Alan Featherstone, founder of Trees for Life, the partner of Festival Wood, has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for our Green Events and Innovations Conference which will be held on March 6th 2014 in London.
There is an a special early bird ticket availability until 31st December gei2014.eventbrite.com
In the 1970s Alan worked and travelled extensively in the USA, Canada and South America – and saw first-hand the destruction of the rainforests, the poverty of the Third World, the effects of pollution etc) – and Alan developed a strong sense of the need to change the impact humanity is having on Nature and the planet. In 1978 this led him to join the Findhorn Foundation, which first became known in the 1960s for developing a new relationship between humanity and nature, based on cooperation instead of exploitation. In his 15 years with the Foundation, Alan was in the forefront of its work with nature, and was the main organiser for a major international conference on the world’s ecological crisis, ‘One Earth: A Call to Action’, which took place, with 240 delegates, in October 1986. Following this, he founded the Trees for Life charity which is working to restore the Caledonian Forest to a large area in the Highlands of Scotland. Alan has been the Executive Director of Trees for Life since its inception, and the charity has planted over 1 million trees to date, including our own trees in ‘Festival Wood‘ at Dundreggan, and has involved thousands of volunteers in its work. Trees for Life has received a series of awards, including the UK Conservation Project of the Year Award in 1991, the Millennium Marque Award, for environmental excellence for the 21st century, in 2000, and Top 10 Conservation Holidays worldwide in 2009. Alan has also been the recipient of a number of awards personally, including the Schumacher Award in 2001, the Spirit of Scotland Environment Award in 2012 and the Nature of Scotland Outstanding Contribution Award in 2013.
Through his work with Trees for Life, Alan has helped provide the inspiration for other ecological restoration projects in the Scottish Borders, on Dartmoor in England and for the Yendegaia Project in Tierra del Fuego, Chile. He also founded the Restoring the Earth project, to promote the restoration of the planet’s degraded ecosystems as the most important task for humanity in the 21st century, and that work is being carried forward by the Earth Restoration Service, of which Alan is a trustee. Alan is also a trustee and chairman of Wild things, an environmental education charity based in Northeast Scotland.
An accomplished nature photographer, Alan launched the Findhorn Nature Calendar in 1983, combining his photographs of nature with inspiring quotations in a beautiful high-quality publication. This was followed by the Trees for Life Calendar and the Trees for Life Engagement Diary which have been published since 1988, and feature photographs and information about the Caledonian Forest. His photographs have also been published in numerous books and journals, including Time magazine, BBC Wildlife magazine and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Alan has given lectures and workshops on the subject of trees and forests, ecological restoration, deep ecology and the importance of wilderness throughout the UK, and in many other countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Namibia, South Africa, India, Hong Kong, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Argentina. He has been a speaker at major international conferences such as the World Wilderness Congress, the Society for Conservation Biology annual conference and the Society for Ecological Restoration conference. He has also authored a number of articles, which have been published in magazines and journals in the UK and abroad, and has appeared on television and radio regularly in conjunction with his work for Trees for Life.
Alan lives with his eighteen year old son in an ecologically-designed, low energy house in the Findhorn Community on the Moray Firth coast in Northeast Scotland.
As the live sector’s response to environmental management matures, GEI will demonstrate the latest solutions and technologies for practical and sustainable event management. There is a crucial aspect of consideration in order for any practical solutions to be truly effective – and that is audience behaviour. This year the conference sessions will give greater focus to the psychology and sociology that explain audience behaviour, challenging current business models to seek more effective and sustainable collective action.
Green Events & Innovations: registration is open – and EARLY BIRD tickets are available here gei2014.eventbrite.com (subject to capacity)