Start with a story. Choose a platform. Take a risk.
Operation Legacy
Congratulations! Following an extensive selection process you have been chosen to join us on our mission to build the future space village. It’s time to think about what you want to do, who you want to see, what you want to take with you and how you wish for your time on this planet to be remembered. There is no time for the cant’s and should’s.
You may have questions. You may have concerns. You may even have children. Unfortunately, these are no longer relevant. You have no choice in the matter.
Legacy is a service which I run for people who have been diagnosed with terminal illness. I collaborate with them to explore how they want to spend their time and what they want to leave behind. Sometimes I collaborate with them to design their funerals and often I facilitate them to create audio/ interactive audio experiences for them to share.
Operation legacy combines the hours spent interviewing astronauts about pleasure in space and the years spent working with people who have no choice but to leave the world that they know. It always comes back to pleasure.
Never wait for bad news, enjoy what you have and don’t wait for permission. Find joy where you can. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.
The In My Shoes Project
In My Shoes is an ever expanding library of over 130 audio, interactive audio and audio visual experiences.
In 2007 I had a brain injury, I lost the ability to walk and talk. I relearnt how to talk, but not how to communicate. I began to use audio as an alternative method of communication, this moved on to video goggles, 360 film and virtual reality. Using this format to connect with my friends, family and medical team had a huge impact on my quality of life.
I have since collaborated with over 130 different people to use audio and audio visual experiences, touch, taste and smell to share their experiences in the same way.
In My Shoes was officially founded in 2009, it is an internationally recognised empathy project - yielding a library of over 100 interactive audio and visual experiences seen by 32,000 audience members in Europe, The US, Australia & Asia.
This picture shows me guiding a participant through In My Shoes: Waking in Slough (New York Academy of Medicine 2012), He is wearing Vuzix Video goggles, my handbag, my watch and my fountain pen. I used these props, touch, taste and smell to guide him through an epileptic seizure that I had on a train.
Quip
In 2024 I co-founded Quip with Siobhan McDonnell. Quip is a collaboration with AI specialists (UWE) and neuroscientists (UCL) who specialise in humour and a team of developers. We are building a unique tech framework for crafting comedy in immersive Films, Games and Location Based Experiences (LBE). Quip uses voice recognition, micro expression detection and sentiment analysis to influence the virtual world. It increases immersion, accessibility & audience impact. It also informs important and meaningful audience research. Quip was selected by the CoStar Ideate programme in 2025.
Audio Activism
‘It could be you’ is a series of audio experiences that tell the stories of people living with a disability from a first person perspective. We share these with people who have political power - whose decisions impact peoples lives..
For example - In 2016 the benefits freeze affected up to 27 million claimants and the traumatic switch from DLA to PIP a
nd the deaths that came as a result. These were brushed under the carpet, we wanted to target the people who were making the decisions.