Born 1967 in Adelaide, South Australia.
Healthy and strong. An unfailingly cheerful baby who charmed everyone. The dazzling smile came early. She walked the day she turned ten months old and soon after showed signs of being left-handed. A reader by three and at four took charge of her baby sister born in April 1972.
The first big change was a long sea journey to Europe: her fifth birthday in Sweden. An English childhood: Cheltenham, Leicester and Rothley village.
A teenager in Thatcher’s Britain.
She was especially talented in music, art and design. An inspired music teacher understood her. After the flute she added the double bass, music theory and there were busy orchestra days and later the bass guitar: a rock chick in the making. Subjects at ‘A’ Level Design, English and Engineering Science and the first dominated her efforts.
Life was too interesting to be confined to schoolwork and she needed convincing to stay on. Always supremely creative she had a distinctive style in everything she did. She pushed the limits and was a vital force in her family.
University was a let down at first: too little design in Design and Technology. The transfer to Leicester Polytechnic to study 3D Design was a good move and she began to rediscover her love of design.
She filled her life with friends, music and girl band ‘Ella’ and could come close to home for occasional comforts.
A BA Hons 2.1 in 1990 and a hope of a career in design. But this was the end of the boom time and the graduate job market had plummeted. The search for work as a designer proved fruitless.
After a year, she decided to moved to Glasgow. Once there she began to forge a new life. Out of this time came an MSc at Strathclyde in November 1992 and then her first ‘real’ job.
New friends and new experiences.
On to Edinburgh, a new job at the University and for the first time she bought her own flat in Easter Road.
Scotland was home for seven memorable years before she moved south to Manchester and then to London.
A BA Hons 2.1 in 1990 but the graduate job market had plummeted.
She tried hard to find work as a designer in her local area but this proved fruitless.
She decided with Dawn, to take a chance in Glasgow. Out of this time came an MSc at Strathclyde in November 1992 and then her first ‘real’ job at Glasgowe University.
She forged a new life making many lasting friends and exciting experiences.
In Edinburgh she joined the CLIVE project and bought her first flat in Easter Road.
For 10 years she developed her career in digital design from interactive learning and web work to mobile technologies
London life in the post 9/11 world was not easy but there were exciting times and good friends.
A series of medical mistakes led down the wrong diagnostic path. In February 2003, after desperate attempts to get help, ovarian cysts were found. Her March post-operative tests did not show cancer. In June she knew and her July 5th operation confirmed advanced ovarian cancer.
But it was already too late.
The surgeon told her mother she had six months.She beat his estimate by a month and died February 2004 after a tremendous fight.
Emma loved creating through drawing and making and writing. A sharp eye for shape and colour and form.
She was a designer by training and her unique talents found many forms in personal and professional life: from a winning poster for the Labour Party youth campaign, designing T-shirts and cards, her parents’ home extension to the multi-media performance Solitary Citizen and ground breaking online learning courses for Veterinary students in the CLIVE project at Edinburgh University.
A talent for performing and eclectic tastes in music.
First the flute and then double bass lessons and eventually good enough to perform in the Leicestershire Concert Orchestra.
Whether it was driven by dreams of stardom or just a love of performing she became a rock chick in the days when few existed. She played bass guitar in Ella girl band with Dawn, Mary, Lydia, Pam and Lisa.
She had particular preference for George Michael from his Wham days onwards: she called her two fish, George Michael Fat and George Michael Ugly. Billy Bragg was a love that lasted a lifetime. And Paul Weller through The Jam, Style Council and beyond. Prince, Everything but the Girl, Isaac Hayes, Shangri-Las, DJ Food, G-Love and Special Sauce and many more.
She was very good at getting her younger siblings into concerts underage.
Emma was always making things. A true creative.
She was equally comfortable with drawings on paper, with moulding clay and with film and digital media. As a school girl she constructed her final design project installation in steel. Her birthday cards to her family were creative works in themselves.
Her drawings are full of life and movement. Her handwritten texts are instantly recognisable for their strong style. She wrote long and memorable letters. Most of all she was a visual artist with a keen sense of form and colour.
In the last year of her life she regained touch with the art and craft of design work in her pottery and life classes. She struggled to reach a quality in her work no matter what it was and always found the effort both rewarding and a stimulus to do better.
She was a multi-media designer and innovation manager in the information and telecommunications industries.
Working between countries and work cultures in marketing and product research.
She was concerned with design and innovation for a purpose- not the gadget idea of technology.
She wanted things that were really useful and benefited people’s lives. So in her work she kept everyone thinking in terms of a user focus
Emma is remembered as someone who would listen and respond. Wherever she was and whoever she was with she could be seen texting and talking - often simultaneously. She knew many people but was close to only a few. Friends go back a long way and she is remembered by everyone who cross her path as someone who responded to you in a special way.
There were special places that Emma made home.
Her bedroom at the Old Farm House Rothley was painted in a vibrant yellow and black. Her flat in East Road Edinburgh was a mixture of ochre red and cool blue. At Brighton Grove New Cross her room was deep mauve and white. She loved the designs, colours and objects of the 1950s.
Her nests were inevitably chaotic in a busy life Sometimes there were bouts of frantic activity out of which a nugget of change would emerge.
Other places she passed through at speed, a keen absorber of the visual magic of modern cities and their unique character. Travels to Moscow, Berlin, New York were adventures to be savoured and stored as rich sustaining memories.
In December 2003, Emma went to Wales to share New Year with friends all the while unable to eat or drink. She struggled to the shore and full of pain, made her way back to the cottage never to see the sea again.
Back in London she died a month later just before dawn, in a small room overlooking the Thames. She had lived long enough to see her namesake baby niece born two weeks before. The notice in the Guardian and Leicester Mercury had mentioned her blog and soon she was a posthumous celebrity on the cover of G2 magazine. She would have roared with laughter at the very thought.
Family and friends gathered on February 14th in Loughborough to say goodbye. In April they gathered again to share memories and celebrate her life at the Yoga centre in South London where she had received so much succour. She had once said in the long dark days of waiting for the chemo to kick in: “It will be harder for you.” And, as usual, she was right.