Public - Private - Volunteers – Charities: the changing face of Landscape Practice and the implications for communities

Speaker: Helen Brown

Plumstead Manor School Woolwich London SE18, Local community greening, learning and food project ©Tamsin Rhymes

From the late 1970s the increasing adoption of public / private partnerships have had a huge impact on the delivery and outcomes for our rural and urban landscapes and their communities. It also has driven large changes to a career in Landscape Architecture.

 The talk will examine some of the implications for publicly funded landscape practice and projects with the move to arm’s length trusts, charities, private consultancy, the use of volunteers, friends of groups and how this sector has developed, for better or worse.     

Helen Brown CMLI (retired) has had a sequence of careers in the visual arts from surface textile design to Landscape Architecture. She worked in public practice on major park restoration and conservation projects including the EU Life funded ‘London Lakes Project’ and ‘The History of Battersea Park’ a public digital interactive exhibition which won the 1993 LI Comms Award, both at Battersea Park as part of Jacky McCabe’s Landscape team at Wandsworth Council; and also at Crystal Palace Park with Bromley Council’s LA project team with Gustafson Porter’s restoration, conservation and development project, HLF funded project.  She was a design tutor at University of Greenwich and taught Historic Garden Conservation and Design with Community amongst other topics.

With the mantra ‘participation not consultation’, Helen is active in community greening projects in SE London, and is an officer in the newly designated Charlton Neighbourhood Forum. She is currently working with the public and several management organisations on securing an historic landscape study for Charlton House’s C17 landscapes and gardens.