb.
On Richard:
"a force of energy who brings visionary creative ideas to cultural projects with a high degree of professionalism, commitment and integrity..."
"...injects equal amounts of creativity, challenge, fun and pragmatism..."
"...a brilliantly connected ideas man, who applies rigorous and knowledgeable planning..."
