Daniel Raven-Ellison

Initiator of London National Park City

Daniel Raven-Ellison is a former geography teacher who turned into a guerrilla geographer, radical educator and National Geographic Explorer. Raven-Ellison is furthermore leading a bold initiative to transform the whole of Greater London into the world's first ‘National Park City’.

‘My work focuses on combining creative exploration, geography and communication to tackle social and environmental challenges,’ he says. ‘I’ve walked across all of the UK’s national parks and cities wearing a mind-reading device, walked the height of Mount Everest by only using London buildings, authored children’s books and completed 125 adventures around the country with my son.’

Making London a National Park City would recognize the importance of urban nature and galvanize actions to improve habitats, health, quality of life and resilience across the city and beyond. As part of the campaign Raven-Ellison completed an epic 560km walk in a spiral around London that took him through all 32 of the city’s boroughs, 242 parks, 23 rivers and saw him cross the Thames no less than 11 times.

London can become a National Park City once the majority of London’s 654 elected ward teams have declared their support. So far 238 ward teams did, along with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.