Creative Tools Lab

Applied anthropology for people who make things

Creative Tools Lab is an evolving series that takes ideas from anthropology, cultural theory and lived experience and turns them into practical creative tools.

The first module, Time (Social), looks at how time is not simply measured, but lived, negotiated and given meaning — and what that means for performers, event makers, teachers, facilitators and anyone designing an experience.

Through ideas such as Chronos, Kairos and Durée, the module moves from theory into audience experience, dramaturgy, cultural context, practical exercises and a reusable Time Lens framework.

It’s part research translation, part learning design and part creative provocation.

Because sometimes theory is most useful when you can actually do something with it.

Applied anthropology · Research translation · Learning design · Experience design

The Green Room with Nik & Mik

Creative practice, human behaviour and the conversations behind the work

The Green Room is a conversational podcast made with my wife and long-time creative collaborator, Nikki Allen.

Drawing on decades across theatre, performance, education and creative work, we use our own experiences as a starting point for wider conversations about audiences, collaboration, creative careers, workplaces, identity and how people actually behave when they are trying to make things together.

Theatre is often where the conversation starts. It rarely stays there.

The project has become an ongoing form of public thinking: part creative reflection, part cultural observation, and part attempt to make the tacit knowledge built through years of practice visible and useful.

Because sometimes the interesting bit isn’t what happened on stage. It’s what the process reveals about people.

Creative practice · Cultural observation · Public conversation · Knowledge sharing

Chase the Feeling

Research turned into performance

Chase the Feeling grew from practice-led research into lived experience, culture and the ways people make sense of complex human behaviour.

Rather than leaving the research on the page, the project used ethnodrama and performance to turn qualitative material into something an audience could encounter: characters, relationships, contradictions, emotion and lived experience rather than findings alone.

It is an example of research translation through creative practice — using theatre not simply to illustrate an idea, but to let people experience the human complexity inside it.

Because sometimes understanding arrives differently when the research has a body, a voice and a room.

Practice-led research · Ethnodrama · Research translation · Performance