Hi, I’m Eloise Smith-Foster, the founder of Becoming Riverkin.

I’m a designer, researcher, facilitator, educator and community organiser, based in Sheffield and working towards green and just transitions, and more liberated pasts, presents and futures.

For more than a decade, I’ve been exploring how people can collectively shape the services, organisations, places and systems that affect their lives. My background is in service and strategic design, participatory research, systems thinking and future foresight, with a particular interest and expertise in the commons: how we share, steward and govern land, resources and places together.

Becoming Riverkin asks what happens when we extend those questions beyond the human too - considering rivers, ecosystems and other living beings as participants, co-creators and elders in the learning experiences and organisations we are designing and governing.

Alongside Becoming Riverkin, I’m a Design for Planet Expert with the Design Council, a board member of Sheffield Community Land Trust, and a community organiser with Cooperation Sheffield. I’ve worked with organisations including Futurice, Hellon, the NHS, B Lab, Arriva Rail and Wales Council for Voluntary Action, spanning focal areas from designing more equitable and inclusive public transport, to co-creating civil society futures, to strategically organising towards community ownership and stewardship of land.

I pay attention to the relationships beneath a challenge - between people, institutions, histories, land, water and other forms of life - and work with curiosity, care and rigour. I also recognise that good intentions are not enough. Becoming Riverkin is committed to accountability and repair, including taking responsibility when my actions contribute to harm and remaining open to challenge and change.

Above: Video I produced on behalf of Cooperation Sheffield about our 'Beyond McDonald's: A paint, play and possibility day', event I co-organised to advocate against McDonald's purchasing local land, and to facilitate a community reimagining of the land under local ownership and stewardship.

I am deeply inspired by a multitude of mentors and collaborators locally and from around the world with diverse lived and learned expertise, including in racial and disability justice, anti-oppressive practice, conflict resolution, facilitation, more-than-human engagement, sustainability, ecology, strategy, design and creative practice and community organising. I bring in associates as and when needed depending on event and project needs.