Biography
Jenny Thornley
I began painting and making sculptures late in life, in my 50s. In 2007 I gained an MA in Fine Art at the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design in Whitechapel, London.
My first degree was in Town and Country Planning and I practised as a planner for three years before joining a research institute in London.
One of the projects I undertook was a study of the workers' cooperative movements in Britain, France and Italy. This was at a time when small workers' cooperatives were setting up all over the country in the 1970s in response to high levels of unemployment.
My publications include Workers' Cooperatives: Jobs and Dreams, published by Heinemann Educational Books, 1981.
After that I joined the Waltham Forest Cooperative Development Agency where I helped to set up new cooperatives and then I worked for a GLC-funded organisation making loans to existing cooperatives.
While my two sons were growing up I worked as a gardener and a dyslexia teacher.
Then I took an MSc in speech and language therapy and, for the last nine years I have been working as a therapist with autistic children in Bermondsey and Peckham.