I'm a registered landscape architect with 17 years experience and work meaningfully with communities in the design of public spaces. My work ranges from large multi-disciplinary public space projects to small co-design projects with councils, schools and communities. I have particular expertise and experience in working with children and youth.

I believe that design is a social process and that my role of landscape architect is similar to that of a 'curator', designing an overall narrative for a collective work in collaboration with many creators (including the systems of a place). My focus very much on the process, which includes meaningful interactions with the community / people who have knowledge and experiences of a place, rather than just the finished work we have become accustomed to seeing in design publications.

After completing several co-design projects with children (in schools and with communities) over the past few years, I'm keen to better understand how I can successfully weave and be part of wider cultural and community networks into a potential landscape design project/process. Landscapes are dynamic, complex places, often with subtle values that are easily overlooked. I wish to build on my current knowledge of systems thinking and to work meaningfully with wider systems (not always tangible) that influence the adults and children I have been directly working with. I know from both theory and experience that the nature of design thinking, by it's rationale for decision-making, enables innovation and is able to embrace complexity - I'd like to scale this up to broader areas of influence and to ensure the process is cohesive.

Moving beyond small co-design projects where I am doing most of the work myself - scaling up and letting go of some aspects of the process for others.
Sharing my knowledge, expertise and where IP fits with this.
Ways to manage strong personalities who can side-track a process.
Confidence in leading larger groups.

To understand the needs of other organisations and how to connect what I have learned and can assist with, with wider networks and systems.
How to influence and offer this knowledge and experience (design process/complexity/systems thinking) relative to linear institutional process (i.e. Councils), which are typically less flexible and risk averse. I'm sure that becoming familiar with the Regenesis concepts and applying them will help me to better understand my work relative to broader systems. How to also understand my own values better while effectively connecting with others to integrate our knowledge / experiences towards greater impact/benefit for the environment.

Counselling - learning to listen well and be an effective communicator.
Masters in Landscape Architecture - with a focus on less tangible landscape values (i.e. cultural and historic narratives); how to integrate these values into landscape design.
PhD - Built Environment & Design - the relationship between design expertise and public participation (different rationales for decision making)
Many years of pro-bono work applying what I have learned through my PhD findings - that the best results occur when clients and communities are involved in the same creative, collaborative and mutual learning process as the designer.

I've outlined just a brief summary of inspiration over the past 10 years below:
Design thinking and resolving complex (wicked) problems - e.g. Professor Kees Doorst from Delft University. How designers use frames to create cohesion from complexity, testing ideas and prioritising some characteristics of a context over others. One of the most powerful quotes I recall is 'a problem can never be solved in the context in which it arose.' Reframing allows a new approach related to that context ...
Personal development: Michael Singer (how we can separate ourselves from the thoughts inside our heads, in pursuit of a happier, more balanced life by noticing those thoughts and allowing them to pass by - as just objects of our consciousness).
Pema Chodran - her writings on uncertainty and how to find the good in discomfort (Buddism).
Nancy Klein - 'Time to Think' - the following powerful quote sums up her philosophy: 'the quality of listening determines the quality of response'.

I believe we are all energy and as part of the human ecosystem, we are all connected to each other and that our intentions (whether conscious or not) profoundly influence outcomes. We each have different skillsets and experiences and rely on each other to work together with the diversity inherent in our human systems. We have a responsibility to look after and protect other living systems on our planet.
Design is a lens through which I often look at life and my relationship with others. The emphasis of design as a logical problem solving process has historically failed to address the complexity of public life on this planet and our relationship with various ecosystems, and has been more about the efficiency of means and ends than the practical situations in which design problems occur. Like the communities they serve, designers are also 'embodied citizens' and need an intimate understanding of what it means to be a citizen in a place and to move between the roles of expert and user with one set of knowledge and experience informing the other. Designers need to embrace a developmental knowledge that adjusts to and grows out of the social-cultural surroundings in which they are situated rather than linear processes which are inflexible and focus on facts and rational logic only.