Rebecca's passion for research focuses on the relationship between place and (specifically creative) practice. Thanks to 10 years’ experience working across sectors as a practitioner, lecturer, researcher and consultant, she has a sustained, deep and extensive grounding in questions of creative practice and its relationship to wider issues of entrepreneurship, identity, inclusion and design. 

 A core element of her research focuses on the reinvention of artistic practice as an entrepreneurial undertaking, identifying the fundamental features of artist-led organisational development and the processes that both promote, and constrain, innovation and creativity. As part of this, she examines the use of culture and the creative industries in the transformation of urban structures. 

She is currently leading the UKSPF Funded project, Flourish Gateshead, a co-research project with Gateshead Council and local creative practitioners that aims to uncover the key elements in successful, sustainable creative ecosystems. Flourish forms part of the delivery of the Tyne Derwent Way a project which is revitalising the nine-mile outdoor trail between Gateshead town centre and the Derwent Valley through partnership work between Gateshead Council, the National Trust, Northumbria and Newcastle Universities and the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust. 

This work builds on a previous research she led in collaboration with Newcastle University, Gateshead Council and GT3 Architects. Mapping Gateshead was a five-month project funded by the ESRC that surveyed and critically re-imagined creative and cultural activity in Gateshead.

Previous research projects include More Than Meanwhile Spaces, an ESRC funded project exploring long-term futures for artist-led spaces and workspaces in the North East of England and Making the Clayton Street Corridor,  funded by Newcastle City Council to lead in running events and creating resources that support meaningful collaboration between grassroots artists/creative practitioners and policy-makers.

She currently leads both Undergraduate and Postgraduate modules focusing on core elements of entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. These dynamic modules  combine the study of creativity and innovation theory with practical learning and problem solving aiming to give students the tools, skills and capabilties they need to develop their own careers.