Journey: To and From Here

I am now able to create games inspired by and using crafts as the main feature of most of my games. My journey to this point was not conventional but each step I have taken has provided me with skills and experiences that I have reformed and moulded to apply them to a variety of projects and tasks.

My design work helped me to develop skill, such as, attention to detail, digital design and research skills which I adapted in order to create diverse creative lessons and resources and also to develop design and craft inspired games and explore games theories.

When I think back often in the past I would find myself exploring LinkedIn and journals to discover people doing the roles or activities I wanted to do and see how they got there. In the beginning my aims were short term and had pretty straightforward connections although there were multiple methods the step clearly led to the same outcome. I wanted to teach at higher education and to research, but first, I wanted to understand the education system and how it prepared student for the further and higher education so I could understand my students educational journey. Therefore I felt needed to follow one of the routes into teaching and by following that route I would become a teacher, simple enough in theory. But, as my career developed I found there was more that I wanted to do and no direct route to achieving it. With many tasks there are a mixture of parts that bring joy, parts that you do because they need to be done and parts that maybe are not our favourites. I found this in my teaching career, there were aspects I really enjoyed about teaching in schools but for me it always felt like there was a different direction I wanted to take my teaching in one that didn’t marry up with the positions I was in.

I decided that I wanted to take the skill and experience from teaching and redesign it to suit outreach, lectures, mentoring, workshops, research, event planning and some opportunities for my own creative practice. I searched for inspiration in the same way as before trying to discover the map to success in my field and what I found was that there was no set route, there was no specific career path, it crosses multiple industries and the people doing it had come from a range of places and had used those experiences to enlighten, inspire and shape the multitude of disciplines their work touched upon. I found this extremely inspiring, it made me feel that I could achieve my multifaceted goals and utilise my skills in an adaptive way in each of y different endeavours.

I want to work with people encouraging inclusion and facilitating diverse opportunities, I also want to continue to research the relationship of craft and game, I want to develop games and continue my own art and design practice. They seem separate when I list them but the more I think about these areas the more interconnected I can see they are. I feel grateful for the experiences and opportunities I have had so far and excited about the future of the project I will be part of and the people I will work with. I want to enjoy what I do but I also want to make a positive difference with my work.

Sometimes it feels strange to have such different interests even though there are tenuous link they each hold a special place and intrigue me in unique ways.

• Games fascinate and intrigue me, and the research surrounding them really reframes the world in a unique and intriguing way. Games themselves are such a unique medium of expression, sharing and sociocultural capsules.
• Intimate apparel design, history and research is a unique area that encapsulate a range of aspect of human history and in many ways are a reflection of the society we live in as well as, on a surface level, being aesthetic and functional. The design side of lingerie is equally as fascinating as the sociocultural symbolism.
• My education work has help e work with a wide range of people researching and studying a wide variety of subject. I have had the opportunity not just to encourage and inspire many students but also to be inspired and learn from those who I have taught, mentored and tutored, which was always a privilege.

Where I go next will be influence by where I have been and though I have been change by the journey thus far it is not over and who knows what new experience wait for me in the days to come.