FLOW’S AIM IS TO HELP CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS DEVELOP, AND THEIR AUDIENCES TO LEARN, CREATE, CONNECT AND FLOURISH, SO THAT THEIR COMMUNITIES CAN THRIVE.
In 2006 I founded Flow Associates with Mark Stevenson and I now co-direct it with Susanne Buck and Alex Flowers. I’m now only 1 day a week or so, as I shift towards work on culture, climate and ecology.
We are cultural consultants whose goal is to help organisations thrive, supporting them and their communities to learn, create, connect and flourish.
We work with arts, heritage, science and educational organisations to create wonderful, effective and sustainable experiences and services. Inspired by the theory of ‘flow’, we ensure that people have the right balance of challenge and support to be optimally engaged. Our research and policy work helps shape dialogues and programmes in areas of cultural learning, sustainable futures and digital strategy.
Since forming in 2006 we have completed audience research, education plans, digital strategies and evaluations for many cultural, heritage and science organisations at policy and delivery level.
We form teams from a pool of trusted associates to expand and tailor our teams to meet the needs of diverse projects around these areas. For example, we have developed and co-ordinated Cultivate, a Cultural Education Challenge in Wandsworth and Lambeth, bringing in project managers, workshop facilitators and evaluators.
My own role in Flow has been to lead consultancy projects in the UK, as thought leader on cultural engagement.
In the past four years, I’ve been increasingly speaking, researching and facilitating on planning for the future – with a focus on environmental sustainability in these areas:
- Preparing future generations through cultural and creative education
- Developing ecologically sustainable programmes and content in arts and heritage
- Evaluating initiatives for their impact on communities and learners
- Scanning the horizon and planning for future risks and opportunities.
Example projects include:
- International research on public attitudes to food sustainability (food systems, climate change and ecosystem harm) and how museums & informal science education can respond. This was commissioned by the Science Museum with the Museum of Tomorrow in Brazil and the Indian Council of Science Museums.
- Research for the Natural History Museum to scope a Global Education Initiative and children’s activity programme on nature connection in context of the Earth crisis.
- Natural World Principles for the Horniman Museum
- Evaluation of the Royal Parks’ Green Futures programme.