James Croft

Why do people make art? What can we learn from art? How can we use the arts to better understand ourselves and our world? And what does it mean to understand something, anyway? These are the questions which drive me.

I'm a candidate for an Ed.D in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education - my advisor is Howard Gardner.

I hold an M.Ed in Arts in Education from the same institution, and an MA in Education with Drama and English from the University of Cambridge (1:1). I am privileged to have been made a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow, which has enabled me to continue my studies, and I was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

I am fascinated by all the places in which the study of the arts and of the mind collide. Currently, I'm working on synthesising descriptions of art-making and art-appreciation from different disciplines and different levels of analysis.

I am also an Ambassador for the Teach First program, from which I graduated wih distinction in July 2007. Under the program I spent two years teaching English (and some Drama!) in Longford Community School in Feltham, West London. This was an extraordinarily challenging and invaluable experience, and I will never forget the professionalism and dedication of the teachers I worked with, nor the good-naturedness and fundamental decency of the children who had the bizarre experience of having me as a teacher.

I am an experienced actor and singer, having performed in many locations around the world including St Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Statue of Liberty, Shakespeare's Globe, the Barbican, and the Royal Albert Hall. I have sung with the Surrey Youth Choir and National Youth Choir of Great Britain, under many renowned conductors and choral leaders, and have taken on such varied roles as Oedipus, Jacques and Touchstone ('As You Like It'), Thomas Becket (Murder in the Cathedral) and Father Christmas (numerous times). I currently sing with the Cambridge (MA)-based Oriana Consort.

For two years I worked part-time for the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project, a charity that takes Shakespeare into prisons around the UK. During my association with LSW I visited HMP Send, Highpoint, Brixton and Pentonville, and helped organise a production of 'The House of Bernarda Alba' that was performed at the Criterion Theatre in London. This was the first occasion in which inmates from a closed prison (HMP Send) were given leave to perform on a London Stage.

I try to weave the performative and academic parts of my life together through the Theatre of Thought, a Harvard student theatre group which seeks to explore complex and compelling ideas through the medium of theare.