Throughout her career, Denise has worked as a consultant, advisor, researcher and facilitator for Arts and Entertainments Training Council, Metier, Creative Skillset, Cultural and Creative Skills, Cambridge University Architectural Research Group, Microsoft Research, Film London, London Development Agency, Burns Owens Partnership, Royal National Theatre and Art of Regeneration.
In 2016 she designed and piloted a MA Creative Enterprise programme aimed at non-traditional and mature students from various creative and digital disciplines. Validated by the Open University, this practice-based interdisciplinary programme tried to integrate content creators and technologists.
Denise’s previous innovations in the music industry include the development of an entirely practice-based learning programme conceived to train black managers for the music industry in Tottenham’s Selby Centre. Students achieved credits equivalent to the 1st year of university from Middlesex University’s Work-based Learning programmes. Many students with no prior qualifications achieved places and an undergraduate degree on the BA Commercial Music Programme at Westminster University. The programme enabled learners to gain real-world experience running a record label, releasing records, and signing deals with artists.
Denise worked with the management teams of EMI, Virgin, Barclays Media, and BT as a trainer-consultant. She has designed and delivered undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in creative and cultural industries for several universities, including Middlesex, LIPA, Westminster, Kent and City University. She developed innovative grass-roots skills training in the community and further education sectors: Lewisham Academy of Music, the Albany Empire, Barnet Arts Centre, Haringey Arts Council, Collage Arts, Lewisham College and the College of North East London.
Denise began her career as a folk musician and benefitted from a free Higher Education to achieve 1st Class BSc Honours degree in Music in 1979 and a PhD in Ethnomusicology in 1989. Later, in 1992 she undertook an MBA to become a creative and cultural industries consultant. She has carried out a series of research projects throughout her career funded by the Arts Council of Great Britain, Greater London Arts, London Development Agency, and several Local Authorities across the UK with topics ranging from youth arts, disability arts, young families, and intergenerational patterns in arts, leisure and sports.
In the autumn of 2018, Denise worked as a consultant for ACM, a college that delivers contemporary music and games education for Higher Education and Further Education students with a 25-year track record. Denise was commissioned as a cultural engineer to contribute to organisational culture and development. She re-joined ACM 6 months later to take on the role of Chief Learning Officer, to pilot CLOCK style boot camps with students and to drive project-based and interdisciplinary learning and innovation working in partnership with the Executive Chairman, Kainne Clements. During March-September 2020, Denise led the transformation of ACM’s programme to digital delivery to accommodate the COVID-19 pandemic and then piloted a blended model of delivery from September 2020.
In March 2020, Denise established TULIP Peer2Peer Learning BV at the Rozet, a Community Arts Centre and Library complex in Arnhem in the Netherlands with a focus on European mobility in the creative and cultural industries, and to further the validation and recognition of non-formal learning as a matter of social justice.
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