Sports and leisure

I worked with Leigh Sports Village, an 12,165 capacity community facility in the borough of Wigan, for eight years, improving their visibility in local, regional and national media. Through linked press, website and social media strategies we had some fantastic results, including a stadium-record attendance for the Rugby League World Cup game between Tonga and Cook Islands in November 2013, helping to make Elton John and Lionel Richie concerts sell-out successes and securing Manchester United U23s home games in Premier League 2 and the UEFA Youth League.

I was also a senior part of a strategic team which won bids to host Manchester United Women’s home games at the stadium, four UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 games and three Rugby League World Cup 2022 games.

I also directed the redesign of its website, oversaw its Mailchimp strategy and even spent some time as stadium announcer.

Arts and culture

The Nine British Art

Early in 2015, I was asked by The Nine British Art in St James’, London, to help with the content and promotion of their biggest exhibition to date, John Plumb: A Retrospective. Paisnel specialises in 20th Century British Art, and since then I’ve helped produce press releases and news stories for their exhibition programme. 

In 2018, I wrote the introductory essay in the catalogue for Leigh Davis’s show, A New Perspective, and returned to Leigh’s work in 2020 with another essay for his new show Further Into Abstraction.

Cambridge Rules 1848

What’s your favourite football story? Where do you watch – or play – the beautiful game? These are some of the intriguing questions an exciting public art project I worked on asked the world to answer, creating a truly global window on how football is experienced and has developed to become the planet’s favourite sport.

I helped launch a website and press campaign at www.cambridgerules1848.com, on which people could leave their cherished stories of what makes the sport so special to them. Football fans from Buenos Aires to Preston left images of their favourite ground, shirt – or even tattoo.

The Cambridge Rules 1848 website was a key part of a new public art commission by Cambridge City Council, supported by the National Football Museum and Street Child United. It commemorates the seismic moment at which football as we know it had formalised laws. First nailed to the trees surrounding Parker’s Piece in Cambridge by a group of the city’s University students in 1848, from there, the laws of the game spread to encompass every corner of the world.

Artists Alan Ward and Neville Gabie marked this moment in physical form on Parker’s Piece with a large stone cut into nine, engraved with the original 1848 laws of the game in different languages. I worked on the launch event in 2018 and provided text for a commemorative newspaper. The four cornerstones are now installed on Parker’s Piece, with the others travelling to five football-loving countries across the planet in a cultural exchange.

The football stories, images and sounds gathered from around the world as well as the details of the project, were also gathered together in a book which I contributed to and edited, published in 2020. I also chaired the virtual book laugh that year.

Breaking Ground: Art and Archaeology

I devised the press campaign for Breaking Ground, a project and subsequent book on the excavation of the old Bradford Park Avenue football ground, which received extensive coverage on local, national newspapers and broadcast media. It resulted in a William Hill Sports Book Of The Year nomination, for which I also oversaw the media campaign.

Photographs From Another Place: Alan J Ward and the Gearing Archive.

I oversaw the press campaign for Alan Ward’s exhibition at the Williamson, Photographs From Another Place and its accompanying book – which I proofread. The exhibition featured in regional and national newspapers and broadcast media, with Alan undertaking a number of feature interviews.

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Education

St James & Emmanuel Academy Trust

I began as a part-time Project Communications Officer for a new free school, West Didsbury CE Primary, back in 2014. Working on setting up a school from scratch was fascinating and challenging, and I worked on implementing a communications strategy, helped design and populate its website, wrote a prospectus and engaged the local community to ensure the school had enough applications for September 2015. The school has quickly become the pride of the local community and the first

Through my work at West Didsbury CE, I was then employed by St James & Emmanuel Academy Trust to work on Didsbury CE Primary’s website revamp, and have since also helped other schools in the trust, St Wilfrid’s CE Primary in Northenden and St Elisabeth‘s in Reddish, with their communications. I also contribute articles to the Trust’s Together Magazine.

Altrincham Preparatory School

I worked with Altrincham Preparatory School for a number of years to update and modernise the tone and feel of the content on their website and print publications. I helped the school with their media strategy in the local press – sending press releases and stories – as well as advising them on social media and communications with parents.

My Life Learning

Currently, I’m working with a specialist Further Education College, My Life Learning, as they seek to improve their communications and profile. I have helped them with case study work, the development of a published improvement plan, press enquiries, and have overseen a full website redesign.

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Care sector

My Life Legacy

In June 2020 I began working with My Life, an innovative charity that connects people with their communities. They wanted to evidence the incredible work they do with and for people who need help to live a good life, including their CQC-registered care service, My Life Support, their day opportunities offer, My Life Opportunities and their FE college (see above). What started out as case study work has widened to include high quality content across the board, including strategic reports, blog posts, prospectuses and website redesign.