Placemaking panel

Speaker profiles

Placemaking panel

CHAIR: Richard Hicks, Medway Council Director of Place and Deputy Chief Executive

As Director of Place and Deputy Chief Executive, Richard drives the delivery of the council’s placemaking agenda, seeking to establish Medway as a great place to live, to work, to learn and to visit. Richard has responsibility for Frontline Services, Culture and Community, Regeneration and Communications and Marketing.

Richard has held a number of roles at Medway since its inception in 1998, and before that time worked in a range of positions across Kent County Council, both at corporate and service level.

HEADLINE PANELLIST: Emily Dawson, Head of Benefits –Lower Thames Crossing, National Highways

Emily has been working with National Highways for the past 6 years to ensure our nation’s most exciting and ambitious new road schemes, including the proposed new Lower Thames Crossing, maximise the wider benefits for the economy, environment, and local communities. Her role involves working with government and regional stakeholders to help shape how the benefits of the project are articulated in the business case, ensuring the opportunities are maximised across the region. She specialises in identifying shared objectives among stakeholders and developing opportunities to work in partnership, delivering long lasting benefits that complement the delivery of the crossing itself. PANELLIST: Graham Galpin MSc FIPM, Fellow, the Institute of Place Management. High Street Expert Graham has been leading regeneration programmes for almost 25 years. He was an economic development consultant before he spent 8 years as Cabinet Member for Town Centres for Ashford Borough Council.

He was invited to join the Expert Panel chaired by Sir John Timpson. The panel recommended the introduction of the Future High Street Fund and the High Street Task Force. Most recently Graham has been working with IPM and partners on the processes, tools and “pilot” town centre visits for the Task Force. He is an enthusiastic advocate of community engagement in town centre revitalisation and viability.

Arcadis.

Samer is a Chartered Town Planner, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a Design Council Expert, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has held the role of Professor of Planning and Resilient Systems at the University of Kent since April 2018 having worked in the preceding two years with the Rockefeller Foundation’s global resilience programme as an associate director. In Kent, Samer manages Cultural Co-location, a Creative Estuary project. He served on the Policy Council at the Town and Country Planning Association from 2010-2020 where he also served as a Trustee for five years.

PANELLIST: Councillor Professor Samer Bagaeen, Kent School of Architecture and Planning Professor Samer Bagaeen works across the private sector, academia and local government. He is a Technical Director with the Environmental Planning team at