Jessica Bowles is an academic with a background in professional practice as a theatre designer across the UK, including at Dukes Playhouse Lancaster, Young Vic, and the RSC and as a producer of large-scale festival experiences. At Royal Central, she wrote the BA (Hons) Theatre Practice Course, along the way introducing new undergraduate programs to Higher Education including the first Circus and Puppetry courses to be offered at degree level. In her role as Head of the Centre for Excellence in Theatre Training (2008-11) she led research into the factors contributing to the sustainability of graduate companies which in turn led to the development of the MA / MFA in Creative Producing, the course she now leads.
Between 2010 and 2014, Jessica was on the Management Board of the Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC), a University of London initiative to bring together leading researchers from London’s universities together with creative industry freelancers, small businesses, and students. In 2011 and 2015 she produced the educational component of the Prague Quadrennial, the world’s largest festival of performance design and space. Her educational and research practice focuses on the materiality of performance and the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of performance-making including work with the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, ScanLab and SHUNT exploring 3D scanning and live performance. For over 20 years, Jessica has been active in the development of Puppetry and in 2014 was invited onto the Board of award-winning company Theatre-Rites, a field leader in the creation of experimental theatre for children.
Incubate-Propagate 