Healing Our World: From Despair to Repair - Autumn Conference 2026

Presenters & Workshop Facilitators

• More details about Mike Berners-Lee - Chair of the National Emergency Briefing (Saturday)

  Mike Berners-Lee - Chair of the National Emergency Briefing (Saturday)

  Mike Berners-Lee consults, thinks, writes and researches on sustainability and responses to 21st century problems. He is the author of acclaimed books, including A Climate of Truth, There is No Planet B and How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything. As founder and director of Small World Consulting he helps organisations of all sizes and sectors to address the challenges of the Anthropocene. He is a professor at Lancaster University, where his research includes supply chain carbon modelling, sustainable food systems and the environmental impact of ICT. He has made numerous speaking, radio and television broadcast appearances to promote public awareness of sustainability and climate change issues. In February 2025, he was awarded the Planet Earth Award by the Alliance of World Scientists for his work on seeking solutions to environmental challenges. He is chair of the National Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature crisis, which was held in November 2025 at Central Hall Westminster and is now being screened across the UK and beyond for communities to move from awareness to action.

• More details about Draeyk van der Horn - Introducing Mike Berners-Lee (Saturday)

  Draeyk van der Horn - Introducing Mike Berners-Lee (Saturday)

  Draeyk is Moray’s first Green councillor, elected in 2022, with a strong record of community, climate and nature action. He has championed the Climate and Ecology Bill, declared a Nature Emergency, supported winter warm banks, secured the phase-out of glyphosate, opposed a damaging hydrogen facility, and helped unlock funding through the £500 million Just Transition Fund. As Moray’s first Climate Champion, he continues to push practical local action on climate, nature and community wellbeing. A chef, regenerative farmer, writer, director and registered celebrant, Draeyk has spent much of his career building communities — developing local food networks through Incredible Edible and Tasting the Future, directing a local community enterprise, and now serving as director of the Shieling Collective in the Highlands. He has also established a gallery and makers’ space celebrating nature through Pictish, Celtic and Norse culture and mythology. At the heart of everything is a deep connection to nature. Whether hiking in the Cairngorms, running the dunes, swimming, cycling or working in the forest garden, that connection shapes both his life and his approach to public service.

• More details about Ann Amberg, M.C.S., M.A. - Depth Consciousness for a Changing World (Saturday)

  Ann Amberg, M.C.S., M.A. - Depth Consciousness for a Changing World (Saturday)

  Ann lives on Whidbey Island, WA and is a long-term guest at the ecovillage this winter. She is a writer and PhD post graduate student of depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, currently researching her arts-based dissertation. As a long-time leadership consultant, Ann has worked with non profits training global caring economy leaders and K-12 teachers to meaningfully contribute to culture change, evolutionary eco spirituality and social justice. Since 2013 she has taught her signature immersion course, Archetypal Earth & Cosmos that explores how we can apply a holistic archetypal awareness of earth’s foundational patterns to our everyday lives. Ann is committed to revealing beauty in transformational change particularly in the coherence of inner experience with outer reality. In this participatory presentation, Ann will introduce ten foundational patterns, articulated by evolutionary cosmologist Brian Thomas Swimme as cosmogenetic experience, and ask “what are some emergent evolutionary capacities that can nurture the world soul and enable us to stay present in times of deep change?”

  • Ann Amberg, M.C.S., M.A. - Depth Consciousness for a Changing World (Saturday)'s website
• More details about Jane Frere - Shades of Light (Saturday)

  Jane Frere - Shades of Light (Saturday)

  From Human rights to Gaia’s rights Scottish artist/activist Jane Frere talks about her journey from a war zone to her on going mission with the Ark Project. Combining research, art, culture and people to address climate and ecological breakdown, Jane also wants to involve YOU! Jane asks all of us to choose an endangered species of fauna and flora to ‘stand beside’ and add to her vast tree of life mural which will be the highlight of her exhibition at the Dundreggan Rewinding Centre in Spring 2027. - - - - - - - - - - - - Artist Jane Frere grew up among nature and naturalists paddling in the rock pools of Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water and befriending his famous otters. Jane left for Greece where she worked as an artist and in theatre and film productions before studying theatre design at Central St Martin’s School and the Slade School of Art in London. She joined the doyen of the Fringe, Richard Demarco, to create an arts venue in Edinburgh. after which she was invited to present theatre companies as an international producer at festivals around the world. With human rights interwoven throughout her work, she left producing to establish an ethnological project researching oral histories and conducting workshops in UN Palestinian refugee camps culminating in a major installation Return of the Soul. Back in her native Highlands she established Druimarts Studios by Loch Ness, and collaborated with the late Prof Will Alsop RA exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London and elsewhere. Vexed issues including Brexit, Trump and the rise of the far right informed her expansive protest murals commissioned for the Summerhall arts venue in Edinburgh. From an initial concept during Covid, her Ark Project moved beyond human rights towards a concern for all living beings (Gaia’s rights) to address climate and biodiversity breakdown. With Prof Nathalie Seddon and John-Paul Frazer, Jane is a cofounder of the new Oxford based initiative, I Stand Beside, which aims to encourage people to re-engage with nature in all of its awe and wonder.

• More details about Donnachadh McCarthy - What Drives My Commitment to Positive Change (Saturday)

  Donnachadh McCarthy - What Drives My Commitment to Positive Change (Saturday)

  Following an accident with the Royal Opera Ballet, Donnachadh visited the Yanomami Indigenous people in the Amazon in 1992, with a group of alternative healers. This is where he first experienced the human and ecological devastation being wrought by our ecocidal consumer society. He has dedicated his life since then to ending this destruction and beginning the repairs needed. He is the founder of the Climate Media Coalition and a director of the Media Sovereignty Act Campaign. He was the Weekly Climate Columnist for The Independent and has had articles published in the Guardian, the Times, the Ecologist, Resurgence, Byline Times, etc. He is a frequent national media commentator on a range of environmental topics.He has appeared on The Today Programme, BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain, Radio 5 Live, GB News, TalkTV, Times Radio, and LBC, etc. Donnachadh is the author of Saving the Planet Without Costing the Earth, Easy Eco-auditing, and The Prostitute State – How Britain’s Democracy Has Been Bought. He is the co-founder of the successful cycling campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists. His Victorian home in Camberwell was London’s first carbon-negative home, with solar electricity & battery, solar hot water, solid-wall insulation, a rain harvesting system and a composting toilet. Throughout these years of campaigning, Donnachadh continued to invest in his spiritual healing and empowerment, in order to protect, nourish and empower his work on behalf of Gaia. " In this talk Donnachadh shares the lessons he learnt from this Two Legged Path, in the hope it might inspire more people to do likewise.

• More details about John Talbott - The Evolving Ecovillage (Sunday)

  John Talbott - The Evolving Ecovillage (Sunday)

  John L. Talbott (JT), PE is a professional engineer, ecovillage pioneer and sustainability practitioner who has spent more than three decades helping to develop innovative models for sustainable living. As Director of the Findhorn Ecovillage Project for over twenty years, he played a key role in advancing green building methods, ecological infrastructure and renewable energy systems, helping transform Findhorn into one of the world's best-known ecovillages. He was also instrumental in founding the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and is the author of Simply Build Green. From 2012 to 2021, JT served as Project Director of Narara Ecovillage in Australia, guiding the development of a pioneering cooperative ecovillage community. Since returning to Findhorn in 2021, he has supported several major community initiatives, including leading a Scottish Government-funded project exploring pathways to carbon neutrality. A co-founder and current director of Ecovillage Findhorn CBS, JT continues to work at the intersection of sustainable development, community building and regenerative futures.

• More details about Jason Caddy - Sustainabile and Regenerative Construction (Sunday)

  Jason Caddy - Sustainabile and Regenerative Construction (Sunday)

  Jason Caddy is co-founder and director of Green Leaf Design & Build, a Moray-based company specialising in sustainable architecture and the construction of high-performance, energy-efficient homes and community buildings. For nearly two decades, he has helped pioneer practical approaches to low-impact construction, delivering projects that combine ecological responsibility with thoughtful design. Deeply connected to the Findhorn community, Jason has played a leading role in a number of significant local developments, including the rebuilding of the Light of Findhorn Sanctuary following the 2021 fire and the West Whins affordable eco-housing project. As the grandson of Findhorn founders Eileen and Peter Caddy, he brings both a personal and professional commitment to creating places that support community, sustainability and regenerative living.

  • Jason Caddy - Sustainabile and Regenerative Construction (Sunday)'s website
• More details about Sally Bogale - Education that Serves the Planet (Sunday)

  Sally Bogale - Education that Serves the Planet (Sunday)

  Sally Bogale has been part of Ecovillage Findhorn community since 2024, and lives nearby with her husband, daughter, and dog. She has served as Co-CEO of Gaia Education, an international NGO supporting the transition to regenerative cultures, since 2022. She joined the organisation in 2016 as Project Development and Fundraising Manager, where she worked with pioneering partners on the frontlines of climate change and ecosystem degradation, helping communities to strengthen their livelihoods, restore ecosystems, and build resilience in the face of environmental change. Before joining Gaia Education, Sally worked across the international development and humanitarian aid sectors with organisations including Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Ecologia Youth Trust. Sally loves exploring and promoting the many ways humans can thrive whilst re-establishing ourselves as a happy, healthy, keystone species on this beautiful planet.

• More details about Ross Jackson - Using Money to Heal Civilisation (Sunday)

  Ross Jackson - Using Money to Heal Civilisation (Sunday)

  J. T. Ross Jackson has been described as a man who always seems to be thirty years ahead of his time. He has written a number of books on a variety of topics, including his spiritual journey, needed economic and political reforms, the ecovillage movement, visions of a regenerative future, and the Shakespeare authorship debate. His most recent initiative is a website where he blogs on topics related to geopolitics, economic reforms and global governance in a world that is slowly coming together as a regenerative society in harmony with itself. Ross has for many years been an innovative leader in both the business and NGO worlds. He has functioned as a management consultant in several industries and financial institutions. In 1970, he co-founded SimCorp, which is now a major European financial software company listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. In the period 1988-2000, Ross founded and ran the first international hedge fund based on OTC currency options. From 1995-2015 he was major owner and board member of Urtekram, Scandinavia’s largest organic foods wholesaler. In 1987, Ross Jackson founded Gaia Trust, a Danish-based charitable entity, to promote the transition to a more sustainable and spiritual world. Gaia Trust has financed hundreds of sustainability projects in over 50 countries as well as several “green” start-ups in Denmark, and has supported two major international NGO initiatives—the Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education for over thirty years. Ross’ undergraduate degree was in Engineering Physics in Canada, followed by a Master’s degree in Industrial Management at Purdue University and a PhD in Operations Research, the science of problem solving, at Case Western Reserve University in the USA. Born a Canadian, he has since 1964 lived in Denmark, and became a Danish citizen in 1972. Ross lives with his wife, Heather, on a regenerative farm, Duemosegaard, north of Copenhagen, where they together run a local cultural center with exhibitions, guest speakers, music and a “common garden” project with 20 families producing organic vegetables and fruits together.

• More details about Carolin Waldmann - Healing Through Music (Sunday)

  Carolin Waldmann - Healing Through Music (Sunday)

  Carolin is devoted to guiding people towards nourishment, presence, and a sense of wonder through sound, song, yoga, and community. She creates spaces where people can reconnect with themselves, awaken their senses, and remember their innate belonging to the Earth, to their own voice, and to the deeper rhythms of life. Her work is rooted in the belief that each of us carries an inner wisdom and a unique song waiting to be heard. Through her offerings, she invites people to rediscover the beauty of the natural world, reconnect with the wisdom of their own soul, and re-attune to the cycles of nature that sustain us all. Raised in southern Germany, Carolin's musical gifts were nurtured from an early age, allowing her creativity to flourish across a wide range of musical settings. At the age of 19, she moved to Scotland to join the Findhorn Ecovillage, where life within this creative and spiritually grounded community profoundly shaped both her worldview and her way of holding space. Here, she cultivated an approach founded on deep listening, compassion, and a reverence for the interconnectedness of all life. From this home base, Carolin's journey has taken her across Europe and beyond. She has worked with the Global Ecovillage Network and the European Ecovillage Network, collaborated closely with community musician Barbara Swetina, and travelled to India to deepen her practice of yoga, sound, and Eastern spiritual traditions through dedicated study and training. Ireland has become another significant home in her journey. While studying at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, she expanded her understanding of music in its many cultural and expressive forms, weaving together artistic practice, academic inquiry, and community engagement. At the heart of Carolin's path has always been a profound devotion to voice, sound, and the art of listening—listening inwardly, listening to the subtle guidance of creativity, and listening to the living world around us. This practice of deep listening continues to inspire her work, inviting others into experiences of connection, healing, and belonging through music, movement, and shared presence.

• More details about Audicia Lynne Morley - Nature Based Eco Somatics (Monday)

  Audicia Lynne Morley - Nature Based Eco Somatics (Monday)

  Audicia has spent over 35 years working in the fields of the performing arts, somatics, health and wellbeing specialising in nature-based eco somatics, experiential anatomy and embryology, creative process and ritual. Her lifelong passion for learning and body orientated research have guided Audicia’s studies which bridge both Eastern and Western approaches to BodyMind-Spirit-Nature consciousness. This research led to the establishment of Alive Arts, a creative social enterprise company dedicated to supporting Arts for Peace practices. She developed The ARC Process, a somatic practice in support of health, wellbeing and creative living inspired by her work with Anna Halprin’s Planetary Dance Tamalpa Institute and First Peace Circles EHAMA Institute. Audicia relocated to Forres in 2023, where she established a private bodywork practice alongside her work as Front of House Manager and Lighting Technician for Universal Hall Promotions, Findhorn. Audicia also works freelance in Arts event management and stage production and teaches her work internationally.

  • Audicia Lynne Morley - Nature Based Eco Somatics (Monday)'s website
  • Audicia Lynne Morley - Nature Based Eco Somatics (Monday)'s website
• More details about Galen Fulford - Ecological Water Restoration (Monday)

  Galen Fulford - Ecological Water Restoration (Monday)

  We're also excited to welcome Galen Fulford, Managing Director of Biomatrix Water, whose pioneering work in ecological water restoration and sustainable urban design is transforming how communities work with nature to create healthier, more resilient environments.

  • Galen Fulford - Ecological Water Restoration (Monday)'s website
• More details about Jonathan Caddy - Nature Restoration in the Hinterland (Monday)

  Jonathan Caddy - Nature Restoration in the Hinterland (Monday)

  Jonathan Caddy is a key figure in our community. Having arrived in the area in 1962 at the age of six with his family , the local land and dunes became his natural playground and inspired a lifelong passion for ecological conservation. Under his stewardship, the Findhorn Hinterland was officially recognized as one of Europe's first Nature30 sites, a global accolade celebrating areas committed to protecting at least 30% of the planet for nature by 2030.

• More details about John Seed - Conservation Author, Songwriter, and Film-maker (Monday)

  John Seed - Conservation Author, Songwriter, and Film-maker (Monday)

  John Seed is founder of the Rainforest Information Centre. John is an accomplished bard, songwriter, and film-maker.  In 1995 he received the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 1995, for services to conservation. He co-authored 'Thinking Like a Mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings' and has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology. He has been conducting Deep Ecology workshops around the world for 35 years to help us strengthen our felt sense of connection with the living Earth. John spearheaded s endangered RIC's species, climate change, Asian elephants, Ecuador and Cambodia campaigns.

• More details about Beth Ginter - Learning from the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (Monday)

  Beth Ginter - Learning from the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (Monday)

  The Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council (CCLC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the Chesapeake Bay watershed by educating and certifying landscape professionals in sustainable landscaping and green infrastructure practices. Through our Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional (CBLP) certification program and additional trainings, we equip professionals with the knowledge and skills to design, install, and maintain landscapes that improve water quality, support biodiversity, and build more resilient communities. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Beth Ginter, MPSLD, CBLP Executive Director, Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council (CCLC) Beth became CCLC’s first executive director in January 2020. Based in Silver Spring, Maryland, and working across the mid-Atlantic, CCLC educates and supports professionals to implement conservation landscapes and green infrastructure practices for a healthy and resilient Chesapeake Bay watershed. She helped develop, and also directs, CCLC’s Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional (CBLP) certification initiative. Previously, Beth was the founding principal of a landscape consulting & design firm, and she led scientific communications programs in the corporate sector. She earned a Masters in Sustainable Landscape Design at The George Washington University and a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University.

  • Beth Ginter - Learning from the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (Monday)'s website
• More details about Pupak Haghighi - Restoring the Natural World (Monday)

  Pupak Haghighi - Restoring the Natural World (Monday)

  Pupak Haghighi, co-founder of Trees for Hope, envisioning restoring the Atlantic Rainforest in Moidart, the West Coast of Scotland, and Rewilding the Fertile Crescent. A native citizen of Iran, and belonging to Japan and Scotland at the same time, Pupak bridges cultures and networks worlds and worldviews. Pupak has been living in Findhorn since 2013, and has been holding the focus for Fire Rituals in the community to purify our hearts and heal our life-stories.

  • Pupak Haghighi - Restoring the Natural World (Monday)'s website
• More details about Alan Watson Featherstone - Restoring the Natural World (Monday)

  Alan Watson Featherstone - Restoring the Natural World (Monday)

  Alan Watson Featherstone is an inspirational public speaker, ecologist, nature photographer and writer based in the Findhorn Community in the northeast of Scotland. In 1986 he founded the award-winning conservation charity, Trees for Life, which works to restore the Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands. He cares deeply about our planet, and has dedicated his life to protecting its biological diversity and sharing the beauty and wonders of the natural world through my photographs, talks and writing. ​Alan has been vegan for over 40 years and lives with his wife, Pupak, in an energy-efficient ecologically designed house in the Findhorn Community and Ecovillage in northeast Scotland. He is a trustee of three locally-based charities: the Findhorn Hinterland Trust, Trees for Hope and ‘Wild things! environmental education in action’.​

  • Alan Watson Featherstone - Restoring the Natural World (Monday)'s website