Louanne Tranchell obituary
My mother, Louanne Tranchell, who has died aged 87, was a passionate campaigner for community involvement in planning decisions. She recognised the importance of questioning authority and was committed to bringing people together to mark struggles and successes.
Louanne's work in mobilising the community began in London in 1977, campaigning against Norman Foster's plan for Hammersmith Broadway and imagining an alternative vision for the site that won improvements for the area.
In 1989 she set up Hammersmith Community Trust, which ran the Emerald Centre as a vibrant cultural social space. She always made connections, sharing local experiences with the Campaign for Homes in Central London and around the world with the International Network for Urban Research and Action.
She became the first information officer for Coin Street Community Builders (1985-93), spreading details about their remarkable success building cooperative housing on the Thames South Bank. In 1984 she portrayed this story in Elementary My Dear, Homes, a play she wrote and produced that was performed at the Cottesloe (now Dorfman) auditorium of the National Theatre, London.
Louanne was active in the Labour party, serving as a local councillor for the Broadway ward from 1994 to 1998. She opened the information centre as a hub for visitors and locals in the heart of Hammersmith, and was a member of the Labour Land Campaign, an early advocate for land value tax.
Born in Glasgow, she was the only child of Elizabeth (nee Lygate), who worked in hospitality, and Thomas Harvey, an engineer. The family moved to west London in 1940 and Louanne attended Sacred Heart high school from 1948 before studying drama at Rose Bruford College in London (1955-58).
In 1962, she joined the Margate Stage Company as an actor. There she met Chris Tranchell, a fellow actor, and they married in 1963. Over the next decade they toured repertory theatres across the country including Plymouth, Billingham and Worcester. It was during this time that she made the transition from acting to creating sets and costumes.
Louanne always enjoyed a crowd – from pageants to protests. She travelled to Paris to protest at Cop21 and attended the Spirit of Mother Jones festival in Cork in 2023. She loved geography and in her final days had a map of the world beside her bed.
When paramedics and care workers went to her home in Hammersmith, she would strike up conversations about the countries they knew and the places she had visited. Interested and interesting, making and doing, until the end.
She is survived by Chris, her three children, Imogen, Benedick and me, and five grandchildren.
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Louanne Tranchell obituary
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