I am currently managing a professional association for geologists, but in 2012 when I undertook my Fellowship I was running a regional arts centre, and the arts were and are my first love.

My Fellowship in the USA explored the capacity of the arts to regenerate communities through the presence of artists and their work. Artists tend to locate themselves within poor communities where space is cheap and bureaucracy is limited.

The regeneration came in many forms, through the development of access to the arts and the circumventing of its elitist structures (giving it to 'the people'). The artists were considered 'active citizens' in other communities and were supported by local government to give a voice to those communities that went unheard.

I believe in the arts as a tool for positive action and wanted to implement the lessons I learnt back in the UK. On my return I secured funding to bring over a theatre group from the USA that I had worked with as part of my Fellowship and they did work in local schools on the topic of American writers who wrote about the First World War. The Fellowship gave me a completely new perspective that no amount of reading could have given me.