Contact me: messageallan@outlook.com
I am the Sustainable Development Policy Officer for Welsh Government, working on the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, Futures and Wellbeing Economy. My work is cross-governmental and international in nature, working as part of a team strengthening the use of the sustainable development principle. Previous to this role I worked as Sustainable Development Advisor at Cwmpas developing a programme of support for Social Enterprises on Net Zero. I have also been a Community Led Housing Advisor, Publisher and author of 15 books and hundreds of articles, published by Harper Collins, Kogan Page, the Guardian, The Garden and a wide variety of other newspapers and magazines.
Previous work
I created the three year oral history project Voices from a disused quarry, co-ordinating the recording and archiving of over 80 interviews, an artist residency programme and a series of outreach events, performances, talks and workshops around the 40th anniversary of the Centre for Alternative Technology. I wrote the book Voices from a disused quarry: an oral history of the Centre for Alternative Technology and a peer-reviewed academic paper for the Oral History Journal (Autumn 2015, Vol. 43, No. 2) entitled Change Making, Class Dynamics and technological experimentation at the Centre for Alternative Technology. For more information visit archive.cat.org.uk
I have many years experience as an organic garden writer, writing columns for Garden News and the Guardian, and several books for CAT and Harper Collins, including The Little Book of Compost, which was translated into three languages. I was shortlisted for two awards by the Garden Media Guild for best columnist for my Garden News columns and inspirational book of the year for my Harper Collins title The Organic Garden. You can find much of my work here in this blog but you can also watch my take on organic gardening in these two organic gardening technique videos I made with now Guardian Environment Editor Adam Vaughan at Ryton Organic Gardens.
Allan Shepherd 