Services
About Emma McFarland
Emma is the founder of studio eMc and leads every project, building teams of expert collaborators and support as required. Alongside her independent work via studio eMc, Emma leads the Innovation Programme at The National Gallery in her role as Innovation Lab Manager. She is a Fellow of the RSA.
Emma's career spans the arts, social inclusion and digital worlds and has always been about making new connections between people, ideas and disciplines which help organisations do things differently and make more of a difference. She gained MA Digital Management (Distinction) from leading digital school, Hyper Island, in 2017 focusing on human centered design and its application in the arts and cultural sector to increase cultural democracy. She also holds PG Cert Dance in the Community from Trinity Laban and BA (Hons) Economics.
She leads the digital transformation QuestLab Network programme for choreographers at Studio Wayne McGregor and her recent work as workshop designer, facilitator and speaker spans organisations including IDEO, Kaleider, The Goethe Institut, Young Women's Trust, Mozfest, Knowle West Media Centre and Exeter University MBA programme.
Emma has 20 years experience in the arts and cultural sector as a senior manager, producer, practitioner, researcher and evaluator. As well as her work in the arts, Emma worked in social research and policy development as Programme Director for inclusion charity, Communities that Care, where she was voluntary sector representative on the Home Office Operation Trident Committee on Youth Gun Crime. Emma was also in at the beginning of digital transformation in the voluntary sector as Project Director for wiseradviser for Money Advice Trust, the voluntary sector's first integrated on-line learning resource, successfully launching into 2,000 advice agencies across the UK.
Emma began her career in a very different environment, as Institutional Marketing Manager for investment bank CS First Boston.
What We Do
studio eMc helps organisations and independents in the arts and cultural and wider not for profit sectors do more things which matter and do them better.
We bring new insights, ideas, methods, processes & tools to transform old ways of doing things.
We place the needs of the people that organisations & projects exist for, at the centre of everything they do.
We bring clarity to complexity through research, insight and new ways of managing projects.
Established in 2016, our work is underpinned by the principles, methods and tools of human centered design and crosses creative, digital and innovation producing, strategic design, service design and research and evaluation.
Emma is highly competent, hard working and very knowledgeable about where the future is digitally and most importantly how this might support social change. Emma is innovative, collaborative and is undertaking groundbreaking work. It is a pleasure to work alongside her and she is highly respected by the artists and young people we work with…. she is uniquely placed to advise the arts sector.