Here is a selection of stories from people I’ve worked with.
See how I’ve helped them and could help you.
Serpentine
I joined Serpentine and their digital agency effect for a meeting in April 2023 to discuss how I might help improve their existing ‘Plan your visit’ content for their new website. They felt they needed to create a more user-friendly website and corral some copy back into their tone of voice. This meeting gave us the chance to get to know one another, discuss how we might all work together, and to strategise about how to make the website homepage more user-friendly and user-centred.
After this meeting, I worked with their communications, education, archive, and editorial team to rewrite their Plan Your Visit pages. I introduced a plan your journey section, including links to google maps, Active Things, National Rail and TFL. I also reorganised their Facilities and Access page to focus on the service a visitor might be looking for, such as an audio guide, rather than on disability.
To begin with they weren’t sure how best to organise their content or how to manage their many pages. By the end, we’d cut down the pages, created more static pages with nifty tricks like replacing ‘last year’ with ‘in 2021’, and created a more accessible, comprehensible, and well designed homepage and child pages.
In October, they contacted me again. This time, they wanted me to work on a much bigger project to rewrite, edit, and otherwise refresh the Arts Technologies pages.
For this project, I took the Arts Technologies pages from this to this, the Synthetic Ecologies Lab from this to this, the Legal Lab from this to this, the Creative AI lab from this to this, and the Blockchain lab from this to this.
Arts Emergency
Arts Emergency had grown a lot since it was founded and while the pandemic made some of their work much more challenging, it gave them a little space to reflect on what they’d achieved, consider what they might do next, and to think about how to tell that story.
Working remotely, I met with each of the team, joined their weekly catch ups, and mapped out content for the new site. At the end of the project, Arts Emergency didn’t just get a new website, but they also got the confidence and know-how to use it well.
What people say
CP has been an attentive, engaged and efficient collaborator who brought an in-depth, credible working knowledge of the sector’s leading accessibility practices to our brief.
They worked with us flexibly and remained communicative throughout our extended project. Our website was in need of refining to create a simplified, accessible and smooth user experience for our audiences and CP’s contributions and considerations were crucial to achieving this.
It’s been a pleasure to work with them.
— Youssra Manlaykhaf, Content Manager Unit London (formerly Serpentine)
It was a joy collaborating with Cornelius on the relaunch of the Arts Emergency website and brand. During an extremely busy period it was reassuring to work with someone so organised and proactive.
Our communication throughout the project was friendly and focussed, they also shared insightful ideas and feedback which helped refine our copy and brand guidelines.
Beyond the website and brand launch, Cornelius’ impact is felt every day in the way that we now manage website updates and digital content planning.
I can’t recommend working with Cornelius enough!
— Freya Jewitt, Marketing and Communications Manager Serpentine (formerly Arts Emergency)
Barnardo’s
Curious about how my kind of work worked outside of the arts, I worked for Barnardo’s on their digital transformation programme. During my nearly two years there, I:
- conducted and wrote interviews with key stakeholders across the organisation
- pair-wrote, ghostwrote, and wrote-wrote web content, blog posts, and articles both for internal and external publication
- co-created and ensured adherence to a web and blog style guide
Most importantly, it was here that I was introduced to GDS Content Design principles, which I have used in my work migrating, editing, and rewriting content for Serpentine, Arts Emergency, and the RA Learning and Collections Team.
What people say
Cornelius was an excellent addition to our Capability and Engagement team. Working within digital internal comms, and with our development, design and research teams they delivered comms for our digital transformation, as well as more public posts on the work Barnardo’s was doing with service design and vulnerable children and young people.
They have a beautiful flair for the written word with strong attention to detail and were always a good team player when it came to editing and critiquing others’ work.
They were curious, knowledgeable and always thoughtful in their work.
— Sarah Carter, Talent Witch Ltd (formerly Barnardo’s)
Sensitivity reading
In a previous life, I read and assessed manuscripts for authors, publishing houses, and small presses so as to help eliminate stereotypes, bias, potentially harmful content, and false information or inaccuracy.
While I don’t often do this work anymore, the experience is invaluable when working as an editor.
I’ve put my experience as a sensitivity reader to use when co-editing a report on enslavement, when providing feedback for a film addressing an LGBTQ+ subject, and when writing interpretation for audiences age 5-11 and 16-25.
What people say
Cornelius was the sensitivity reader for me for my last published collection of essays, Vesper Flights. Their combination of fine critical acumen and deep emotional integrity made them the obvious choice for this role. They are an exceptional writer, deeply informed and in possession of a wide-ranging, incisive intellect. They are also a phenomenal reader, with a keen eye for style and a capacity for teasing out the complex ramifications of analytic arguments. Our communications were exceptionally clear, and they worked with rapidity and grace under pressure. The whole experience of working with Cornelius on this project was a delight, and I commend them to you wholeheartedly.
— Helen MacDonald, author of Prophet, Vesper Flights, H is for Hawk, and Falcon
I was fortunate to have Cornelius work as the sensitivity reader on my novel The Moonday Letters (Titan Books, 2022). They helped me refine the portrayal of a non-binary character whose role is central in the story. I found Cornelius’s report to be comprehensive and insightful, written with excellent editorial eye for detail. I was also impressed with their expertise and well-argued suggestions on how the manuscript might be improved. I have no doubt that Cornelius’s comments helped me make The Moonday Letters a better book, and I would recommend them to any colleague without reservation.
— Emmi Itäranta, author of Memory of Water, The City of Woven Streets, and The Moonday Letters
Cornelius provided a sensitivity report from me for a children’s novel, and their work was truly exemplary: hugely insightful, intelligent, and clear. Their report contextualised and provided background for several important themes and areas of the text, and their suggestions and critical analysis were thoughtful, helpful, and diplomatic. The book was greatly improved for Cornelius’ efforts, and I remain enormously grateful for the great level of care their work demonstrated. I very much hope to have the chance to work together again one day, and in the meantime I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them.
— Tom Bonnick, Editorial Director, Harpercollins Children’s Books
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