Catalyst Campaigns is run by Karen Grant, offering consultancy based on almost 30 years experience working with campaign groups in Scotland and internationally.
After gaining an Ecology degree she ran the Forest Campaign for A SEED Europe (Action for Solidarity, Equality, the Environment and Development), where she also co-ran international youth workshops about trade justice and climate change. She then worked with the Green Group in the Scottish Parliament, before becoming Director of Scottish Education and Action for Development. Taking the organisation from a dormant state, she helped make it a vibrant hub of community action and popular education, and founded Switch On to Climate Change – one of the first projects of its kind in Scotland, supporting the growth of new community-based climate action. In recent years, she has worked to help increase people's connection to nature through a new hutting movement in Scotland, as part of Reforesting Scotland's Thousand Huts campaign. She also co-runs a small farm with her brother.
She has participated in a range of key international conferences (and in their parallel alternative summits), and in running grassroots events parallel to various EU Summits and G8 Summits.
She has represented the voluntary sector on the panel of the Climate Challenge Fund and sits on the Board of Directors of LifeMosaic. She is a practicing artist and has exhibited in Glasgow and London.
Particular areas of expertise and experience
- Climate change, particularly community-based climate action
- Participatory education for action
- Communications writing and design
- Art and social change
