Join landscape architect Robert Myers, artist Ivan Morison, and The Reverend Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s Piccadilly, for an insightful conversation on the transformative power of restorative green spaces. Together, they will reflect on their 2024 Chelsea Flower Show garden, created in partnership with the church.
This discussion will explore the role of urban gardens in mental health and the healing power of nature. Inspired by St James’s Piccadilly, which has been offering free drop-in counselling since 1982, the garden featured a counselling hut designed by Ivan, symbolising the church’s commitment to providing safe spaces for emotional recovery.
Robert, Ivan, and Lucy will delve into themes of hope, resilience, and refuge, examining how thoughtfully designed, small green spaces can offer peace and connection amidst urban life. They will also explore how their work integrates history, art, and nature to foster well-being and social impact in cities.
Speaker Bios
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Robert Myers
Robert Myers
Robert Myers is an experienced chartered landscape architect who explores the rhythm and flow of buildings, drawing direct parallels between space, light, pattern, repetition and movement to create cohesive outdoor space. He has an innovative approach to using hard materials, and his love of architecture and plants combine to create light, calm and practical spaces.
His award-winning practice undertakes commissions from private individuals, rural estates, developers, and institutions such as cathedrals, universities, and schools. He is listed in Country Life's Top 100 and has won many awards, including seven gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and the Society of Garden Designers' Grand Award 2017 for the Magic Garden at Hampton Court Palace.
Robert read geography at Cambridge, exploring and recognising the differences in cultures, political systems, economies, landscapes and environments worldwide. He qualified as a landscape architect at the University of Central England and immediately joined Elizabeth Banks Associates (EBA) in 1993, where he led the team that created the new Duke of York's Square, Kings Road, Chelsea (described by architect Richard Rogers as “the first successful square in London designed for public use”), which was followed by further work at Cavalry Square and The Saatchi Gallery.
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Ivan Morison
Ivan Morison
Ivan Morison is an artist who has built a significant collaborative practice alongside Heather Peak that transcends the divisions between art, architecture, and theatre. He has produced major works for many British institutions, including Tate Modern; exhibited widely across Europe, North America and Australasia; and represented Wales at the 52nd Venice Biennal.
His work is held in many collections around the world. His work is often performance-based and site-specific, existing as one-off events, social projects, or large-scale installations and buildings in public spaces. In particular, he is known for his architectural structures and buildings that relate to ideas of escape, refuge, the transformation of the modern city, and the function of civic communities. The central preoccupation of his research has always been how we navigate catastrophe and the violence of change - from the wider collective view down to how individuals deal with moments of personal calamity.
Currently his work and research is focused on sacred space and therapeutic spaces of care. He is working on two new permanent centres for therapeutic care in London and Liverpool, permanent sculptural works and landscape designs in various places, a building on a beach to be slowly washed away by the tide, a temple in a forest, a mobile observatory and a library of short fiction.
He is a tutor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art, and Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. His teaching specialism is working with students to fully understand and inhabit their creative practices, a place from which art and life will flow.
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The Revd Lucy Winkett
The Revd Lucy Winkett
The Revd Lucy Winkett was ordained in 1995, having worked previously as a professional soprano. One of the first generation of women to be ordained in the Church of England, she served her title in Manor Park, Newham before becoming the first woman priest appointed at St Paul’s Cathedral, later becoming Canon Precentor.
She has been Rector of St James’s since 2010 and was licensed as Priest in Charge of St Pancras Church in November 2023. With degrees in history and theology, she broadcasts regularly on Radio 3 and 4, and is a long-standing contributor to the Today Programme’s Thought for the Day. She was a founding advisor for the public theology think tank “Theos” and the co-founder of “Leading Women”, a national development programme for women clergy. She is a Governor of The Queen’s Theological Foundation in Birmingham and a trustee of the National Churches Trust.
Her book “Our Sound is Our Wound” (Continuum 2010) was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book. In 2014, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Winchester University.
