PEDAL -> Portobello Transition Town

PEDAL’s Board of Directors meet on a monthly basis to mon­itor the company’s fin­ances, determ­ine com­pany policy, and provide over­sight of the pro­jects. There are 12 spaces on the PEDAL Board, and up to nine of these are open to ordin­ary mem­bers of PEDAL who are elec­ted at Annual General Meetings. The remain­ing three spaces are for Directors co-opted by the Board – these can be PEDAL mem­bers or other people who have rel­ev­ant skills and experience.

Our cur­rent Board mem­bers are lis­ted alpha­bet­ic­ally below, along with a short pro­file of their skills, exper­i­ence and interests.

Bob Barnham (Co-opted)

Bob trained as an archi­tect and has worked in the pub­lic, private and vol­un­tary sec­tors.  His under­gradu­ate and post-graduate research focused on self-build hous­ing in a devel­op­ing con­text in Kenya, where he worked with squat­ter groups. Following this, Bob ran tech­nical aid centres in Liverpool and Dundee, includ­ing the first community-based energy effi­ciency pro­ject in Scotland. He was also Director of Energy Action Scotland for three years, and a mem­ber of the Consultancy Group for the then Department of the Environment. Bob has worked for Changeworks, a local sus­tain­able devel­op­ment organ­isa­tion, for the past 19 years, deliv­er­ing energy effi­ciency improve­ments and the City of Edinburgh Council’s Home Energy Conservation Act strategy.  Part of his cur­rent remit relates to design­ing and deliv­er­ing train­ing. This has included devel­op­ing and pilot­ing an award-winning train­ing resource for local author­it­ies and hous­ing asso­ci­ations, and train­ing organ­isa­tions for com­munity engage­ment initiatives.

Chris Booth

Chris has worked with vol­un­tary sec­tor organ­isa­tions sup­port­ing the peace move­ment nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally since 1984, includ­ing edit­ing peace magazines and organ­iz­ing major con­fer­ences. He was self-employed as an IT con­sult­ant to a wide range of vol­un­tary sec­tor organ­isa­tions for 13 years and he now works for a work­ers co-operative provid­ing print and web design solu­tions for third sec­tor and pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tions. He is also respons­ible for  PEDAL’s own web­site. Chris is a trustee of the South-East Scotland Quaker meet­ing, and a mem­ber of Protest in Harmony (Edinburgh’s rad­ical street choir) and the Woodcraft Folk. He lived in Portobello as a child and can remem­ber when there was a don­key in the Donkeyfield!

Diana Cairns

Diana worked for two blue chip com­pan­ies, in the energy and fin­ance sec­tors, for over 20 years.  Her back­ground is in train­ing and organ­isa­tional devel­op­ment, with exper­i­ence in design­ing, deliv­er­ing and eval­u­at­ing train­ing, design­ing organ­isa­tional level devel­op­ment strategies and pro­ject man­age­ment. She has been involved in a num­ber of suc­cess­ful high pro­file local cam­paigns for envir­on­mental justice, includ­ing Portobello Campaign Against the Superstore and Portobello Opposes New Garbage Site. Diana has lots of exper­i­enced in organ­ising and run­ning events and fun­drais­ing. She is a mem­ber of Portobello Community Council and involved in a num­ber of other local groups.

Stephen Hawkins (Treasurer)

Stephen is a Chartered Building Surveyor with extens­ive exper­i­ence of work­ing in local gov­ern­ment, hous­ing asso­ci­ations and the health ser­vice. He is also a part time lec­turer in hous­ing main­ten­ance at Heriot Watt University, and one of three Councillors for the Portobello/Craigmillar ward on City of Edinburgh Council. Stephen is a mem­ber of Portobello Community Council and has a long involve­ment in local affairs, includ­ing sev­eral suc­cess­ful local cam­paigns and pro­jects. He has skills and exper­i­ence in prob­lem solv­ing, pro­ject man­age­ment,
budget­ing and con­trol of expendit­ure. He also holds a Master in Business Administration degree from Edinburgh University, and is an asso­ci­ate of the Chartered Institute of Housing. Stephen’s par­tic­u­lar interest is in integ­rated energy man­age­ment and reduc­tion in urban areas.

Justin Kenrick

Justin chaired PEDAL from its incep­tion in 2005 until 2010 when he decided to focus on other PEDAL pro­jects, and other com­munity cli­mate change work. In 2009 he stopped lec­tur­ing in social anthro­po­logy at Glasgow University to focus on sup­port­ing com­munity responses to cli­mate change. He is devel­op­ing a strategy for Fife Council to sup­port com­munity car­bon reduc­tion ini­ti­at­ives; works with ini­ti­at­ives across Scotland to build com­munity resi­li­ence Holyrood 350; and sup­ports forest peoples in Central Africa to respond to cli­mate change. He has lived in Portobello since 1998 with Eva and their 3 boys (with brief peri­ods liv­ing on Eigg and in Falkland), and is inter­ested in how ‘local to local’ con­nec­tions — across Scotland, and across the Global North/South divide – could rad­ic­ally re-energize national and inter­na­tional action for sustainability.

Jane Lewis (Chair)

Jane has worked in the vol­un­tary sec­tor since 1987 in a range of com­munity and user-led pro­jects. She has many years’ experience in devel­op­ing and man­aging pro­jects, includ­ing fun­drais­ing, recruit­ing and super­vising staff and volun­teers, and car­ry­ing out research. Since 2003, Jane has worked as a National Development Worker at People First (Scotland), a self-advocacy organ­isa­tion run by adults with learn­ing dif­fi­culties. Jane is a founder mem­ber of PEDAL, is act­ive in the food group and is pas­sion­ate about increas­ing the pro­duc­tion and avail­ab­il­ity of local organic food. She is a keen organic allot­ment holder, is song leader for Protest In Harmony (Edinburgh’s rad­ical street choir) and plays a key role in Portobello Woodcraft Folk.  She lives with her part­ner, Chris, and son, Callum, in Portobello.

Peter McColl

Peter is a com­munity act­iv­ist who has lived in Edinburgh for 12 years. Peter came to Edinburgh to study geo­graphy, pub­lic policy and crit­ical the­ory. His thesis was on land reform in Scotland. While at University, Peter was President of Edinburgh People and Planet and Vice President of the Students’ Association (EUSA), dur­ing which time he cam­paigned for car­bon reduc­tion, Fair Trade and eth­ical invest­ment of Edinburgh University’s reserves. He cur­rently works for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and has recently become Chair of Transition Support Scotland, an organ­isa­tion that sup­ports Scotland’s Transition Towns move­ment. Peter lives in Portobello with his part­ner, Maggie. He is a mem­ber of Portobello Community Council and has been act­ive in PEDAL since its cre­ation. He has par­tic­u­lar interests in com­munity own­er­ship and land reform.

Eva Schonveld

Eva Schonveld has lived in Portobello for the last 12 years and has raised her 3 boys there. She was a founder mem­ber of PEDAL, helped set up the PEDAL orch­ard as part of the food group, and was part of the team who developed PEDAL’s CCF fun­ded pro­jects. She has worked in com­munity devel­op­ment and involve­ment pro­jects for the past 20 years and is very com­mit­ted to the ideas behind the Transition model. Together with oth­ers in PEDAL she set up Transition Scotland Support, where she’s cur­rently work­ing to sup­port Transition com­munit­ies across Scotland and build a national net­work for them.

Neil Woodward

After com­plet­ing a degree in Microbiology & Virology in 1985, Neil worked for the University of Nottingham Department of Pharmacolgy doing research for a well-known house­hold products man­u­fac­turer. He went on to work for Scottish & Newcastle Plc in 1990, first in fer­ment­a­tion research and then as Pilot Brewery Manager, where he was instru­mental in brew­ing and pack­aging designer beers.  He later became Consumer Relations Manager for the UK, com­pleted his MBA and became an aud­itor for BSI.  Unfortunately, due to ill health, Neil was retired from this role in 2009, but fol­low­ing a full recov­ery is now look­ing for a new career.  His interest in PEDAL came about through being involved in the Donkeyfield Orchard, and the oppor­tun­ity to become more involved in the com­munity was too good to miss. Neil lives in Portobello with his wife, Lorna, and their son Alexander. He is an affil­i­ate mem­ber of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development