I am a great believer in inclusive and collaborative city-making and I know the best way of doing that is with a little positive energy and creativity, a lot of collaboration, and building networks to make projects happen. 

This has remained true throughout my latest venture, one that I never expected I would undertake. 

I’d never been seriously ill before. But in 2021, I spent months trying to shake off a viral infection. I put it down to being a bit overworked but on my last legs with very little energy I ended up asking a GP for a blood test and being rushed to A&E. My life changed forever. At University College London Hospital, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of blood cancer. 

As anyone who has experienced a serious illness will know, the statistics quickly become impossible to ignore. In the UK 80% of people diagnosed with AML will die within five years, and around half will not survive beyond six months of diagnosis. 

I began six months of intensive chemotherapy and then a further year of treatment. My total focus was on a tiny bit of positive energy and I tried to hang on to it and grow it. That’s what shaped everything that followed. 

At the end of 2022, in remission and after an extraordinary year of treatment and recovery, I found myself on a beach reflecting on everything I’d been through. In what was intended as a completely private moment, I spontaneously did twelve cartwheels on the sand, one for each month of the year that had transformed my life. 

This moment sparked something. From January 2023, I began doing a cartwheel every day. I’ve cartwheeled at St Paul’s Cathedral, on the Bafta red carpet with Mo Farah, with Spurs Women and Partick Thistle, and in the Houses of Parliament!  Friends and strangers joined in and cartwheeling became a way of connecting with others and starting conversations about cancer and leukaemia and the urgent need for research. 

After undertaking 1,000 cartwheels for my nurses at UCLH, I decided to partner with Leukaemia UK on a national campaign to ‘Cartwheel for a Cure’, asking people to join me in cartwheeling, or any other daily joyful movement of positivity (what I call a “cart-twirl”), to help raise money to fund kinder, better treatments for leukaemia.  

Sadly, every family in the UK will be touched by cancer in some way and leukaemia research has proved of great impact and significance for many aspects of chemotherapy treatment, immunotherapy, Cart-T cell therapy treatment breakthroughs that can benefit other cancer research institutes. 

Because of the incredible generosity of the British public and some wonderful individual donors and companies from our industry, in my first year of trying I have raised £140,000 towards our £200,000 goal into more research. Many amazing individuals and companies in our sector have wanted to support from Rick Willmott of Willmott Dixon, Peter Millican, Stanhope, Helical, Dorrington, Almacantar, AKTII, Newable, GPE, The Portman Estate, Howard de Walden Estate, Hopkins Architects, Miles Delap, Judith Sykes of Useful Simple, Nick Searl, the wonderful NLA and many many more. Can Girman ran the London Marathon for Cartwheel for a Cure; I recently cartwheeled in front of Lord Hendy’s Routemaster on his and Peter Murray’s bus tour, and there are many spectacular events and programmes happening this autumn and ways of getting involved! Every penny raised will help Leukaemia UK support life-changing research. 

On 30th June 2026, thanks to the incredible Julia Barfield, Merlin Entertainments, and Concorde Media, hundreds gathered at one of the UK’s most recognisable landmarks, the London Eye, for the UK's first National Cartwheeling Day. The event brought together supporters, campaigners, celebrities and friends for a joyful collective celebration on the Eye and a mass cartwheel in Jubilee Gardens. There was something wonderfully appropriate about marking the occasion beside London's most iconic wheel, watching people of all ages take part and reminding me that joy is contagious and a future where leukaemia no longer devastates lives is possible. Around the country primary schools, farmers, dancers and footballers joined in. 

National Cartwheeling Day will be every 30th June and all through the year I will be joining cartwheelers and cart-twirlers (for less able bodied participants) and raising a lot of money and momentum for cancer research. Please join in. 

To donate or get involved visit www.cartwheelforacure.co.uk, or find us on Instagram @cartwheelforacure or @lucy.musgrave. 

©Jenny Zarins