Common Ground?
- BOOK A PLACE for this Green Conversations event)
Welcome
In April's instalment of this year's Green Conversation series, we will be exploring themes of biodiversity, flood resilience and freedom through the lens of front gardens and continuing this year's theme of 'The Commons'. We are delighted to announce three amazing speakers who will bring their own angle to the topic and generate a discussion. We look forward to welcoming you at the Brookmill (4 minutes walk from St Johns Station and 8 minutes walk from Elverson Road DLR station.
Freedom to Roam (with Joanna Jones)
- Playgrounds of the imagination
Joanna is a British artist who co-founded the London studio collective in 1973. After settling in Dover in 1997 she set up The Dover Arts Development (DAD) in 2006 with Claire Smith. Their organisation continues to nurture a formidable local artistic community. Joanna also enjoys Dover's sprawling landscape and apparent lack of boundaries. These experiences have led her to realise the important connection between our internal and external realities. "How can we shape the innovations for a better future", she asks, "if we can’t roam freely across the lands and in our imaginations?"
Spongey Neighbourhoods (with Marcus Gayle)
- Flood resilience for St Johns
Marcus has worked in the public sector for numerous years, delivering innovative nature-based flood resilience schemes. He is a civil engineering and a Chartered water and environmental manager with extensive experience working with communities to implement nature-based adaptation. His work is driven by a commitment to creating resilient and environmentally friendly infrastructure for the communities he serves.
Gifts to the Street (with Create Streets)
- How better homes and gardens can create better streets
Create Streets is a London-based social enterprise that works alongside its charitable arm, the Create Streets Foundation, to make it easier to develop and steward places that are popular, sustainable, beautiful, healthy, and prosperous. They advocate for fine grained, street-based urbanism, and for greater community input into the design and creation of new places. They work ‘bottom up’, working with community groups, councils, and landowners, and ‘top down’, developing policy and advocating for planning reform. They will introduce their research into the links between the built environment and our health, happiness, wellbeing, and prosperity, and then delve into some ideas for how we can unlock the potential of St Johns through making better use of our roofs and front gardens.