Living in the 'avant-garden of life', Kirsty Lucinda Allan has led a curious career. Born in 1982 in Scotland, Kirsty was raised in East Kilbride, near Glasgow. Attending local schools and ballet classes, she was a quiet, studious child, yet secretly she was fascinated by the 'big questions', the unconventional and the outré. Studying ancient mysticism, magick and comparative religion as soon as she could hold an encyclopedia, keeping snakes by age ten and practicing hypnosis by 12, she was perhaps always destined to become a 'maverick' in her fields. In the 1990s, Kirsty was a child fashion model and junior ballerina for the Scottish Ballet Company, but her ambitions were curtailed by her developing body shape being deemed 'unsuitable' for either career. As an alternative thinker, these rejections laid the foundation for later adventures challenging body and beauty norms. As an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Glasgow, Kirsty created Ministry of Burlesque as a project to help her and others overcome Anxiety surrounding body image. In doing so, she became an accidental arts movement leader and is considered one of the pioneers of the modern burlesque renaissance. As a 'student hobby that got out of hand', she has produced, directed and written approximately 1,000 shows, workshops and media projects celebrating body and beauty diversity. In also landing (cat-like) in the world of corsetry, latex, fetish and alternative fashion, her subversive appeal led to many worldwide magazine covers (including prestigious art publication 125 magazine), international catwalks and art gallery exhibitions. Adding to her remarkable portfolio, Kirsty was also a formal paranormal investigator for a psychical society and became a consultant for mainstream television and leisure groups on matters of hauntings, vampires and psychic phenomena. By age 23 her first business cards read 'Pinup, Performer, Paranormal Investigator'. As a postgraduate, Kirsty has studied at numerous universities acquiring further certificates in the fields of parapsychology, consciousness, transpersonal psychology, spirituality and mental health interventions. She continues her academic research today - specialising in psi phenomena and the trait of high sensitivity. She is also a scholar and teacher of Western mystery philsophy. Through her unusual career in both avant-garde arts and science, she has developed many unique creative wellbeing workshops and personal development courses inspired by the beauty and insight in everything she encounters. Kirsty lives in an old (happily haunted) 17th Century home in the romantic Lake District, UK with her husband Jon, two children (Victor and Gabriel), cats and a snake. She continues to write, create and coach others to realise their potential through expansive consciousness. More information can be found on Ironic Fundamentalism here: https://belong.theifcrowd.com
