Debs Armstrong resigns from London's Pleasure Gardens

The fall out from the ill fated BLOC Weekend continues with the news that Debs Armstrong, the founder and creative director of London's Pleasure Gardens has resigned from the board of directors.

Her team won the mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, and mayor of London, Boris Johnson's competition to find 'meanwhile' uses for prominent brownfield sites in the Olympic borough of Newham and set about creating a waterside festival site called London Pleasure Gardens which will feature events, live music and cross-cultural collaborations until 2014.

Debs Armstrong, who is the creative Director and co-producer of the Shangri-La area at Glastonbury Festival, was also the co-Founder and Producer of the Lost Vagueness area which preceded it, as well as the designer of bespoke events and live music tours by the likes of Groove Armada, and Ed Harcourt.

It was under her leadership that London Pleasure Gardens has been realised from a state of dereliction into the 60,000 sq.m waterside leisure park featuring a geodesically domed concert hall, landform theatre, an oyster grotto, the 'Hanging Gardens of Contaminated Curiosity', the gold-medal winning Korean garden transplanted from this year's Chelsea Flower Show, a mural by American street artist Shepard Fairey, nature trail, follies, gazebos and outdoor furniture, in an ever evolving project.

Debs Armstrong has released the following statement, "My role was primarily transformational and I am enormously proud of the alchemy that my team and I have achieved. In only 3 months, we remediated what was for decades a lighted, inaccessible and formerly contaminated site. We've built the foundations of the Pleasure Gardens vision - a unique public leisure and cultural space in London.

I look forward to seeing audiences enjoy the huge grassy landform amphitheatre (angled perfectly for lying down and contemplating clouds); the beautiful benches and structures designed by emerging practitioners, the wonderful work from iconic leaders of the street art movement; the pastoral journeys through the wild meadows.

We have seen but the first inkling of what LPG can be and I do hope its artistic and cultural potential is supported moving into 2013 and beyond. The cultural and regenerative work we have done is certainly the most extraordinary test case.

My next work is to design a transformation of the O2 arena and a total redesign of the Shangri La area of Glastonbury Festival for 2013."

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