3 lunchtimes of inspiration and learning on how to make a positive social impact on places.

 

Join us from 1-3 March to gain fresh insight on making a positive impact through your place-based work.

 

What to do, what to avoid, and how to measure it. Join us for a tight programme of enlightening and fresh voices offering deep, inspiring and practical knowledge. 

 

The talks will also be recorded and made available along with our festival talks library, so you won’t miss a thing.

 

This digital event brings together our community of developers, local authorities, academics, architects, landscape designers, impact investors, community groups and collaborators to learn and be inspired by a series of talks that look at the social determinants of health and wellbeing and place-based impact. 

 

Join this frank and open conversation about the challenges of making places that thrive, be inspired by the work being done, learn and get energised.

 

Agenda

 

 

1 March

11:00 - Sarah Forster, CEO and Co-Founder of The Good Economy Partnership will be speaking about making a meaningful and measurable place-based social impact. Having worked at the forefront of finance for positive impact for more than 25 years, Forster previously worked in the fields of sustainable economic development, development finance and impact measurement and management before founding The Good Economy in 2015.

12:00 - Maria Adebowale-Schwarte, CEO of the Foundation for Future London, will share her insights on capacity building in communities to ensure they gain from urban regeneration. The foundation is a charity set up in 2015 to connect the communities of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest with the new East Bank and its globally renowned arts, innovation and cultural partners. The Foundation for Future London fundraises to expand grant-making and creative placemaking opportunities

 

12:50 - Olaide Oboh is a Director at Socius Developments, a developer committed to making a positive social and environmental impact. Oboh will share their key approaches to delivering a place-based social impact for the communities in which they work

 

2 March

 

11:00 -  Filip Mesko is an architect and academic researching the divide between the town and country, from the design of the original garden cities, to the emergence of the suburbs, to BIG’s latest proposals for eco-developments. Mesko will discuss the merging of countryside, ‘wildness’ and urban as we see future town-planning paradigms for the survival of life in a world remade by climate change.

 

11:50 Breakout & parley: Trickle Down, Levelling Up, Social Value and magical thinking: Steven Taylor, researcher and The Developer contributor and Festival director Christine Murray lead an audience discussion as we discuss the myths, challenges, blockers and opportunities taking place in the industry around the theme of social impact. Your chance to take part, join the stage and contribute to the debate 

 

12:30 - Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix: Why nature makes us happier, healthier and more creative (2018) and her latest book, Heartbreak: A personal and scientific journey (2022) will share her insights on how beauty and nature can help people heal and feel better

 

3 March 

 

11:00 - Dr. Isabelle Anguelovski will be sharing her research on green gentrification and what policies and practices you need to ensure climate resilience and net zero includes all citizens. Anguelovski studies how environmental injustice is materialised and contested, including the social and racial manifestations and impacts of green gentrification for historically marginalised residents and urban planning for health and wellbeing, with a focus on land use, health equity and justice

 

12:00 - Professor Nick Tyler, Director of the Centre for Transport Studies at UCL, will share his latest research on how urban parks affect the human brain and behaviour, as learned through experiments in the UCL urban environments laboratory, PEARL. Tyler works in a transdisciplinary way, researching how humans respond to urban environments physically through their senses, and how we can design the city to be encourage sociality

 

12:50 - Andrew van Doorn is Chief Executive of HACT, which helps the housing sector drive value for residents and communities by supporting the measurement of social value and connections to the NHS and other like-minded organisations