ACA Chartered Accountant
Professional accountancy training, grounded in the practical choices that keep organisations financially viable.
← HomeTHE PERSON BEHIND THE QUESTIONSA life.
A life.
A few turns.
Still curious.
Creative ambition and financial viability. I’ve always been interested in both.
STUDY & EXPERIENCE
A few useful foundations.
Economics, creative practice and commercial experience all inform the questions I bring to a room.
Industrial Economics degree
University of Nottingham
Part of the background to Human Economics and its questions about what we measure and who benefits.
Art studies
Slade; Kensington and Chelsea College
My art education has included both institutions. I also achieved a Fine Art distinction.
IN PRACTICE
Digital and direct marketing. Financial modelling.
Practical experience connecting creative ideas, the people they need to reach and the numbers that help them work.
CREATIVITY CAME FIRSTNot quite
Not quite
a straight line.
I began in advertising, including charity-focused work at Bluefrog and work at FEEL, the agency founded by Dr Chris Arnold. Chris is now my business partner.
I subsequently trained as an ACA Chartered Accountant in my twenties. Creativity came before accountancy; the training added another way to understand whether an idea could work and keep working.
My art education has included the Slade and Kensington and Chelsea College, and I achieved a Fine Art distinction. I’m interested in making things, looking closely and being prepared to see something differently.
Over approximately fifteen years, I’ve explored creative, entrepreneurial and charitable projects in the UK and East Africa. That has included supporting startups, a former non-executive director role at Startup Direct, running coworking spaces and restoring a 1939 wooden boat.
There have been debates, including from a horsebox, and professional boxing events in Uganda, where I’ve promoted events and helped launch professional careers.
Some things worked; some did not. They weren’t all part of a perfectly planned strategy. I’m dyslexic, and my way through a problem is not always a straight line either.
The through-line is a wish to challenge conventional thinking about business, success and the way we live, and encourage people to imagine better possibilities.
Ideas need
somewhere to go.
EVIDENCE INTO BETTER DECISIONS
My Social Impact
Marcus co-founded My Social Impact with Dr Chris Arnold to help organisations understand, improve and communicate the difference they make. The work connects strategy, evidence, delivery and credible communication. It informs Human Economics and Social Impact Excellence: social impact should be taken as seriously as financial performance.
Visit My Social ImpactIDEAS INTO SOMETHING REAL
The Ideas Shed
After years of ideas and entrepreneurial experiments, Marcus founded The Ideas Shed: a creative venture studio combining imagination, commercial experience and AI to build websites, software, apps and new ventures. Technology is helping him carry more ideas into reality, with fewer of the resources that once put them out of reach. That practical experience is behind his talk and workshop, From Ideas to Action.
Visit The Ideas ShedOPPORTUNITY IN EAST AFRICA
The Wild Ones
The Wild Ones is a Kampala creative community and social enterprise connecting artists, musicians, entrepreneurs and people with ideas. Its next chapter is being developed in Muyenga. Marcus’s wider work in East Africa has included promoting professional boxing events in Uganda and helping launch professional careers. Wild Futures, digital inclusion and opportunities for young people to explore technology and AI remain developing ambitions, rather than established programmes.
Visit The Wild OnesROOM FOR PEOPLE TO CREATE
Interim Spaces
Marcus is a trustee of Interim Spaces, a charity bringing empty buildings back into use for artists, entrepreneurs and communities. Affordable studios, flexible workspace and opportunities to try a business connect creative ambition with practical support. Its work includes artist studios, a retail incubator and space for local makers in Shepton Mallet, reimagining what underused buildings and high streets can become.
Visit Interim SpacesLIFE AS A WORK OF ARTA work
A work
in progress.
Life as a work of art in progress. I like the thought that a life can be something we keep making, rather than something we are supposed to get right once.
Thomas Crum’s invitation to turn a life of work into a work of art is an influence here. My art education and creative practice keep that idea practical: try something, look at what happened, learn from a mistake and try again.
An original reflection inspired by Thomas Crum’s The Magic of Conflict.
The Delphic maxim “Know thyself”, discussed by Socrates in Plato’s Charmides, is another useful starting point. What do I value? Which ambitions are mine, and which have I borrowed from other people’s expectations? Being curious includes examining my own assumptions and being willing to change my mind.
Technology is part of the experiment. I’m interested in how it can expand human possibilities, make useful ideas real and help us improve other people’s lives. Efficiency can matter, but it isn’t the only reason to make something.
I want to see a world where curiosity and creativity are valued as highly as certainty. That doesn’t mean abandoning evidence or financial reality. It means making room to ask whether our familiar ways of doing things are serving people well.
That’s a question I take into speaking, writing and the next experiment.
Explore the books in development