Saturday 22nd March, 2008 (7 days): Findhorn Foundation Easter Conference

The
Findhorn community was recently found to have the lowest ecological
footprint ever measured in the industrialised world – just half the UK
national average. 

The week begins by encouraging us to open to our creativity. Joanna
Macy will lead a two-day exploration of deep ecology while Richard
Olivier will lead a one-day workshop on Green Leadership using the
themes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. We then transition in the
second half of the week to look at the many positive responses that are
already emerging from communities around the world.

Among those presenting at the conference are:

Joanna Macy teacher and author, is the creator of the
Work That Reconnects. Drawing from Buddhist practices, systems theory,
and love for life, her workshops empower environmental and social
activists worldwide. Her many books include Coming Back to Life:
Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World; World As Lover, World As
Self; Widening Circles, A Memoir; and translations of Rilke’s poetry. www.joannamacy.net

Dorothy Maclean is a co-founder of the Findhorn
Foundation and community and continues to dedicate her life to teaching
and supporting others to make their own inner connection to God and to
nature’s intelligence.

Richard Heinberg is widely regarded as one of the
world’s foremost peak oil educators. He is a Research Fellow of Post
Carbon Institute, a member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil
and a core faculty member of New College of California where he teaches
a programme on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community. Richard is
the author of seven books including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the
Fate of Industrial Societies, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a
Post-Carbon World, and The Oil Depletion Protocol. His monthly
MuseLetter was nominated in 1994 for an Alternative Press Award and has
been included in Utne Magazine’s annual list of Best Alternative
Newsletters. www.richardheinberg.com

Richard Olivier is Artistic Director of Olivier
Mythodrama – a unique leadership development consultancy. He was a
leading theatre director for 10 years and directed Henry V for the
opening of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London in 1997. He has worked
extensively in the fields of organisational and personal development.
He works today at the leading edge of bringing theatre into the
development of authentic leadership. Richard is the founding voice
within Mythodrama – a new form of experiential learning which combines
great stories with psychological insights, creative exercises and
organisational development techniques to explore issues faced by modern
leaders. www.oliviermythodrama.com

Richard Lochhead, MSP is Member of the Scottish
Parliament for the constituency of Moray, where Findhorn is located. He
is a former convener of the European and External Relations Committee
of the Scottish Parliament. He currently holds the Scottish National
Party’s portfolios on Environment, Energy, Fishing and Rural Affairs in
the Scottish Parliament.

Rob Hopkins is founder of Transition Town Totnes, the
first transition town project in the UK, as well as the newly formed
Transition Network. He publishes TransitionCulture.org, a blog
exploring these issues. A teacher of permaculture for 10 years, Rob has
built with strawbales and cob and has a particular passion for walnut
trees. Transition Towns are an emerging approach to enabling towns to
prepare for peak oil and climate change and act as catalysts for the
community to explore how the end of the age of cheap oil will affect
them, and what they can do to prepare. They are based on the simple
assertion that life beyond cheap oil and gas could be preferable to the
present, but only if we engage in designing this transition with
sufficient creativity and imagination, and with a previously unseen
level of engagement. www.transitiontowns.org

Megan Quinn is the Outreach Director of Community
Service, Inc and has been writing and speaking on Peak Oil for more
than four years. She served as Master of Ceremonies for the first,
second, and third US conferences on Peak Oil and Community Solutions in
Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at the Peak Oil and Environment conference in
Washington DC in May 2006. Megan graduated with a degree in Diplomacy
and Foreign Affairs from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she
studied Peak Oil and its implications for US foreign policy, and
studied abroad at the University of Havana in Cuba. Megan co-wrote and
co-produced her organisation’s new documentary, The Power of Community:
How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. www.communitysolution.org

Jonathan Dawson
is a sustainability educator, teaching up to undergraduate level at the
Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Scotland. He is also President of the
Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and Executive Secretary of GEN-Europe.
Jonathan has spent much of his working life promoting community
economic development in Africa and is the author of several books
including the recently published Ecovillages: New Frontiers for
Sustainability. He is also a gardener and a story-teller. www.gen-europe.org