Community & Voluntary Work
GREENING & ENVIRONMENT
How Green is My City
Wherever Susie has lived, she’s always played an active part in the local community. 
As a long-term Mayfair resident, she was a founding council member of The Residents’ Society of Mayfair & St James’s. As the Chair of the Greening & Environment Committee she established a conference called ‘How Green is My City’. It was hosted by Grosvenor House on Park Lane and brought together the key players in the area – namely – Westminster City Council, The Crown Estate and Grosvenor, who gave presentations on their approach to greening and the environment in the area. In addition to the 3 keynote speakers, other interested parties e.g. Royal Parks, the London Wildlife Trust, and Open Spaces, had stalls at which they displayed their literature. Originally, it was intended as a one-off but it was such a big success, it’s become an annual event. For the past 3 years the event has been hosted by Claridge’s and has grown to such an extent that it is now held in the grand Art Deco Ballroom.
Significantly, it’s not just a talking shop. A couple of years ago, one of the keynote speakers was Dusty Gedge, from ‘Living Roofs’. 
This is an umbrella organization that promotes the introduction of living roofs to brownfield sites like office blocks. They are generally spaces that do not have public access and the entire area is covered with Alpines, with an irrigation system to keep them watered. Immediately after his talk, new developments in the area included plans for living roofs – most notably – the refurbishment and expansion of the Connaught Hotel. Equally, when Edward Meyer spoke about modern architecture’s impact on the habitat of the swift, plans for swift boxes were incorporated into the designs of both new builds and refurbishments. How Green is My City 2007’ featured a presentation by Gus Grand from The Eden Project in Cornwall.
Mount Street Gardens
Mount Street Gardens is a treasured haven for all who 
live and work in the area but like so many public amenities, it is in need of some investment and the trouble is, that is not forthcoming. It’s an oasis of peace and tranquillity in the midst of frenzied activity of Central London. Its pathways are lined with benches paid for and dedicated to people who have enjoyed and loved it’s beauty. One of these people was is the great Hollywood director, Fred Zinnemann, who, amongst his many hit movies, gave the world From Here to Eternity. The Victorian bronze drinking fountain had been, not so much vandalised, as dismantled to order and was in desperate need of restoration. The Society always holds a summer party and for 2 years running Susie organized the event to raise money to restore the vandalized drinking fountain. The newly reinstated fountain was unveiled by the Duke of Westminster.
The Journey
Sadly, London has become the sex-trafficking capital of Europe. This involves girls, some as young as 13, being kidnapped or even sold by their own family to traffickers who transport them to London with the promise of a better life. But the reality is that, if they survive the journey, they become sex slaves. ‘The Journey’ is a campaign both to increase awareness of this vile practice and to pressurize the government into ratifying the European Directive on Sex Trafficking. The Journey was officially launched by Emma Thompson on 23rd September 2007 at a large event in Trafalgar Square and will continue to campaign for these objectives. Susie has been donating her time and expertise as her contribution to making the event a success. But, as the picture shows she also participated in one of many Art Protests, devised by Sam Roddick, which took to the streets of London in advance of the launch to publicise the event. This was a funeral cortege that followed a horse drawn hearse, decorated in pictures of trafficked girls and adorned with flowers that read – SEX SLAVE. The image echoes the suffering of the mothers of ‘the disappeared’ in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s who would gather in the main square holding up pictures of their missing relatives.