Explore Red Queen Renaissance
Red Queen Renaissance is a collection of connected creative, educational and reflective projects. Each branch explores a different part of the landscape, but they all come back to the same things: curiosity, understanding, practical use and trying doors you thought were closed.
Choose a branch below and have a wee adventure. Where a YouTube channel is live, the title will take you there, just click it. Over time, each branch will also have more of its own home here on the RQR website.
You never know which handle might open a door you thought had closed.
Reflective, practical thinking for complicated human lives.
Red Queen Wisdom explores what we can learn from psychology, behaviour, relationships, resilience, lived experience and the strange business of being human — without pretending there is always one neat answer.
Context matters.
Understanding before judgement.
Useful ideas for real life.
Music, performance, songwriting and creativity.
Red Queen Music follows my return to making music after believing that particular door had closed for good — from gigs, live performance and covers to songwriting, creative experiments and whatever happens next.
Reconnection through creativity.
Performance without perfection.
Sometimes doors aren’t closed. We just stop trying the handle.
Science, evidence and the mechanisms hiding underneath everyday questions.
Red Queen Science explores health, biology, behaviour, cognition and the wider science behind the things we experience, notice and argue about.
Evidence before assumption.
Mechanisms matter.
Complicated science, made understandable without turning it into nonsense.
Beauty, self-expression and practical experimentation.
Red Queen Beauty is about finding ways to feel more like yourself — not telling people what they are supposed to look like. Expect hair, makeup, DIY beauty, experiments, mistakes, discoveries and a fair amount of growing old disgracefully.
Expression over perfection.
Practicality over rules.
Beauty should feel like yours.
Practical making, problem-solving and figuring out how to make things work.
Red Queen Builds follows the projects I build, repair, adapt and invent — from furniture and upcycling to accessibility workarounds, tools, construction and the ongoing transformation of an old caravan chassis into a fully equipped wagon.
Solve the problem in front of you.
Adapt when the obvious answer doesn’t fit.
Sometimes the interesting bit isn’t the finished thing. It’s figuring out how the hell to make it work.
Making academic knowledge easier to access without dumbing it down.
Red Queen Learning Labs explores science, behavioural science, psychology, AI and technology, AI literacy and guardrails, research skills, misinformation and source evaluation, learning and digital skills, study, memory, note-taking, learning systems and practical experimentation.
Core explanation first. Deeper theory when you want it.
Curiosity → understanding → practical use.
Learning without shame.
Art, expression and experimentation.
Red Queen Art brings together both my historical work and whatever I create next — from commissioned pieces and dog portraits to new experiments, works in progress and ideas that need somewhere to become visible.
Create without needing a reason.
Experiment without needing perfection.
Sometimes making the thing is the point.
Photography as craft, observation and storytelling.
Red Queen Photography brings together both historical and new work — from wildlife, landscapes and gigs to people, cars, dogs, macro, documentary moments, editing and the stories behind particular photographs.
Look closely.
Notice before you frame.
Sometimes the photograph is the interesting thing. Sometimes it’s what you had to notice before you could take it.
Observation, behaviour and practical life with dogs.
Red Queen Dog Behaviour follows life with Kira and Echo — including the realities of living with a large reactive dog — while exploring canine behaviour, reactivity, management, environmental setup and practical problem-solving.
Observation before interpretation.
Understand the behaviour before trying to change it.
Sometimes dog ownership feels less like cuddles on the sofa and more like running a small furry risk-management departmen
Looking beyond the headlines to the systems, stories and patterns shaping our world.
Red Queen Perspectives explores politics, society, psychology, history, culture, media, power and the connections between them. It’s where I test observations, interrogate claims, compare evidence and perspectives, and share the conclusions I draw — with room for discussion, debate, uncertainty and changing my mind when the evidence warrants it.
Evidence is evidence. Opinion is opinion.
Change the angle. Test the pattern.
The point isn’t to tell you what to think. It’s to give us better tools for thinking about it.