Sarah, Founder
As the founder of The Avalonia Project, I manage the project and its associated collaborations. Here's a little more about me...
Following a career start as an engineering consultant and project manager in the renewable energy industry in Scotland, the wild Scottish landscapes awoke in me a clear misalignment with my values and need for Nature. Driven by a long illness, my path took a turn when I visited the Schumacher College in Devon in Spring 2019 for a short-course (Mind in Nature) that changed - and saved - my life.
I later became a volunteer in that pioneering university until the pandemic hit. Sensing the time to head back home after 12 years abroad in the UK, I returned to the Alpine region of my youth at the French-Swiss border near Geneva and studied with GEN about eco-communities. The Avalonia Project was imagined at the end of those studies in Summer 2021.
I went on several other courses to find out more about how to bring it to life, with notably fantastic help from the French project incubator InnoVales who supported the project through the year 2022. Passionate about the Human-Nature relationship, I continuously study the fields of ecopsychology, regeneration (including systems change), deep and spiritual ecology, European indigenous wisdom etc. On the path of druidry, I am now a Bard and about to embark on the Ovate journey with the OBOD. Today, after over nine years in the renewable energy field at senior and partner roles, I finally work in the field of regeneration with the Ostara collective as a project manager on regenerative leadership.
As an ecophile animist, my mission through this project - and in life in general - is to help us all reclaim the mindset that we are part of Nature, and develop a more loving outlook and sense of care for Nature and each other. Inspired by Celtic indigenous wisdom, I use several creative methodologies - notably through ritual, art, music, poetry, collective intelligence - to fulfill my mission. With these tools, I hope to play my role in this wonderful collective web of care to rekindle the bond between Humanity and Nature.
You can find out more about my motivations behind the project in this article.
Looking forward to meeting you at one of our gatherings...
Sarah
