Bioregional Learning Days in South Devon

Co-founder Isabel is BLC’s CEO. She is a leading advocate for place-based education and regenerative design. With a background in storytelling, systems thinking, large-scale project management and community engagement, she works to empower local actors to restore ecological and social resilience. Isabel’s work focuses on bioregioning as a practice of deep transformation, fostering connections between people, landscapes, and regenerative economies.

In her early career, her experience in the London art world (where her work included writing as an art critic for The Times and curating exhibitions at the Royal Academy) led her to set up and direct the Festival of Muslim Cultures that took place across Britain throughout 2006. Over 120 events in almost every conceivable art form brought audiences into contact with the Muslim world in order to build bridges of understanding between cultures. Isabel moved to South Devon in 2010 and created and led learning programmes for children and young adults with Transition Network. Since 2012 she has trained in Regenerative Development and Design with Regenesis.

Clare co-founded Bioregioning Tayside in 2020. One of three Directors, she leads on project development and delivery. An independent creative producer, working across the fields of culture, nature restoration and tourism, she co-founded, and was co-director from 2018-2025, of Tayside’s ‘museum without walls’, the Cateran Ecomuseum where she produced the first two stages of their ‘Museum of Rapid Transition’ programme. Previously a member of Alyth Community Council and a founding Director of the Alyth Development Trust, she also served on the Local Action Group of the Rural Perth & Kinross LEADER programme from 2014-2021. She is a member of the Scottish Nature Finance Pioneers Group and co-leads The Alyth River-Keepers.

Nick is Data and Evidence lead for the Bioregional Learning Centre. He specialises in the analysis, visualisation and communication of strategic information to engage stakeholders and ensure that environmental actions are co-designed, targeted and co-created in locations that give the greatest magnitude and diversity of social, cultural, economic and environmental outcomes. For ~15 years, Nick has been working as a ‘knowledge-broker’ and co-creation-facilitator on local collaborative governance, participatory environmental planning, community-based climate resilience/adaptation and Nature Based Solutions projects. Since 2017, Nick has been working as a European Commission (Horizon 2020 and Joint Research Centre) Technical Expert.

Oscar is an environmentalist specialized in non-violence and sustainability from a systemic perspective. He has been involved in socio-ecological movements in rural Catalonia for more than two decades and lives in La Garroxta. Oscar co-founded a rural coop on 2006 working on permaculture. In 2016 he co-founded the non-profit coop Resilience.Earth, where he works on regenerative development, community resilience and the social and solidarity economy, both locally and internationally. Nowadays he is involved on deepening regenerative governance processes at rural level in bioregions on north Catalonia. The focus of his work in the La Garrotxa bioregion is on the ecosystemic articulation of the social and solidarity economy, the development of adaptive governance systems, and the creation of social infrastructures that balance autonomy and interdependence. His expertise in bioregioning and territorial regeneration enables him to design governance and economic models that dovetail with and enhance the ecological, social, and cultural specificities of each rural context.

Tim Crabtree is Director of Wessex Community Assets, and has been involved in bioregional economy initiatives in South West England for over 30 years. His focus is innovation in community-led housing, local food initiatives, community energy and bio-based fibresheds. He was the founder and chief executive of Local Food Links Ltd, a successful Dorset-based community enterprise where he developed a school meals catering service now supplying 60 schools with a turnover of £2 million. He is currently Chair of Dorset Community Energy and Bridport Area Community Housing. Tim studied economics at Oxford University before working on policy with New Economics Foundation for 5 years. Since then, he has focused on social enterprise and cooperative development, in urban and rural contexts, including pioneering work in bioregional finance and community land trusts. Tim was Senior Lecturer in Economics at Schumacher College for 8 years, leading practical modules that integrated regenerative economy with systems thinking and processes of complexity. He is also a part-time researcher at the University of Plymouth, with a particular focus on the use of bioregional materials in construction and retrofit.

As a co-founder of the Bioregional Learning Centre (BLC), Jane brings design into the heart of BLC’s practices and projects as a way to try things out, get stuff done, give form to ideas and inspire action. As a trained graphic designer, Jane has led and inspired interdisciplinary teams for global design and architecture firms in London, Ohio, Boston and San Francisco, delivering projects for clients across multiple sectors and industries. Her understanding of ecological complexity and large-scale ecosystem restoration grew from spending time with the redwoods and rivers of Northern California whilst working with NGO, California Trout, who have been actively improving, freshwater ecosystems for over 50 years. Instrumental in recently delivering a top-ranked, 3-year, 13-partner saltmarsh restoration project on the Dart, Jane creates mission-led, place-based experiences and meaningful forms of communication, including the arts—with the South Devon bioregion as her client. Her current focus is “Sensing the Bioregion”, an enquiry into this bioregion’s bio-cultural identity.