How Can Communities Lead Climate Action? Panel discussion

Thomas Dixon is ACH’s Research and Project Lead. His work primarily focuses on the design and delivery of innovative projects, developed to test innovative methodologies to support integration. He has worked with refugees and vulnerable migrants since 2011, with several years experience in client facing, frontline support roles. This first-hand experience of mainstream integration services, and their inherent limitations and bias, led to him moving into his current role. Recent areas of work include developing a person-centred Integration Toolkit, and designing a Life Before Language learning methodology to challenge the focus on learning English being the cornerstone of integration. He is currently developing a new model of support and integration, based on Critical Time Intervention, working in partnership with Crisis.

Karen Edkins is a professional photographer and photojournalist with 30 years’ experience working in press, advertising, West Midlands Police – PR, and for ‘Small World Stories’, working with NGO’s and the United Nations in Nepal and Vanuatu. She has been Community Engagement Worker at Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust for over three years, leading the Community Climate Action Project. She is a Lockleaze resident and is passionate about us all having a clean, healthy environment to live in. She sees a real need to tackle the inequalities in our communities and is a keen nature lover.

Emily Fifield is Community Project Manager at Eastside Community Trust. She has been part of the team since joining Up Our Street in 2016 as the business development coordinator. Prior to moving to Bristol, she ran a sustainable fashion business working alongside women artisans in Arequipa, Peru, and completed an MBA in Global Social Sustainable Enterprise. She is a resident of Easton and passionate about finding ways of doing things that create connections between people and ideas, and build local ownership and strong, healthy communities.

Emma Geen is Projects’ Coordinator and Community Climate Action lead for the Bristol Disability Equality Forum and an associate lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. In her free time she is an activist for Extinction Rebellion and Our Air, Our City.

Kirsty Hammond joined Heart of BS13 in 2017. In her current role as Climate Action Development Practitioner she works across the BS13 community to support the production of a Community Climate Action Plan. She works with young people, supporting volunteers and community participants to build skills and confidence as they start their climate action journey. She has worked in the community for over 13 years in various development roles and is passionate about supporting people to reach their full potential by ensuring there are equal opportunities for them to access services.

Amy Harrison is Bristol Green Capital Partnership’s Community Manager, coordinating the Bristol Community Climate Action project. She has a BSc in Environmental Science and is a qualified teacher. She has over 15 years’ experience of developing and delivering engaging learning and participatory programmes with communities, young people, schools and families in the cultural, placemaking, sustainability, STEM and heritage sectors. She is also a Vice Chair of Eastside Community Trust and Director of Our Place (Bristol) CIC.

Dee Moxon is activating craftivist activity with a focus on climate as part of her creative commission with Bristol Green Capital Partnership. She has a background in both environmental activism mingled with street performance, carnival arts and giant puppetry.

Image credit: Paul Blakemore

Donna Sealey is the lead for community development and engagement at Ambition Lawrence Weston. She joined the team full time four years ago after spending 15 years working in Public Health and for the Local Authority. She has a passion for regeneration to ensure that everyone can reach their full potential and live life to their fullest. She was instrumental in setting up Ambition Lawrence Weston back in 2013 whilst being seconded from Public Health one day a week.

Abiir Shirdoon was the lead engagement worker for Eastside Community Trust’s Community Climate Action co-production process. She joined Eastside in 2019 as a community researcher after volunteering in the local area, and also works for the organisation as a play worker at Felix Road Adventure Playground. She is committed to making the neighbourhood greener and more child-friendly and ensuring a better future for generations to come. She is a trained cycle instructor and passionate advocate for making cycling more accessible to people, especially in the Somali community. She has helped develop Eastside Community Trust’s family cycle loan scheme, and is involved in a range of campaigns and programmes around cycling and active travel at a local and national level.

Image credit: Jonathan Bewley

Morgan Tipping is a commissioned artist for the Bristol Community Climate Action Project. She employs collaboration and co-creation as well as empathy, humour and improvisation to create films, audio, spaces, experiences, exhibitions and events that explore and challenge power structures and marginalisation.