OASIS Profile

Organisation Development
Creativity and Improvisation
Team and Individual Mentoring

Focus, experience and interests

Claire works nationally and internationally as an independent consultant.  She is also a long standing Associate with the Oasis School of Human Relations, specialising in developing creative and collaborative approaches to whole organisational development, particularly in relation to integrating or re-configuring diverse teams, services and systems.  She is also involved in team and individual mentoring.

Her clients include Aycliffe Secure Services, The Longhurst Group, Impact Housing Association, Buckinghamshire NHS Mental Health Trust, Enterprise 5, Northumberland PCT., Countryside Agency.

After an initial foray into the world of theatre and films, Claire worked as a film publicist for an international animation company in London and was a founder member of a fringe theatre group.  Three years later, Claire decided to take a very different route and after working first as a Care Assistant and then as a Manager of a number of residential homes for older people, she qualified as a Social Worker.

Following qualification Claire returned to working with older people , later developing different levels of expertise including working within a specialist Child Protection team and with adolescent young women, particularly those who found themselves either offending or at risk of offending.

After a spell lecturing and becoming a qualified teacher, Claire returned to Social Services in Northumberland, working as member of the Senior Management teams with particular responsibility for managing an internal change agency team.  Her mandate also included working at national level on a variety of integrated health, social services, not for profit and private sector projects.  It was during this period that Claire achieved an M.A., her dissertation topic focused on an analysis of approaches to change and leadership in hierarchical organisations.

Throughout this journey, Claire has maintained a significant involvement with the theatre and spheres of creativity.  She is currently exploring the integration of creativity with the role of management and change agency in organisational life and is studying Socio Drama and Action Methods. 

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the RSA Northern Committee as well as a Board member of Queen’s Hall Arts, a thriving Art Centre and Theatre in Northumberland.  She is also active in and co-founder of a Youth Theatre Group and ‘React’, a Playback Theatre Company, based in the North East of England.