Hannah publicly serves as Board Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland, and as a Chair of nature repair focussed events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Over 2022-23, whilst at SRUC, Hannah was a core part of the Dandelion “Anything Grows Festival” team. Commissioned by EventScotland and funded by the Scottish Government, the six month national festival was inspired by the global ‘grow-your-own’ movement and a surge in home-growing during the Covid-19 lockdown. Read more about it!
In schools, more than 100 small Cubes were distributed across the nation, where pupils used them to conduct their own growing experiments with special Internet of Things research stations commissioned by Hannah. The big Cubes were equal parts artwork, laboratory and vertical farm – beautiful and practical, ingenious and inspiring. From the Borders to the Highlands to the islands, they toured around Scotland in 2022.
In 2012, Hannah collaborated with the National Theatre of Scotland to co-produce the award-winning live, 24 hour long, for everyone by anyone, online production, Five Minute Theatre. Watch it go live!
In 1998, Hannah co-wrote, together with Dr Billy Smart, The Benefactor, the first British hyperdrama to be published on the Internet and performed in the UK. It has never been performed again, but it is globally referenced in research papers. It has been translated into Chinese, German, Italian and Spanish for study at university courses internationally, and Hannah and the play are cited on Wikipedia.
You can read The Benefactor in full, in all its retro, SML (standard mark-up language) glory!
A hyperdrama is a play that is written in hypertext, that is performed as a promenade, and that is realised on multiple levels. Scenes happen simultaneously throughout a performance space. In The Benefactor, there are five different locations where the action takes place. The scripts for the different locations are divided into levels which represent the time span of the piece (about 45 minutes real time). The table of scenes shows what happens at the same time. All the characters and locations in this hyperdrama are of equal importance. As an online reader, you could follow the path of one character through the play by clicking on their hypertext links; read all the separate scripts in a linear fashion; or explore the hyperdrama more randomly by swapping between rooms via the links. Start your journey here!
It started with drama and music!
As a teenager, Hannah was empowered by drama, captivated by learning music, and enjoyed a great social life performing in bands. The ’90s was an era when electronic musical instruments became affordable and computers enabled composition and recording to become something amateurs could do at home.
“Youth theatre helped me slip into other human beings’ skins, and learn empathy. Whether physical, psychological or emotional, drama is about a point in crisis – that could be a relationship, politics, history or a person’s life. I read Drama and Theatre studies at undergrad and masters, and experienced theatre as a movement for change. I still go to see a wide range of dramatic work and music whenever I can.”
Hannah, still a culture vulture.