Whose job is it to make our cities great places to live? Everyone’s! Cross-disciplinary designer and educator Loren Holmes will introduce people who have taken action to make their homes, streets and suburbs better places for people and nature.

Landscape architect Christina Nicholson has created a beautiful, productive garden for her family. Dubbed the ‘Vine Street National Park’, it supports the community via shared spaces and biodiversity. 

South Fremantle resident Kali Balint began working with his neighbours twenty years ago to reinvent the park in their street as a place for local families. Gold Street Park became a hub for its community that endures today.

Town Team Movement is a global movement of ‘doers’ empowering local communities to improve their places and by putting ideas into action. Fremantle Town Teams’ leader Cate Baker shares some of the projects being delivered by passionate locals and tips on how to get the support to do it.

Kavi Guppta is a Community Engagement Partner at the City of Fremantle. In this role, he collaborates with proactive community members to navigate local government processes, ensuring both the effective use of energy and funding, and the capturing of public input and experiences on decisions that affect them.

This event is part of the Fremantle Design Week Conversations Series. Tickets are available for individual sessions, a whole day or the whole weekend.

Students and concession card holders can use code FDWCONCESSION for 10% off tickets.

Vine Street images: by Sarah May and Dan Marano

Conversations Series presented by:

Loren Holmes

Loren is a multidisciplinary designer with a knack for conveying ideas and sharing knowledge across scales. With qualifications in architecture and environmental design, she has 20 years of experience in design communications for the built environment and arts sectors across London, Melbourne and Perth. Loren is a senior team member at Fremantle landscape architecture and urban design practice UDLA.

Christina Nicholson

Christina’s passion for contributing to a better life of community, family, food and nature through biodiversity, led her to founding landscape architecture studio Banksia and Lime. Prior to this, she worked for local government and private practice on award-winning sustainable projects. Her project experience is wide-ranging – from public parks, nature reserves and therapeutic landscapes to residential outdoor living spaces and community gardens. Christina also teaches future landscape architects. 

Kali Balint

Kali came to Freo as an 18-year-old hippy and fell in love with the place, returning after a 15-year absence to raise 3 kids. The essence of community has been a strong pull for Kali and his family, with immense gratitude for those who created such a strong foundation of interconnectedness in Freo. Kali has sought to add to this by pulling existing threads into an intertwined mishmash of kids, parents, oldies and dogs, all finding community in the tiny pocket park next door.

Cate Baker

Cate is a Placemaker with Town Team Movement, collaborating on projects involving place activation, community engagement, capacity building, place plans and supporting place strategy implementation for local, state government and private sector clients. Cate’s consulting role is combined with supporting, connecting, and promoting new and existing Town Teams, with a focus on the Fremantle area and Perth’s North Metro corridor.

After 17 years in the commercial property industry, post graduate studies led to placemaking. Cate has loved the change of scenery, contributing to creating better places and enabling active citizens in their local communities.

Kavi Guppta

Kavi is a passionate and active Fremantle resident who leads the Community Engagement practice at the City of Fremantle. Kavi cares deeply about working with his community to achieve great things for the city he loves. He has a long history of guiding individuals, businesses, and government organisations on a range of issues at both local and international levels.

Kavi has been active in helping local community groups, residents, and businesses achieve positive outcomes in collaboration with each other and with the City of Fremantle. Globally, he has worked collaboratively and drawn experience from communities across Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Lithuania, and Estonia, exploring solutions to issues like youth unemployment, workforce transformation, and mental health and wellbeing.

As specialists in selling design-led homes, ZSA ZSA Property believes in the power of great design to help people live in more meaningful ways. Through selling, sharing and celebrating beautiful homes, ZSA ZSA Property is dedicated to helping their clients reach their potential – setting a new standard of excellence. They combine astute design knowledge and traditional service with modern technology and digital trends, ensuring every sales and marketing campaign is strategic, polished, and multifaceted. This approach, paired with their discerning eye and access to the media, gives clients a unique advantage in a crowded market. At ZSA ZSA Property, every beautiful home has a story, and it’s their mission to sell it.