ABOUT

At the heart of my work is a deep faith in collaboration, born of experiencing, again and again, what becomes possible when we meet one another and the living world with real attention. Complex challenges can be creatively addressed when we approach them as whole systems, drawing on many perspectives and ways of knowing.

As a researcher, designer and learning partner, I support foundations, public bodies, civil society organisations and private sector clients. Together, we build capacity to learn, decide and design in ways that enable diverse experiences and voices to shape programmes, places and strategies.

Over three decades my engagements have embraced housing, health, education, food and farming, play and the public realm. These include national guidance on inclusive schools, resident participation in affordable housing design, public spaces cared for collectively, local food economies rooted in place and collaborative research for systems change.

My approach weaves together geography and policy, art and landscape, research and teaching, ecology and farming. It began with geography at Cambridge and parliamentary research on environmental policy, followed by a doctorate on the ethics of community design that took me to UC Berkeley.

Alongside, an artistic practice opened a way of thinking with the material and imaginative qualities of place, and led me into landscape architecture. More recently, research at Coventry University and Stellenbosch University, training in organisational constellations and farming with my family have deepened my understanding of places and organisations as alive and interconnected.

Throughout, I have discovered that life-affirming change grows from careful listening, genuine meeting and shared learning, and that it is sustained by responsive strategy and cultures of collective stewardship.