Creative Arts, Culture and Tourism
Sowmya Parthasarathy
Investing in arts and culture is powerful way to boost identity, build a local place-brand, create a high-quality visitor experience, promote tourism, and create economic opportunity. While bricks-and-mortar initiatives such as museums, theatres, and arts centres can be effective and highly visible investments, combining it with a complementary approach to arts and cultural programming that invites wider community participation is shown to deliver long-lasting and sustainable outcomes. We are here to support you in understanding the role of creative arts, culture and tourism in your projects.
The type of support we can offer includes:
support on developing creative arts and culture projects and considerations for successful programming
support on Covid-19 recovery in relation to tourism
access to online seminars, surgeries and direct 1-1 support
Sowmya Parthasarathy
Sowmya is an architect and urban designer with over 25 years of global experience in the UK, US, and Asia. She is a Director in Arup’s Integrated City Planning group where she leads city-scale and neighbourhood-scale projects working across architecture, urban design, planning, engineering, transport, and sustainability. Her expertise lies in masterplanning and strategic planning for new development and regeneration in urban areas confronting significant change and growth.
Sowmya has been a designer and lead advisor for projects in both the private and public sectors and brings a deep understanding of how partnerships and collaborative working can help translate ideas into implementation. She has significant experience in arts and culture led urbanism, including:
the integration of public art programmes (London Olympic Legacy Masterplan);
redevelopment anchored around a major arts institution (York Central adjacent to the National Railway Museum);
visitor experience based placemaking (Broadgate Placemaking Strategy in London) ; and
embedding cultural landscapes into masterplans (Wellcome Genome Campus in South Cambridgeshire, and St. Cuthbert’s Garden Village in Carlisle).
She is currently project director for an Arup University research initiative examining the role of urban lighting in supporting the night-time experience and economy of our towns and cities. Sowmya was appointed in 2017 as a Mayor’s Design Advocate with responsibility to work with London’s City Hall and boroughs to advance the Good Growth by Design programme. She is member of the Greater London Authority’s London Review Panel and the design review panel for Transport for London.
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Heritage Design and Assessment
Thomas Pearson
A town’s heritage is vital to its sense of identity. It can be a source of both community pride and economic development. We are here to support you in understanding heritage design and assessment from large-scale improvements to the built environment to attracting visitors to cultural events.
The type of support we can offer includes:
support on heritage-related projects particularly around design, conservation, and assessment
support on developing compelling narratives on the towns’ history and story
access to online seminars, surgeries and direct 1-1 support
Topic Lead: Thomas Pearson
Based in Arup's York office, Thomas is an architectural conservationist, designer and heritage consultant. He leads a team of heritage specialists (including architects and engineers) split between London and York, delivering assessments, design and conservation solutions for historic buildings of all types and ages.
Thomas is passionate about history and the complex stories contained within towns and cities, embodied in their buildings. He has led various award-winning conservation projects, including the refurbishment of the Grade II* listed Engineering Building in Leicester, one of Britain’s most daring and provocative buildings.
Accredited with the Institute of Historic Building Conservation, Thomas sits on the national casework committees of the Georgian Group and the Twentieth Century Society, two of the UK’s statutory consultees for work on historic buildings. He is a published author on conservation, has taught at several universities and lectured at heritage groups including ASCHB and Docomomo.
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Youth, Urban Childhoods and Inclusive Environments
Sophie Camburn
Inclusive design is vital to the resilience and success of our town centres. It is a methodology that enables everyone, regardless of their situation, to participate. Understanding what can prevent people participating, in both the physical and digital world, helps us to create better designs. Designing inclusively ensures that the built environment is accessible and maximises independence for all users.
As our town centres increasingly focus on providing experiences as well consumption, we need to shape visions and aspirations that reflect the broadest range of users to create meaningful stories of place. Engagement with youth and young people can help develop sustainable urban proposals that reflect the needs of future generations. We are here to support you on understanding how to engage with young people and how to create inclusive environments within your towns.
The type of support we can offer includes:
advice and support on urban childhoods, child friendly cities, design solutions for young people, and developing inclusive environments
design workshops
access to online seminars, surgeries and direct 1-1 support
Topic Lead: Sophie Camburn
A masterplanner and architect, Sophie leads the Integrated City Planning team for the West, covering the Solent region, including Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole BC, Bristol and the South West.
Previously Sophie was based in London, where she led a range of international and UK masterplanning projects including the Regeneration Strategy for Tottenham following the 2011 riots. This included engagement with local young people to inform proposals and build community skills and capacity.
Sophie has over twenty years’ experience leading large, design led, complex, mixed-use regeneration and placemaking strategies with sustainable placemaking at their core. Sophie provides design leadership and advisory services to both public and private sector clients from vision and concept though statutory planning processes to delivery.
Sophie is a skilled communicator who drives design excellence and deliverable outcomes on projects through collaborative working and inclusive engagement.
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