Ellie Kuper Thomas is the Planning Policy Manager at the London Borough of Newham. She has worked at Newham for a year and a half and before that worked at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets – just the other side of the river Lea. The Planning Policy Team is responsible for writing and monitoring the policies which shape and manage development in the borough.

Advisor to the Mayor of Paris – Innovation, Digital, Resident Experience & Participation, Equality, Human Rights and 15 Minute Neighbourhoods

The concept of the 15 Minute City came to prominence particularly in Paris as a key priority, inspiring other cities across the world.

Healthy Streets was developed by Lucy Saunders through her research on the interface of urban spaces and human health. She is a unique combination of public health specialist, urbanist and transport planner.

Lucy works with organisations across the world adapting her Healthy Streets Approach to each context. She also collaborates with kind and brilliant people to create exciting new things that help to improve population health.

The success of this Approach is its wide-reaching resonance across political, special interest and professional divides. Lucy uses this Approach to engage, influence and coordinate a wide range of stakeholders around a coherent vision. She is a skilled and engaging presenter and teacher who has inspired and trained hundreds of practitioners, advocates and politicians around the world.

Dan Hill is Director of Strategic Design at Vinnova, the Swedish government’s innovation agency, and Professor at Oslo School of Architecture and Design. A designer and urbanist, his previous design leadership roles include Arup, Future Cities Catapult, Fabrica, SITRA and the BBC, and he has lived and worked in UK, Australia, Finland, Italy and Sweden. He is Visiting Professor at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Design Academy Eindhoven, and an Adjunct Professor in Design at RMIT University. He is a founding member of the Council on Urban Initiatives, a joint initiative between UCL, LSE Cities and UN HABITAT. Dan is also a Design Advocate for the Mayor of London, and a Trustee of Participatory City Foundation.

Gemma is the Project and Policy Officer for Healthier Places at the TCPA, where she works to support the TCPA’s work on reuniting health with planning. As part of a collaborative project between the TCPA and Sport England, Gemma promotes and facilitates the implementation of healthy, more active places including 20-Minute Neighbourhoods. Prior to joining the TCPA, Gemma worked as a planner in Milton Keynes. She has Post-grad and Masters qualifications in public health and urban and rural planning from the University of the West of England.

Hello, my name is Halima Hamid and my upbringing is in East-London. I am an active mum and local resident that enjoys recreational outdoors sports, such as cycling, swimming and walking to keep and maintain a healthy and holistic lifestyle. I am a keen community builder and aspire to create community unity projects that inspire grassroots initiatives. I have varied experience with voluntary work and have been involved in consultations and participations. I come from an education background but connect better with localised engagements. I am passionate about working with women, also very interested in wellbeing and wellness organisations.

My name is Twinkle. I have been living in Beckton for 12 years. I love the area and have seen many changes over the years. I have worked before as a volunteer for children centre and also been a parent governor for my local school.

I joined the CSS program last year which included training as well as doing fieldwork which involved visiting few areas assigned to us within Newham and approaching locals, doing interviews and asking what good life actually means to them, the issues they face in their areas and what they think can help improve their life.

Noel is the Head of Policy & Research at London Borough of Newham. He is passionate about mobilising the collective creativity of people around local places and bringing people together from different walks of life to make a difference in their places. He brings experience in strategy, transformation, insight, service design and change, as well as a co-founder of a cultural organisation.

His service helps develop activities that help the organisation better understand the needs & experiences of residents, develop strategic priorities and translating them into practical commitments, and developing strategic partnerships and attracting funding into the borough. It also leads the development of Citizens Assemblies.

Michael Wood is the Head of Health Economic Partnerships at the NHS Confederation. Prior to this he developed and held the role of NHS local growth adviser from 2015, for some of this time working as deputy local growth consultant for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Before that, he was senior European policy manager at the NHS European Office for more than seven years. He has also worked for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and for a Member of the European Parliament in Brussels. Michael is currently on part-time secondment to NHS London advising on the development of an NHS Anchor Network, as well as holding national advisory positions on the Civic University Network, AccessHE and the Midlands Engine Health Board.

Christina Pace is Assistant Director of Children’s Commissioning at London Borough of Newham.

Kirsty Reed is Early Years Strategic Lead at the London Borough of Newham.

Over 85,000 children live in Newham. Partners are committed to ensuring that every child in the borough grows up happy, healthy and safe, and receives an excellent education, which prepares them for the next stage of their lives.

Early help is the principle of providing the right support at the right time to tackle problems emerging for children, young people and their families. It is about providing effective help as soon as difficulties emerge, while they are still low level.

Dan Hopewell is Director of Knowledge and Innovation at the Bromley by Bow Centre. The Bromley by Bow Centre is a dynamic and innovative charity operating in East London. The charity is focused on transforming the lives of local residents and the community as a whole. It’s based in Tower Hamlets, but operates across East London and delivers services in areas of very high deprivation. Whilst providing universal services, the Centre focuses on those with greatest needs and vulnerabilities, often the people considered the hardest to reach and engage. Working the bodies as large as the NHS, to GP practices and local community groups, the Bromley by Bow Centre is supporting the development of a range of health creation initiatives, from ambitious new Health and Wellbeing Hubs to local health creation networks that complement the recently formed Primary Care Networks. Dan Hopewell is also London co-chair of the Social Prescribing Network and London Region Facilitator for Social Prescribing.

I have lived and worked in Newham for a decade and I’m constantly learning about the borough and the people that live here. I have a passion for improving the local environment and enabling as many people as possible to walk and cycle more, to help people live healthier lives and to make the borough a better place to live.

Change can be difficult; I have worked with schools, community groups, and individual residents; and led the delivery of infrastructure and traffic management projects, to enable behaviour change.

Ben Addy is the Head of Collaborative Design for Sustrans London. Ben has extensive experience in the management and delivery of exemplar community engagement and collaborative design projects and programmes.

Leading the Collaborative Design Team in London, he understands meaningful engagement is essential in reimagining London’s streets and spaces and increasing equity in the city.

Sustrans is the charity making it easier for people to walk and cycl, the work they're doing creates healthier places and happier people.

Katherine Jacob has 20 years worth of experience in community development and project management in Glasgow, Bristol and London. Her previous roles include work with Age UK, Origin Housing, Lambeth Healthwatch, Harlesden Crisis and leading community projects. She has been working for 2.5 years with Living Streets as London Manager, running a small team which has delivered projects in Brent, Merton, City of London, Barking & Dagenham, Redbridge, Havering and Camden. She has experience of school streets, LTN, public engagement, healthy street audits, school route audits, WOW (Walk To School), play streets. Last summer, she also led engagement in Brent around their 9 Healthy Neighbourhoods programme (low traffic neighbourhoods).

Living Streets is a national charity with bases in Scotland, Wales, North England and London, which just celebrated its 90th birthday. It used to be known as the Pedestrian Association – established in 1929 as a campaigning organisation. It has achieved major and lasting changes including pedestrian crossings (1934), speed limits (1934), the Highway Code (1931) and the national driving test (1934). More recent successes include WOW Walk To School programme (using software Travel Tracker), School Route Audits and Community Street Audits to critically assess the walking environment. Living streets' current campaign is to ban pavement parking.

Rebecca Trevalyan creates and lives in places where she can build, eat, share and learn with others. She helps build neighbourhoods that have everything we need within a 15 minute walk. She previously set up community assets and infrastructure like Impact Hub Brixton, Open Project Night, People's Fridge Brixton, which emerged out of innovation programmes she led on local space/ food/ education systems.

One of her long-term projects is Library of Things - a social enterprise that helps people save money and reduce waste by affordably renting out useful Things like drills, sound systems and sewing machines from local spaces. We're active in libraries and community hubs across London & soon the South East. We are looking for community organisations, councils, manufacturers and funders who believe this should exist in neighbourhoods everywhere.

A current project Rebecca Trevalyan is leading is a programme called Platform - to change property uses, practice and ownership in UK town centres.

Sharon Prince has lived in Newham for 25 years and been part of GoodGym since 2016.

Goodgym is a community of people who are getting fit by doing good. Goodgym started in Tower Hamlets 2009 and came to Newham in 2014.

Goodgym Newham have been involved in various projects including a race trip to Bruges and the Goodgym Olympics.

John is the Debt, Benefits & Employment Rights Team Leader for Our Newham Money.

Newham is the first Local Authority in the UK to establish an Employment Rights Hub.

The Employment Rights Hub, Our Newham Money, is key to delivering on the Mayor's Community Wealth Building agenda, to ensure economic growth in Newham is shared locally. The Mayor is putting people at the heart of everything the council does to ensure that you, our residents, have access to financial support whatever your circumstances.

Our Newham Money offers support to Newham residents who may be struggling with debt or the everyday cost of living. We are a free confidential service and here to help you secure financial wellbeing.

https://www.ournewhammoney.co.uk/

Frames of Mind is a new charitable participatory arts organisation based in Stratford.

Frames of Mind deliver training and bespoke projects using film, stop frame animation and digital arts to support the health and wellbeing of Newham’s communities.

Directors Bo and Zoe share backgrounds in television and art direction and the desire to empower communities to exploit the language of film and digital media as a powerful advocacy tool, to tell their stories, and inspire positive communication.

We believe preserving unique individual histories is an essential part of our collective heritage promoting a shared sense of belonging which underpins communities.

Every One Every Day is a groundbreaking initiative in London’s borough of Barking and Dagenham which aims to give people living and working in the area the practical tools they need to improve their lives and the lives of their family, friends and neighbours. 6,000+ people are already involved in making their neighbourhood better by hosting growing, making, repairing, connecting, learning and cooking projects across the borough. Every One Every Day operates out of 6 neighbourhood spaces and one large maker space ‘the Warehouse’ that are places for idea incubation, sharing and learning.

Iris Schoenherr’s role is to design inclusive and low risk programmes that incubate collaborative and co-operative businesses in food, ceramic, wood work, childcare, recycled plastic, textiles and much more.

Kul Sanghera is one of the partners in Partap Fashion Fabrics, established in 1970 on Green Street. He was brought up in the area and has seen the changes over time. He has worked here and in Southall in his family business.

Kul Sanghera was also on the committee of the Southall Chamber of commerce and Green Street CIC and is currently Chairman of the Green Street Traders Association as well as a partner and director in several companies.

Matthew Jaffa is the Federation of Small Businesses’ chief London spokesperson and leads on London policy issues affecting small businesses, including economic policy. He also worked in the national policy team on education and skills, and transport policy.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is a membership organisation representing small and medium-sized businesses throughout the UK.

Prior to working at the FSB, Matthew Jaffa worked in the Cabinet Office in the Better Regulation Executive looking at European Regulatory Impact Assessment and the Strategy Unit, where he was a researcher on various strategic projects.

Matthew Jaffa will be talking about the importance of small businesses, shopping locally, how we must ensure they get paid on time, procurement and the importance of spending locally. And all the impacts of government policies on growth.

Amy Rosa is a Participatory Democracy Coordinator at Newham and coordinates the Community Assemblies programme.

The Community Assemblies are open and inclusive neighbourhood forums, where residents can discuss and find solutions to issues of local concern. Through the current assembly cycle, residents have been able to decide how to spend £100,000 in each neighbourhood on a range of projects to improve their local area and benefit the whole community.

Mohamed Hammoudan has over 35 years’ experience working in the public and charity sectors. Before joining Newham in 2012, Mohamed worked for a number of local authorities across different disciplines, including sports and leisure, play and youth, community work and neighbourhood and town centre management. Since 2015, he has managed Newham Council’s Resident Engagement and Participation service.

Mohamed Hammoudan leads on Newham’s community assemblies, which is one of the largest resident participatory budgeting programme in the country. Mohamed has responsibility for a range of community assets in Newham, including libraries, community centres and the town halls.

Mohamed Hammoudan has worked for a number of national charity organisations including Community Matters, where he led on the National Youth Empowerment Programme.

Mohamed Hammoudan will be covering the topic of everyday service delivery.

Mohamed Hammoudan will be covering the topic of everyday service delivery

Jeremy Leach is Chair of London Living Streets which works to be a voice for people on foot across the capital. Active travel offers a huge opportunity to reduce emissions across Newham where three-quarters of all journeys in Newham are already active being made either by public transport, walked or cycled but where motor vehicles currently dominate much of the streetspace.

Living Streets is a volunteer organisation that campaigns for a city that enables and inspires people to walk. Jeremy Leach will be covering the topic of active travel, walking and cycling.

Gary Connors will be covering the topic of community safety, a cross-cutting issue