Kate Swade

Bio

"I'm Development Manager at Shared Assets, which exists to promote and support community management of woodlands, waterways, parks, green spaces and coastal areas. We support communities wanting to take more control of their natural environments, offer consultancy services to landowners, and carry out research (most recently into woodland social enterprise, and the scaling of community-led social innovations).

I’m also a 2013 Clore Social Leadership fellow, and am completing some practice-based research into how systems thinking and complexity theory can be useful for community groups. I’m really interested in how facilitation and group processes can help people make better decisions about managing the environment and natural resources.

I have a background in working with communities to help them take more control over their built environment, and to do it in a socially enterprising way. I am interested in how community ownership and management of land and buildings can transform our cities and towns for the better, and how a commercial mindset can bring social benefits.

I am a trustee, and chair of the estates committee at Toynbee Hall, a multi purpose social justice charity in east London. I am an experienced facilitator and trainer and speak good Arabic and Spanish."