Looking back on the last two years of wAILA fresh, it’s been a year of great change and development. One thing has been constant – a strong and dedicated committee with a uniform vision of creating a support network for the emerging landscape architects of WA.

When the wAILA fresh committee first formed in late 2013, meetings were in lounge rooms, over dining tables and at pubs. Meetings gradually formalised throughout 2014, Rosie Halsmith was elected as the Chair, with vice-chair Deniqua Boston and treasurer Laura Thwaites and secretary Pip Munckton.

In 2014, wAILA organised our first two events - Fresh Friday, a drinks and catch-up series which is still going strong today, as well as our student welcome packs, which have now been rolled out nationally. In WA these packs have helped raise the profile of AILA amongst the student group as well as contributing to increased student and grad membership numbers. During 2014 the team also organised a film night and the first of our speaking events, Finding Ground.

Rosie was lucky enough to attend the 2014 Festival of Landscape Architecture in Brisbane, Forecast, as the WA State Representative for FRESH National for the first National FRESH face to face, as a guest of Intergrain.Great momentum was gained at this meeting for the year of FRESH activities to come.

The end of 2014 saw the election of a new executive – Rosie and Pip as co-chairs, and Jess Ledger as treasurer. In 2015, our meetings moved to a central location on King St, Perth thanks to our friends at Brickworks Design Studio. Fresh Fridays continued into 2015, as did our student welcome program. We’ve had interstate and local guests take part in our speaking event, Youthful Design at the Esplanade Youth Plaza, which also involved partnerships with local councils, business and social enterprises. This past year we've also been building our online community and have loved being part of the national and international landscape architecture conversation through the ASLA 'Designed by a landscape architect' campaign.

Our next event is coming up soon, 3x3 – based on an event established by our friends over at (S)AILA Fresh. At this event three landscape architects will tell us about the moments that have shaped them as designers.

The last two years has overwhelmingly been defined by teamwork from the wAILA fresh committee, members past and present,the national FRESH team,as well as the local landscape architecture community’s willingness and enthusiasm to help us out, speak at and support our events. We’ve loved that wAILA fresh has evolved in to something that is not for students and grads alone – that our events provides a platform for all levels of the profession to get to know and support one another.

We’ve also had amazing support from the AILA WA executive and our local National Council members. We’d like to say a massive thankyou to Sara Padgett Kjaersgaard for her role in approaching the graduating class of 2013 to get FRESH WA off the ground, and for all her support and advice along the way. A big thank you also goes out to all the national office folk, particularly Caroline Odgers for her constant enthusiasm for all things FRESH.

Best of luck to our excellent new committee and executive,and to the current national team – FRESH couldn’t be in better hands!

Rosie and Pip

wAILA Fresh