I work for Locality, previously the Development Trusts Association. In 2007 I set up the DTA’s consultancy service, the Pool, drawing on the grassroots expertise of practitioners throughout the development trust movement. Alongside providing high-quality advice and support on community enterprise and community assets, the Pool also develops experimental work for the DTA, including the original Advancing Assets for Communities programme and the Community Sector Trading virtual learning approach.
In 2009 I completed a 5-month secondment to Communities & Local Government where I took the policy lead for assets and specifically developed new policy on ‘meanwhile uses’ of empty town centre premises. I then led the DTA’s Meanwhile Project to bring empty shops into new community uses ‘while the recession lasts’. I am a director of Meanwhile Space CIC and a proud founder member of the Meanwhile Ning.
All my work bridges policy and practice and aims to bring practitioners into a more central role in shaping policy.
Before joining the DTA in 2007, I was Deputy Chief Executive of the British Urban Regeneration Association for three years, responsible for developing and overseeing events and projects, training, awards and sharing best practice, as well as strategic leadership, staff development and building membership within the voluntary, community and academic sectors.
My background as a community activist and entrepreneur in Deptford & New Cross, South East London included leading the award-winning ‘Get Set for Citizenship’ regeneration programme and establishing numerous social enterprises including a publishing company, an environmental consultancy, a children’s nursery, and a community finance company. I founded the creative outreach charity Magpie Resource Library and published extensively on local history.
From direct experience at Magpie and then as a member of the National Community Forum I developed the Community Allowance proposals to allow community organisations to pay local people to do sessional/part-time community work without it affecting their benefits.
I live in and work from Hastings and I have been the Treasurer of the Hastings Pier & White Rock Trust since 2008.
Areas of policy expertise include asset based development and asset transfer, local community enterprise, worklessness and welfare, community participation, and seaside regeneration.
Alongside all that I have a 10-year old daughter, a supportive partner and a very scruffy dog. My plates are always spinning…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_AMXrMxXyg&feature=player_embedded
thanks to Nic Greenan of Leeds 14 for this link to Spinning Plates by Middleman
