Below are details of the expert speakers who you will be hearing from as part of each Assembly session.

Paul Creed

Paul is Head of Development & Placemaking in the Royal Docks team, which is a joint initiative between the Mayor of London and the Mayor of Newham to regenerate the Royal Docks in Newham. Paul’s team works on development sites, infrastructure and public realm projects.

Jessica - Young Expert

Aged 12, Jess is a young leader at the Shpresa Progamme and Telco. She's active in the Keep it Wild Project, working hard to make Stratford Park a safer place. This project helps people enjoy and reconnect with nature. Jess has been busy conducting surveys to find out what people want in their parks, for example cafes in the park with wifi. Her mum and brothers are her inspiration as she's watched them get involved in nature-based activities too. Jess goes to St Angela's Ursuline School.

Kevin - Young Expert

Also a young leader for the Shpresa Programme and Telco, Kevin is 14 and goes to School 21 in Stratford. He is especially keen for more people to feel safe in parks and have access to quality sport and art activities there. He’s learning how to organise to fix this and more about how the world works in general. Kevin is a strong advocate for the the Keep it Wild Project and was part of Youth Safety Commission working group with TELCO and Newham council.

Kelly Prior - London Borough of Newham

Kelly is Senior Community Safety Enforcement Officer with a substantial experience in Public safety in LBN parks and green spaces.

Elizabeth Withnall - Aldersbrook Residents Association

Elizabeth has lived around Aldersbrook for most of her life and moved onto the Brading Crescent estate just before the first lockdown. She is a full time teacher at a Secondary school in Redbridge where her roles included head of year and SEN teacher. She also has a two year old to keep her busy! In my role as an SEN teacher she set up a school allotment and this gave her the bug for trying to establish more community led initiatives including gardening. She set up the residents association Aldersbrook Action last August which has gone from strength to strength. There are 65 members on their WhatsApp and are hoping to expand this summer. Read more about them here http://aldersbrookandlakehouse.org/about/

Sonia Quintero - Newham Poetry Group

Poet, cultural promoter, dreamer and change maker. Sonia is the founder and organiser of Newham Poetry Group. She has experience of delivering poetry workshops in Newham’s Parks.

Jane Scott - Parkside Gardening

Jane Scott is a gardener with over 15 years experience working within horticulture. Passionate about community gardening, Jane has volunteered and worked on a number of community greening projects across London with various charities. She is one of two coordinators with Parkside Gardening Project, a Newham based project that uses gardening to support the wellbeing of adults with mental health needs.

Celia Wain-Heapy - Climate You Change

Rob Hopkins - Founder and Director Transition Towns

Rob Hopkins is a cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and Transition Network, and the author of The Transition Handbook, The Transition Companion, The Power of Just Doing Stuff, 21 Stories of Transition and most recently, From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want. He presents the podcast series ‘From What If to What Next‘ which invites listeners to send in their “what if” questions and then explores how to make them a reality. In 2012, he was voted one of the Independent’s top 100 environmentalists and was on Nesta and the Observer’s list of Britain’s 50 New Radicals. Hopkins has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought and A Good Read, in the French film phenomenon Demain and its sequel Apres Demain, and has spoken at TEDGlobal and three TEDx events.

Professor Kate Jones - Chair of Ecology and Biodiversity, UCL

Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity in the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CBER), within the Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment (GEE) at University College London. Kate has held appointments at the University of Cambridge, Columbia University, Imperial College London, and is an honorary fellow at the Zoological Society of London.

Ed Rosen - Project Director at GP Food Coops

Since 2012, Ed has been directly involved in supporting the Lambeth GP Food Co-op. He has been the project director since 2013 and has worked with GP surgeries across the London borough of Lambeth. The project was awarded the Best Sustainable Food Initiative in the NHS by the NHS Sustainability Unit/ Public Health England in 2013.

In March 2013, he led the launch of the Lambeth GP food co-op at Kings Collage Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Corner Surgery which is a first collaboration between a GP surgery and a large foundation trust to provide food growing opportunities for patients and staff.

Dr Duncan Wilson - Professor of Connected Environments, Advanced Spatial Analysis

A professional with over 20yrs of digital technology, R&D, innovation and strategy experience developed at individual contributor, team leader and management/executive levels. Primarily working at the interface between industry and academia in roles that challenge me to think about how digital technology can enhance automotive, retail and built environment sectors.

Currently Professor of Connected Environments in The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London and member of the Smart London Board. His research focuses on how emerging technologies such as connected sensors and cognitive computing can augment our understanding of the built and natural environment.

Victoria Bradford-Keegan - National Trust, Future Parks Accelerator

Victoria has been working on innovative projects relating to parks and greenspaces for over 7 years. She has worked with many local councils including many large cities and London boroughs. Currently she leads the Future Parks Accelerator programme on behalf of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the National Trust. This involves working with 8 large councils to rethink, redesign and repurpose parks for the 21st Century. Out of work, Victoria loves spending time in green space, including parks. She lives in Bolton in Greater Manchester and has two small children who love parks even more than Victoria.

Usman Haque - Umbrellium

Trained as an architect designing both physical environments & software infrastructure, Usman creates interactive systems & mass-participation platforms. Author of dozens of articles on cities, participation & the internet of things, he is a recipient of Japan Media Arts Festival's Excellence Prize, Asia Digital Art Award's Grand Prize & the Design Museum's Design of the Year Award (Interactive).

Cassie Robinson, Deputy Director of Funding Strategy - National Lottery Community Fund

Cassie is Deputy Director of Funding Strategy at The National Lottery Community Fund where she’s responsible for Innovation, Policy and Practice, and a £60 Million a year funding budget. She is also Co-founder of the Point People.

Over her career, she has taken on roles and projects that span the whole system of social change. Her passion is centred on connecting new thinking and practice, and growing relationships. Always with the goal of justice – a more equitable and regenerative society. Cassie sees culture as an integral part of social change and she’s produced programmes of work that have shown at places like the Barbican, Somerset House and the Royal Festival hall.

Day Four

Bridget Fox - Woodland trust

Bridget Fox is the External Affairs Officer for the Woodland Trust covering London and South East England, advising on the value of trees and woodlands for people and nature, and advocating for policies to better protect, enhance and connect them. Bridget has previously worked in planning, on renewable energy projects and on sustainable transport policy, and many years ago was a councillor in her home borough of Islington.

Outside work she was recently part of the British Red Cross volunteer team supporting the COVID vaccination programme in Newham. You can follow Bridget on Twitter https://twitter.com/WTBridget

Selina Papa - Lottery Heritage Fund

Selina is the Head of Engagement for the Lottery Heritage Fund. The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest dedicated grant funder of the UK’s heritage.

We distribute National Lottery grants from £3,000 to £5million and over, funding projects that sustain and transform the UK's heritage. We distribute other UK heritage funding, for example of behalf of governments. We provide leadership and support across the heritage sector, and advocate for the value of heritage.

Understanding, valuing and sharing our heritage brings people together, inspires pride in communities and boosts investment in local economies. We’re supporting the heritage sector to strengthen its recovery from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and build back for positive change. You can follow Selina on Twitter https://twitter.com/papa_selina

Cathy Stancer - Lankelly Chase

As an independent foundation, Lankelly Chase we’re working in partnership with people, across the UK, to change the systems that perpetuate severe and multiple disadvantage. Our mission is to get to a place where people want to, know how to and are free to create systems that are effective in responding to the interlocking nature of severe disadvantages such as homelessness, drug misuse, violence and abuse and mental ill health.

Ask Cathy about how severe and multiple disadvantage is experienced by different groups of people and the intersections with (and between) gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation; rights-based approaches, how we build a quantitative and qualitative picture of the lives of people facing severe and multiple disadvantage and the use of the law as a tool for change. You can follow Cathy on https://twitter.com/cathystancer

Mark Holloway - Parks Foundation

We are a small but perfectly formed independent charity devoted to enhancing Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s parks and green spaces for everyone to enjoy. Parks and green spaces breathe life into our towns providing our communities with precious spaces to get together, exercise and play. https://parksfoundation.org.uk/about-us/

Dr Mikey Tomkins - Edible Urban

Dr Mikey Tomkins works across academic research and art practices within the field of urban agriculture (UA) both as theory and practice.Mikey studied fine art, before completing a Masters in architecture at UEL. Following from he completed his PhD at the University of Brighton in the school of architecture and design, where I am currently an honorary research fellow. He worked at Sustain as part of the Capital Growth project where he trained beekeepers in London, setting up over 50 apiaries in the city. From 2014 - 2018 Mikey worked in Dallas and Iraq , developing UA as co-founder of the NGO The Lemon Tree Trust.

Mikey developed the Edible Maps, which combines mapping, artist-led walks, with talking, costumes as well as initiating food production. These combined academic-artistic approaches can enrich and complement quantitative approaches to developing UA, where the questions of yields are brought to life through stories, enactments, and images. Implementing UA is an important aspect of my work, meaning that something tangible should emerge from any research process. For example, in Newcastle (2018-2020), with the support of local gallery Shieldfield Art Works, wheat was planted in seven locations around the neighbourhood, which was harvest, milled and baked as bread. Please contact mikeytomkins@gmail.com for any questions.

Myanah Saunders - Forest Gate Community Gardenl

Forest Gate Community Garden develops projects that further our three garden aims to:

Create and maintain green spaces for wildlife, plants and people.

Support enjoyment and learning about nature.

Promote and inclusive community and nurture wellbeing.

Susan Lewis - Newham Council

Senior Neighbourhood Enforcement Officer

Jane Custance - Newham Council

Director of Planning & Development

Noel Hatch - Newham Council

Noel Hatch is head of the policy & research team who help the organisation better use research & insight to understand our communities better and work with services to better develop strategic plans to tackle our big issues.