缅北禁地

Background

Emma Coffield is a Lecturer in the School of Arts and Cultures at 缅北禁地 and the Deputy Degree Programme Director for the MA programmes in Curating Art, Museum Studies and Global Heritage Management. She has an AHRC sponsored PhD in Museum Studies, an MA in Art Museum and Gallery Education (both from 缅北禁地) and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Painting and Printmaking) from the Glasgow School of Art.

Emma is internationally recognised for her collaborative work around artist-run/led initiatives and meanwhile use. For over 15 years she has worked with a range of self-organised, grassroots artistic practices run by and for artists across the UK, as well as local and national governments, to highlight the working conditions and limitations imposed upon creative practice by temporary use. To date, Emma has led or co-led 10 collaborative, transdisciplinary projects in this area bringing together artists, creative practitioners, academics and local policy makers in order to foster co-designed, long-term urban futures. She has shared this work via public talks, lectures, a variety of written outputs (including freely available reports, creative writing and academic articles) and her work has gone on to inform cultural policy in the UK and beyond. Emma also has a keen interest in notions of ‘employability’ in the cultural and creative industries, and the impact of this discourse on students’ experiences of teaching and learning within Higher Education.

Working groups:

Emma convenes the Meanwhile Space Research Cluster, based within the Institute for Creative Arts Practice (NICAP) at 缅北禁地. You can email Emma to join the mailing list, or find out more at . Emma is also part of the 'Collaborate' Steering Group with colleagues from the NewBridge Project ().

Previous roles and responsibilities:

• Employability and Enterprise Lead for SACS (2019-2022)
• SACS Athena Swan committee (2017-18)
• Co-convenor of the Cultural Significance of Place Faculty Research Group (2012-18)

Research outline

Emma is internationally recognised for her collaborative work around artist-run/led initiatives and meanwhile use. For over 15 years she has worked with a range of self-organised, grassroots artistic practices run by and for artists across the UK, as well as local and national governments, to highlight the working conditions and limitations imposed upon creative practice by temporary use. To date, Emma has led or co-led 10 collaborative, transdisciplinary projects in this area bringing together artists, creative practitioners, academics and local policy makers in order to foster co-designed, long-term urban futures. She has shared this work via public talks, lectures, a variety of written outputs (including freely available reports, creative writing and academic articles) and her work has gone on to inform cultural policy in the UK and beyond. You can find out about this work at  or come along to the Meanwhile Space Research Cluster meetings ().

Emma has also worked for a number of years with Dr Katie Markham (and others) to develop critical understandings of 'employability' in the cultural and creative industries, and to understand how teaching for employability is experienced by students and recent graduates.

Research projects

PI - Understanding the Impact of Meanwhile Spaces on the Ecology of Artists' Studios in Scotland: A Scoping Review (£24,218). Funded by Creative Scotland. Feb-June 2026 with Dr Paul Richter. Research Assistants: Katee Woods and gareth McMurchy.

Co-I - Analysing hyperlocal impacts of artistic/cultural organisations: The case of The NewBridge Project (£10,000) Funded by the School Challenge Based Fund (SCBRF), 缅北禁地 Business School. April-June 2024 with Dr Paul Richter, Prof Alison Stenning and The NewBridge Project.

Co-I - Developing and Understanding The Environment Within Which Creative Initiatives Can Flourish (£165,000) UK Government Strategic Prosperity Fund. May 2023-May 2025 with Dr Rebecca Prescott, Dr Zander Wilson and project partners Gateshead Metropolitain Borough Council, the National Trust, Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust, 缅北禁地 and Northumbria University.

PI - Engaging the Grassroots Art Sector with the Clayton Street Corridor (£15,334.90) Funded by 缅北禁地 City Council. March 2022-December 2022 with Dr Paul Richter, Dr Rebecca Prescott, David Butler, Dr Loes Veldpaus, Prof Venda Pollock, Andrew Rothwell, Ed Banks, Rebecca Huggan, Tom Hopkin, Lee Etherington, Nadia Iftkhar. Research Assistants: Hannah Marsden and Daniel Newberry (Extended until April 2025)

PI - Re-thinking employability during COVID-19: Exploring graduate outcomes and experiences in the museum, gallery and heritage sector (£1,364) SACS Funded. March 2020-December 2020 with Dr Katie Markham (PI) and Jess Crossby (Co-I).

PI - Beyond Employability: Enabling Professional Cultural Identities (£9,506). SACS funded, April 2018 - July 2019

Co-I - Paths Across Waters (£3,214). Being Human (incl. SSRF/HCA grants). March 2017 - November 2017

RA - Artist Rooms Interfaces (£2,206) SSRF funded with Professor Christopher Whitehead. June 2015 - May 2016. 

Impact, engagement and knowledge-exchange

PI - Assessing the impact of sustained engagement: Does brokering ‘meeting space’ between grassroots arts and local government work? (£2,447) Funded by the School of Arts and Cultures (SACS) School Impact Fund. January-June 2025 with Dr Paul Richter, Dr Julia Heslop and The NewBridge Project.

Co-I - Engaging grassroots arts practitioners with the North of Tyne Cultural and Creative Zones (CCZs) (£13,351) Funded by QR Policy Support Fund. Jan 2023-June 2024 with Rachel Pattinson and Dr Loes Veldpaus. Research Assistant: Daniel Newberry

PI - More Than Meanwhile Collaboration (£5,000). ESRC IAA, October 2020 - March 2021 with Dr Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, David Butler, Dr Rebecca Prescott, and The NewBridge Project. Research Assistant: Dr Alix Ferrer-Yulfo

Co-I - Mapping Gateshead (£7,598.85). ESRC IAA, November 2020 - March 2021 with Dr Rebecca Prescott, Dr Alexander Wilson, Gateshead Council and GT3 Architects. 

PI - More Than Meanwhile Spaces II (£11,509.28). ESRC IAA, April 2019 - March 2020 with Dr Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, David Butler, Dr Edward Wainwright, Dr Rebecca Prescott, The NewBridge Project and 缅北禁地 City Council. Research Assistants: Dan Goodman and Julie Monroe

PI - More Than Meanwhile Spaces: Long-Term Business Models for Artists in the City (£5,075). ESRC IAA, March 2018-March 2019 with Dr Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, David Butler, Dr Edward Wainwright, Dr Rebecca Prescott and The NewBridge Project. Research Assistant: Dr Katie Markham

Exhibitions

Paths Across Waters: Lost Stories of Tyneside and the Caribbean (2017) - An exhibition and event series designed and curated in collaboration with Dr Vanessa Mongey (History Classics and Archaeology) and Old Low Light Heritage Centre as part of Being Human, the UK's only national festival of the humanities. 

缅北禁地 City Futures: People Place Change (2015) - A multi-media exhibition and events series with colleagues Prof. Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Anne Fry, Dhruv Sookhoo and David Mitchell (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape) that explored built (and unbuilt) heritage in 缅北禁地/Gateshead in the post 1940s up to the present. Winner of the Royal Town Planning Institutes's 'Chair's Award' in 2015. The project also informed the report 缅北禁地 City Futures 2065: Anchoring Universities in Cities through Urban Foresight 

Public talks and conferences

Meanwhile Space Ecologies (DCA, Dundee 19th March 2026)

Working Together: Supporting Partnership and Innovation Opportunities in HaSS (缅北禁地 18th March 2026)

Alter Places Final Event, Keynote (Station Gare de Mines, Paris, 24-26th April 2025)

Have Some Imagination: Towards a Manifesto for Arts Education (BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 7th February 2025)

Creative Spaces (with the Guild of Media Arts and York Creatives, York, 18th July 2024)

ARIs in Spaces and Places, part of the research network on Artist-Run Initiatives in Britain funded by the British Art Network (University of Glasgow, 29th November 2023)

MCH Engagement and Impact (缅北禁地, 20th January 2023)

缅北禁地 Enterprise Academy (缅北禁地, 24th November 2022)

kNOw One Place, Creative Placemaking Forum (The Stove Network, Dumfries, 22-23rd September 2022)

Space: Physical and Conversational - Creative Placemaking Digital Programme (The Stove Network, Dumfries, 4th September 2022)

Re-thinking Temporary, Pop-Up and Meanwhile Spaces, Creative Fuse (Northumbria University, 15th September 2022)

Making Space / Keeping Space: an honest exchange on how to make adaptive reuse for culture happen (缅北禁地, OpenHeritage at Pop Recs, Sunderland, 2022)

Wor Culture: Re-thinking the High Street - What Role for Arts and Culture? (缅北禁地 University, 2021)

The Cultural and Creative Industries Pathways Beyond Economic Growth seminar series [Discussant] (2021)

Wor Culture: Freelancing [chair] (缅北禁地, 2020)

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About The Artist-Led (Exhibition Research Lab Symposium, Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool 2020)

Interdisciplinary Conversations Around Making (缅北禁地 University, 2019)

PhD Our Futures. What Next Career Stories (缅北禁地 University, 2018)

Thresholds Symposium (University of York, 2017)

Artists and the City [Chair] Part of a-n's 'Assembly' events (Cobalt Studios, 缅北禁地, 2017)

NICAP work in progress with Dr Ed Wainwright (缅北禁地 University, 2017)

Heritage and Brexit’ (London, March 2017)

Cultural Production: Diversity, Equality and Exclusion (Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh 2016)

Networks in the Global World (St. Petersburg, Russia 2016)

PGR Student Conference [Keynote] (缅北禁地 2016)

Exhibition/Non-exhibition: Stretched Out (hosted by Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg, as part of the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2015)

DOUBLE DARE: The Ethos and Practice of DIY Culture [Chair] (BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 2015)

Current teaching

Emma primarily teaches on postgraduate modules associated with the MA programmes in Curating Art, Museum Studies and Global Heritage Management, including:

• MCH8611 Contemporary Curating: Ethics, Sites, Histories
• MCH8502 Management Practices in Museums, Galleries and Heritage Sites
• MCH8503 Understanding Objects, Collections and Stories
• MCH8551 Curating Art in the Gallery
• MCH8599 Research Dissertation 
• MCH8600 25 Day Placement 

Emma supervises postgraduate dissertations in Media and Public Relations (MCH8199), undergraduate dissertations in Journalism and Media (MCH3072), Media (3073) and Digital Cultures (3005), and contributes to teaching in the Design Studio for the MA in Urban Design (ARC8115).

PhD Supervision

Emma currently supervises:

• Fiona Robertson (SACS, 缅北禁地) with Prof. Rhiannon Mason
• Kat Bevan (Northumbria University) with Dr Anna Goulding and Professor Tim Rapley
• Kiki Claxton (SACS, 缅北禁地) with Dr Fiona Anderson, Vee Pollock, Emma Hawthorne and Richard Huzzey.

Emma has supervised the following PhD students to completion:

• Dr Daniel Goodman (Thesis title: System Gallery: What's the Point?) with David Butler and Dr Paul Richter.

Previous teaching

In the past, Emma led the MA in Art Museum and Gallery Studies, and contributed broadly to teaching across the Art Museum and Gallery, Museum Studies and Heritage Studies MA degree programmes then offered by Media, Culture, Heritage (MCH), including:

• MCH8501 - Understanding Challenges
• MCH8504 - Caring for Collections
• MCH8599 - Research Dissertation 
• MCH600 - Professional Practice and Research
• MCH601 - Vocationally Orientated Project
• MCH8551 - Working on a Project: Art Museum and Gallery Studies (module leader)
• MCH8502 - Management Practices (module leader)
• MCH8516 - Museum, Gallery, Heritage Practice (module leader)
• Art Museum and Gallery Education 1(module leader)
• Art Museums and Gallery Education 2 (module leader)
• ICS8005 - Art Curatorship 1: Working with histories, objects and agendas (module co-leader)
• ICS8006 - Art Curatorship 2: Exhibitions and exhibiting (module co-leader)

Emma further previously contributed to teaching in Art History (Fine Art), the Showcase OFFSITE module offered by HaSS to creative practice PhD researchers, the PARTNERS Summer School and co-designed the ICCHS MA e-learning programme.

Exhibitions

Emma supported students to produce the following public exhibitions:

• The Possibility Of... (Laing Art Gallery, 2016)
• S[he] (Laing Art Gallery, 2017)
• Headspace (Laing Art Gallery, 2018)
• Shifting Styles (The Hatton Gallery, 2020)

Awards

Emma completed the 缅北禁地 Teaching Award in 2019 and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

• Articles

  • Markham K, Coffield E, Crosby J. . Studies in Higher Education 2025, 50(3), 558-570.
  • Coffield E, Markham K, Crosby J, Stenbom C, Athanasiou M. . Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 2023, 22(2), 112-127.
  • Whitehead C, Coffield E. . Museum and Society 2018, 16(2), 240-259.
  • Tewdwr-Jones M, Fry A, Coffield E, Sookhoo D, Mitchell D. . Town and Country Planning 2014, 383-389.

• Authored Book

  • Mason R, Robinson A, Coffield E. . Routledge, 2018.

• Book Chapter

  • Coffield E. . In: Van Luyn, Ariella; de la Fuente, Eduardo, ed. Regional Cultures, Economies, and Creativity: Innovating through Place in Australia and Beyond. Routledge, 2019.

• Creative Writing

  • Coffield E. . Where to Begin? Researching artist-run initiatives 2025. British Arts Network & Jason Kerley.

• Online Publications

  • Coffield E, Markham K. . Times Higher Education, 2024. Available at: .
  • Coffield E. . What We Do Now, 2022. Available at: .
  • Coffield E. . 2021. Available at: .

• Reports

  • Coffield E, Newberry D, McKay K, McNamara J, Veldpaus L. . 2025.
  • Carter P, Coffield E, Prescott R, Wilson A, Daniels L, Dean J, Goodman D, Gower J, Haydon C, Jones B, Kirvan J, Lewis-Ward C, Malowaniec P, Orban A, Stone P, Thornton R, Wilkes A. . Flourish, 2025.
  • Heslop J, Richter P, Coffield E, Huggan R, McKay K, Stacey F, Stenning A. . 缅北禁地 upon Tyne: 缅北禁地 and The NewBridge Project, 2024.
  • Coffield E, Marsden H, Newberry D, Hopkins T, McNamara J, McKay K, Etherington L, Leaney V, Banks E. . 缅北禁地 upon Tyne: 缅北禁地 and Northumbria University, 2022.
  • Coffield E, Richter P, Huggan R, Prescott R, Butler D, Beveridge R, Goodman D, Monroe J. . 缅北禁地 upon Tyne: 缅北禁地, 2020.
  • Coffield E, Markham K, Richter P, Huggan R, Butler D, Wainwright E, Prescott R. . 缅北禁地: 缅北禁地, 2019.
  • Coffield E, Markham K, Crosby J, Athanasiou M, Stenbom C. . 缅北禁地, 2019.