Jenny Elliott is a multi-disciplinary Designer and Chartered Landscape Architect. My work involves a mix of urban design, research, co-design, graphic design, illustration and photography relating to the built environment.
A creative and collaborative problem-solver with an entrepreneurial background, I am passionate about how together we can find innovative and effective ways to design, build and value greener, healthier, more vibrant places.
Jenny Elliott has worked for architectural, landscape and design consultancies, universities and local government across the UK, Australia and Denmark over the last 15 years, on projects focussed on placemaking, urban design, and reimagining our cities and everyday streets and public spaces. Recent clients include the V&A Dundee, The Stove Network, Living Streets and the University of Edinburgh.
Alongside her award-winning freelance design and consultancy work, Jenny is currently undertaking PhD research at the University of Edinburgh into barriers built environment practitioners experience to realising ‘better’ public spaces for health, well-being and environment in our cities and the ways urban data or other solutions might help.
Jenny often uses human-centred design, systems thinking, and design thinking approaches to enhance collaborative, creative design and research projects, and has successfully completed IDEO training in Human Centred Systems Thinking to complement my formal Chartership as a Landscape Architect, 1st Class degree in MA Hons Human Geography and Distinction in MA Landscape Architecture,
Recent work
Most recently Jenny worked with Living Streets to communicate and illustrate technical street design infrastructure scenarios as part of their Inclusive Design report with Scottish Government, create illustrated scenes communicated the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s mission, and worked with The Stove Network on visual communication (report graphic design, infographic creation) and impact evaluation for their creative placemaking What We Do Now project.
In a recent former role at the Edinburgh Futures Institute Jenny also led design and delivery of project 'Future of the High Street' (LI Award Finalist 2021), a ‘Smart Places’ series of events, articles and illustrations with key thought leaders on this topic, and brought together University of Edinburgh colleagues (Travel Tech Scotland, Edinburgh Living Lab, Edina, Informatics) and industry partners (Serco, City of Edinburgh Council) to produce report ‘Piloting Novel Monitoring and Evaluation for Street Interventions’ to understand the impact of the Spaces for People temporary street changes for cyclists/pedestrians.
Prior to this, in 2019 Jenny supported the Edinburgh Living Lab on a mix of ‘urban data and design’ project work and graphic design including leading urban design, photography and community engagement elements of project ‘Data and Design for Property Planning: Service Design and Our Assets’ (LI Award 2020 Winner for Excellence in Community Engagement).
Jenny has also recently been commissioned by the V&A Dundee for graphic design of an infographic for poster production and an exhibition (2021), and worked with client Living Streets Scotland to produce film and photography outputs sharing different user experiences of everyday walking in our cities for their Big Walking Seminar 2022.
Background
Jenny has an entrepreneurial background as co-Founder/Director at Edinburgh based award-winning landscape architecture and co-design studio ‘Here+Now’ (2014-2019) - leading teams of designers and researchers to deliver Public Life Studies robustly assessing current pedestrian and user behaviour in public spaces and future design opportunities, in addition to other urban design, active travel, prototyping, user experience and community engagement projects.
Jenny has also initiated and delivered various pro-bono placemaking projects aiming to deliver positive social impact. In 2020 Jenny’s photography project Looking for Rainbows shared 100 visual messages of hope and short doorstep interviews across Edinburgh during the first Covid-19 lockdown. She also founded ‘Urban Fabric’ (Australia, 2012-2014) which facilitated meanwhile creative use transforming vacant land for 6 outdoor community cinema and exhibitions promoting 40+ local film-makers and artists’ work to 400+ attendees, and launched ‘Hold Me Dear’ in 2013 - an online global community photography project of locally treasured places revealing user experience and personal attachment to places post-occupancy.
Academic background
Jenny’s academic background covers Human Geography, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. Jenny won the UK-wide LDA award for ‘Excellence in Landscape Architecture’ for her Masters in Landscape Architecture (Distinction), and Lind Award for her Geography MA Hons (1st Class).
Selected talks, exhibitions, published work and awards:
Speaker&workshop facilitation: ‘Delivering Greener, Healthier Public Spaces’ at the Urban Innovation Centre, London, 2023, with Connected Places Catapult.
Exhibition design&presentation: ‘Better Public Space Outcomes’ at the SGSAH showcase at The Studio, Glasgow, 2023
Panellist: Living Streets’ ‘Big Walking Seminar 2022
‘Finding Space for Shared Futures’ - published peer-reviewed, co-authored paper about how we used ‘Collaborative Evaluation’ on project Future of the High Street.
Panellist: Scottish Parliament’s ‘Sustainable and Resilient Cities’ event as part of the Festival of Politics 2021.
Invited speaker on Urban Development at Dubai Expo 2020, held Nov 2021.
Designed and led delivery of project Future of the High Street - Finalist for the Landscape Institute’s ‘Partnership and Collaboration’ award 2021.
Speaker at ‘Inclusive Environments’ conference 2021 organised by the Landscape Institute.
Invited as a Judge for the Landscape Institute Awards ‘Excellence in Community Engagement’ category 2021.
Winner ‘Excellence in Community Engagement’ Landscape Institute Award 2020 for freelance urban design, community engagement and visual communication work on Service Design and Our Assets: Data and Design for Property Planning 2019-2020.
Speaker presentation -‘Data and Design for Property Planning’ and ‘Smart Places: engagement and events’ , University of Edinburgh, 2020.
‘Public Realm Design and Assessment’, guest lecture Masters in Landscape Design for Health and Well-being, ESALA, 2017, 2018, 2019.
Speaker and panelist - ‘Reimagining The City’, Copenhagen, 2017.
‘Green active travel’, presentation/workshop of global case study research findings, CSGN Forum, Edinburgh, 2017.
Speaker at Architecture & Design Scotland’s ‘Pretty Vacant’, and ‘Stalled Spaces Seminar’, Glasgow, 2014.