The DPNF committee is made up of volunteers who live or work in the forum area (see map above), elected annually by members who attend the forum’s AGM. The committee meets as often as required for current activities, usually every six weeks.
DPNF Committee (2023/24)
Chair: Ilona Hay
Deputy Chair: Valerie Doulton
Treasurer: TBC
Nicholas Bradfield, Marie Brunborg, Ben Castell, Jessica Jacobs, Emily O’Mara, Angela Tebe, Joanna Van Heyningen, Peter Wickenden and Eileen Willmott.
Local councillors: Lorna Russell, Camron Aref Adib, Anna Wright, Sylvia McNamara and James Slater are ex-officio members of the DPNF committee.
Committee sub-groups can be found here.
More about the current committee members:
Nicholas Bradfield represents the Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Advisory Committee on the Hampstead Heath Consultative Committee. He has lived in Dartmouth Park for twenty-five years and is secretary of the Dartmouth Park Road Residents’ Association. After studying Urban and Regional Planning at Central London Polytechnic, he worked for the British Standards Institution for twenty-five years, project-managing European and International standards, and also worked in local government. He is the author of the recently published photographic book, Gasholders and Lost King’s Cross (2021).
Ben Castell has been on the Neighbourhood Forum since its inception, including two spells as Chair. As a professional town planner, he has worked with communities doing neighbourhood planning throughout the country, as well as advising Government and local authorities.
Valerie Doulton, Deputy Chair of the DPNF, has staged work at venues including the National Theatre, the Lyric Hammersmith, the Garrick Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, the Royal Exchange Manchester, and the Wales Millennium Centre. In 2002, she launched The Live Literature Company with the goal of making world-class performance and the arts accessible to the widest possible audience, and has partnered with many of Britain’s leading performers to stage work at the National Portrait Gallery, the V & A, the British Library and the Tate. She has toured the company to Portugal, France, Italy and India, and runs an annual Drama Study Abroad programme in the UK for American university students. Her abridged Shakespeare performances on the tea lawn at Lauderdale House have been a great success with local families and young children.
Ilona Hay trained as an architect and is Director of Texere Studio Ltd. as well as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. She has taught and lectured in architecture design and technology at several UK Universities; London South Bank, Oxford Brookes, Kent, Plymouth and East London; as well as Dalhousie in Canada. As well, she is an Examiner at the Architect’s Registration Board.
Jessica Jacobs has been on the Neighbourhood Forum since its inception. She is a former journalist and travel writer and currently a Research Fellow in the Geography Department at Queen Mary where her work focuses on filmmaking, crafts, heritage tourism in the Middle East, social housing and award-winning community engagement projects. She is a founder of community-led housing and engagement organisation Camden Community Makers and a trustee of Mortimer Terrace Nature Reserve. She also runs the annual street party Parly Party funded by Camden Council. She has lived in Dartmouth Park – firstly privately renting, but now in Heathview Tenants Co-operative – since the mid-1990s.
Emily O’Mara is an award winning community engagement artist and textile crafter. She runs the annual street party Parly Party and is one of the founders of local community-led housing group Camden Community Makers and a Trustee of Mortimer Terrace Nature Reserve. She lives in Heathview Tenants Co-operative. Her son is a pupil at Gospel Oak Primary, her daughter was born in April 2020.
Angela Tebe
Eileen Willmott is a founder member of the DPNF, and currently part of its ‘Greening’ project where green spaces and trees are paramount priorities. She moved to Dartmouth Park in 1967 after obtaining a degree in Botany at Kings College London, and worked as a clinical biochemist at the Middlesex Hospital, Moorfields Eye Hospital, St Bartholomew’s Hospital and at the Whittington Hospital. Her daughter and two grandchildren attended Brookfield School. Eileen is especially interested in the trees and hedges of the Brookfield Estate and the veteran trees of the Dartmouth Park area and Hampstead Heath, where she volunteers as a Heath Hand. Since the 1990s she has been a member of the Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Advisory Committee, where she reviews and comments on tree applications.