I am a Director at Common Futures, a new venture exploring digital asset development by and for communities, and an Associate Director (Community Assets) with Locality. I'm also a member of the Government's Local Public Data Panel, and a Faculty Member of the Open Institute.

I spent a decade in academia reading and teaching government, social theory and international development, before moving into the public sector to work in regional spatial and economic policy development then senior relationship and programme management linked to economic participation for socially excluded communities.

After joining the Development Trusts Association in 2008, I established the Asset Transfer Unit and assumed responsibility for broad-ranging national programmes intended to promote and enable the transfer of publicly owned land and buildings to communities for social benefit - including, the Advancing Assets for Communities and Community Assets Programmes funded by DCLG and the Big Lottery Fund respectively. Following a merger between the DTA and bassac, I assumed an oversight role in relation to Locality's traditional community assets work to shape aspects of the Localism Act and support the roll-out of its My Community Rights advice/support service. I also established a national network for community libraries, undertaking primary research for Arts Council England: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/supporting-libraries/community-libraries-research/ 

On secondment to the Cabinet Office in 2012, I contributed to the work of its ICT Futures team, implementing spend controls in relation to the high level ICT procurement decisions that government departments need to make. This meant working to very tight deadlines, rapidly absorbing complex technical information whilst understanding the strategic implications, and liaising across government departments including providing direct advice to Ministers where projects exceeded a value of £5m.



Common Futures is now working with The Creative Coop to implement a UK-wide action-learning programme involving civic engineers, community broadband pioneers and digital service developers within the social enterprise sector on behalf of DCLG, the Nominet Trust and Social Investment Business. We are also involved in a number of collaborative initiatives to establish Library/Hack/Maker spaces and, with that, provide a test-bed for those involved in library service transformation.