The death of Tracey on Thursday morning has become public today and her departure will leave a very significant gap in our city for a long time to come. The announcement arrived as so often is the case from twitter and then was spotted in the Argus newspaper online here. The ironic aspect of their publication is that whilst she has done so many things over the last 20 or so years in her time here in Brighton, she actually began by working for the Argus, albeit in the promotional part of the paper and yet the paper has changed so much in that time that they were unaware of that or failed to mention it in their early announcement. I had the privilege to meet her when she first arrived in the city and was working for the Argus and indeed I worked for her briefly in a job I carried out at the time. We have met several times since and she was very friendly on each occasion.

As she moved from the role in the Argus across various sectors, she continued to play a significant role, setting up the first Brighton Marathon events and then moving more into the voluntary sector where I was also involved, offering funding advice to a range of charities and social enterprises. The rather small photo above is from an event at Community Works that she was speaking at. One of her close friends was Susi Doherty who runs the Vervate Photographic Agency. I am pleased to have also met Susi (and benefited from her work) and her tweet which ends with a link to Tracey’s memorial fund is:

“We are all absolutely heartbroken here to hear of Tracey’s @SEAPR01 passing. She was a good friend & confidant to me over the years & we had only just enjoyed a few gins & a cheeky fish n chips together. Thank you Tracey for being such an amazing human.”