Rebecca Nicholson

r.nicholson5@ncl.ac.uk

Before joining Open Lab I was a teacher of Music and Drama at a large secondary school in the West End of Newcastle.

Broadly, my research interests lie in education and social justice, particularly the availability of Performing Arts education and ways in which digital technology can be used to facilitate this.

I have a BA in Music, specialising in Classical music and analysis. I then took a slight detour and after my undergraduate studies I retrained in Law (taking both the GDL – Graduate Diploma in Law – and the LPC – Legal Practice Course). I worked for a Local Authority for three years within the Housing Options Team where we were responsible for running a multiagency drop-in service providing a wide range of legal advice from housing and homelessness law to benefits advice and child care law.

Following this I returned to the Performing Arts world and completed my teacher training before coming back to Newcastle to teach in the West End of the City.

I have also always been active in unions throughout my working life both as a steward and school rep and then as a committee member primarily taking on casework but also engaging in activism and campaigning at a local and regional level.