DEMOS

Melissa runs the Cities Programme at Demos, where she leads a variety of projects on public space, creativity, and the future of cities.

Projects that Melissa is currently involved with include:

Glasgow 2020: a major mass imagination project to develop new stories for Glasgow based on people's everyday lives and aspirations. This innovative public engagement project is focused on how individual and collective well-being can be better connected and explores non-institutional approaches to city development.

Mass Participation 2012: this feasibility study is investigating how communties across the whole of the UK can meaningfully participate in the London Olympics and how they can win a sustainable local legacy. Demos is developing practical proposals for how this can be taken forward.

Extended Malls: this project is looking at how and if out of town shopping centres- often seen as the bogey-men of urban renewal- can yet become spaces of civic and social value.

The Network Effect: Demos works with the British Council to design and deliver this leadership development programme for the next generation of European leaders, with participants from countries stretching from Ireland to Turkey.

Melissa has worked with with a wide range of cities and local authorities across the UK and internationally including Barcelona,  Gothenburg, Helsinki, Lewisham, Milton Keynes, Newcastle Gateshead, Sunderland and Wakefield.

Previous to joining Demos Melissa was Government Affairs Officer for the RSPB where she worked on climate change, transport and urban policy. Melissa also spent time in Washington DC working for Public Citizen on environmental justice and consumer rights issues.

In her spare time she is an elected board member of the Waterloo Community Regeneration Trust, a £5million community-led SRB programme in central London.

e-mail melissa.mean@demos.co.uk