Rachel Jacobs is an award winning artist, researcher, creative educator, consultant and interactive designer. She was a pioneer of video streaming in the late 1990s and early mobile and locative art games in the early 2000s. Her interactive, socially and environmentally engaged artworks have toured nationally and internationally. She is currently working on the research and development project ‘Rituals and Robots‘ exploring the connections between the environmental and climate crisis and the impacts of digital technology, creating three new artworks in response.

Rachel is lead artist on the 30 year arts/research project ‘Future Machine & When the Future Comes‘ where the mysterious interactive artwork on wheels – Future Machine – appears at the same time every year, in five curious places across England, as the seasons change. 

She co-founded the artist-led collective Active Ingredient in 1996 and the commercial games company Mudlark Production Company in 2007. She co-produced a series of British-Brazilian projects in collaboration with Mobilefest and artist/curator Silvia Leal between 2007-2017, travelling regularly to Brazil to work with schools, artists, botanists and in the Mata Atlantica.

Rachel was an Associate Researcher at Horizon Digital Economy, University of Nottingham since 2018, where she completed a Doctorate in Computer Science in 2014 and was a Research Fellow at Horizon Digital Economy 2017-2018, Visiting Research Fellow at Central St Martins, UAL (2019-2022) and An Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College (2023). She publishes and presents regularly in academic and arts contexts.

She is one of the artists in residence as part of the The Commons Residency Project, an arts, ecology and music residency in Finsbury Park, and is also a resident artist at Primary in Nottingham.

Rachel facilitates imaginative and innovative workshops that help us imagine positive futures in response to climate and environmental change, in universities, schools and community groups. She is looking for new commissions and research projects and is available to run workshops in all kinds of contexts.