For the past six years she has led the Young Foundation's work on communities and housing, developing and managing a wide range of research, policy and innovation programmes.
Saffron developed and led Future Communities, a partnership with the Homes and Communities Agency, Local Government Improvement and Development, Peabody Trust, and local authorities in England and Sweden, to explore practical ways for new communities to succeed as places where people want to live and work.
She has also led action research to develop new approaches to understanding and tackling deprivation in very small housing estates funded by the Tenant Services Authority; coordinated the Young Foundation's neighbourhoods and community empowerment programmes; managed research for NESTA about local social innovation; directed Local 2.0, a programme funded by Department for Communities and Local Government to explore the potential for 'hyper-local' or neighbourhood-based web media to support community empowerment; and work for CLG on supporting local social enterprise.
Saffron joined the Young Foundation in 2005 to manage Transforming Neighbourhoods. She has been involved in community projects since the early 1990s, including work on Local Agenda 21 and sustainable transport. Saffron specialises in action research, ethnography, social network analysis and oral history. Before joining the Young Foundation, she was a senior researcher at The Future Foundation; Associate Director at communications agency Cohn & Wolfe; and has acted as a consultant for Citylife, Action for Children, and UK for UNHCR.
Saffron is exploring social sustainability in new urban neighbourhoods as an MPhil/PhD student at UCL. She is a member of the Academy of Urbanism and a trustee of Oxford House in Bethnal Green
