Dr Sarah Scarsbrook

Sarah brings over fifteen years’ experience across higher education, the creative industries, and cultural research. She has designed and led foundation, undergraduate, and postgraduate courses in arts and cultural management, creative enterprise, and professional practice, achieving high levels of student satisfaction and progression.

Her co-designed curricula with local, national, and international creative industry partners, ensures that learning remains relevant, inclusive, and outward-facing. 

Combining academic insight with professional experience, she has worked with organisations including Surrey Arts, Southbank Centre, British Council, and the V&A to create opportunities that connect students, artists, and industry.

Sarah’s research-led and socially engaged approach to creative education champions practice-based methods that empower creatives to build sustainable, critically informed, and meaningful careers. By integrating pedagogy, practice, and sector knowledge, her work prepares students to navigate the cultural industries with confidence and creativity, and empowers creatives to build sustainable, critically informed, and meaningful careers.

Sarah’s research explores artists’ experiences of education, professionalisation, and creative labour, with a particular focus on class, access, and equity in the creative and cultural industries. Her project Classed Acts uses podcast-as-research to foreground working-class voices in arts and humanities higher education and the creative economy.

She has published and presented widely on creative education, cultural policy, and artist professional identities, including in the Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy and at the International Conference for Cultural Policy Research. 

Sarah’s research and practice continue to inform inclusive, research-led approaches to creative learning and professional development in championing inclusive pathways into creative careers.

• Artists’ identities, professionalisation, and career pathways
• Access, equity, and class in higher arts education
• Creative and cultural policy, and its relationship to creative higher education
• Practice-based and research-led pedagogy in creative learning
• Creative enterprise, industry engagement, and curriculum co-design
• Inclusive approaches to professional development in the arts

Sarah holds a PhD in Arts Management from Birkbeck College, University of London.  Her research investigates the intersection of creative education, professional practice, and cultural policy, with a particular focus on class, access, and inclusion in higher arts education. 

She employs practice-led and socially engaged methodologies, including podcast-as-research, to foreground artist voices and experiences. Her work critically examines the professionalisation of artists and the development of sustainable creative careers, bridging academic research with sector practice. Through her projects and publications, Sarah contributes to the development of inclusive, research-informed pedagogies that prepare students for meaningful participation in the creative and cultural industries.