Biography of Susan

Susan moved from London to Rye in 2018, two years after her husband died. She grew up in the USA arriving in England at the age of 19 to study at the Royal College of Art in London. She has been here ever since for well over six decades.

Susan arrived in Rye not just before the pandemic knowing almost no one. In the times when she was able to get into town she noticed how many women were working either in paid occupations, or as volunteers, to support our local community with strength and resilience during that difficult time. She soon got to know the then Mayor, Rebekah Gilbert, who had difficulties due to covid restrictions to raise money for her local charities. Together they came up with the idea of creating a calendar to celebrate women working in the town. Susan took over 80 portraits at that time and realised these women had amazing stories of their lives to tell. She got together with the writer Bronwen Griffiths to write a Heritage Lottery bid for a website to create a living archive of oral histories. The bid was successful and Ali Casey joined the team to further develop the HerStory of Rye bespoke website designed by Nick Roberts. www.herstoryrye.co.uk 

Susan did lots of different creative jobs in fashion, photography, publishing and the performing arts after studying textile design at the Royal School of Art. One of her fellow students at the RCA was a young Indian woman whose family had a small textile business in Gujarat. Through the relationship with this family over 60 years, and at the age of 75, Susan created a little fashion label with her granddaughter called ShirtStory. For the past ten years ShirtStory has supplied annual collections of handmade 'Ikat' shirts to the Victoria & Albert Museum shop in London. 

Susan designed textiles for Bernat Klein and Bute Looms in Scotland but when she had young children in the 70's she left textiles to edit and publish children’s books. She edited the first children’s newspaper in 1980 for The Times called Small Times. After a bruising encounter with Rupert Murdoch, who pulled Small Times after its first edition because he thought it wouldn't make money, Susan left publishing in 1987 to create something new. She loved working with writers and a series of residential workshops for talented writers, composers, dancers and filmmakers, called Performing Arts Labs (PAL) was born to develop new works for theatre, cinema and opera. In 2000, PAL Labs received a grant from the National Endowment for Science and the Arts to bring leading artistic talents to work with practicing scientists and science teachers. Susan produced 150 experimental PAL Labs over 25 years across the UK and overseas.

Moving to Rye has given her a new lease of life. Besides the HerStory project Susan is currently working with the Trinidadian composer Dominique le Gendre, Founder Artistic Director of StrongBack productions, to develop SongMaps Rye focussed on climate resilience. This arts/science initiative will be bringing together artists, writers and environmentalists with local schools in a two year programme of workshops and events along with Dominique's new opera called The Chronicles of Rye.  

As Susan says, people often tend to work in silos and her aim is always to bring people from different disciplines together to discover new ways of working to create something new.  If that wasn’t enough for a woman in her mid-80s, she is also on the board of Rye News and has helped to set up a Press Club for students of all ages at Rye College.

Audio of interview with Susan