Ian leads work on the Park Managers Forum and Fast Follower network and cohorts. He joined us in early 2023 from the Edinburgh's Thriving Green Spaces team where he was a Greenspace Development Officer working on topics including place-making, community co-design, park masterplanning, citizen and other digital science subprojects, and health and wellbeing work.  

Ian spent much of his earlier career in strategy, planning, funding and policy development and implementation in post school education at local, Scottish and UK levels. He worked at the now Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh from 1990 to 1996 in a range of academic support roles including timetabling and quality assurance and enhancement before moving to the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) in autumn 1996. 

At SHEFC, later the Scottish Funding Council for Further and Higher Education (SFC), Ian held a series of different roles. These included managing Strategic Change Grant funding, strategic plan analyses, and working on the development of the University of the Highlands and Islands. He later worked on Scottish and UK governance, leadership and management development provision, human resource management in the college and university sectors, stakeholder relations, work on implementing the Single Equality Act 2010 and on monitoring and evaluation. 

From late 2008 to early 2010 Ian job shared as Head of Policy, Planning and Governance on secondment to the University of Stirling. 

Ian left SFC in 2012 to train at postgraduate level in People and Organisational Development with Roffey Park Institute, alongside family life and managing a house renovation. He has first person experience as a family carer of the health and social care systems and of the importance of greenspace to physical and mental health and wellbeing. 

Ian holds a Certificate in Practical Horticulture from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh and has also recently worked front of house in the hospitality industry. He has a range of other relevant paid and voluntary experiences including with Friends of Saughton Park, Friends of Inch Park, the Woodland Trust, the artist members'-owned open access Edinburgh Printmakers, Dig In Community Greengrocers, Bruntsfield, Edinburgh, and Product Forge, who run ‘public good’ digital hackathons.  

Ian’s interests include gardening, cycling, and landscape. 

Contact Ian