Alasdair Hamilton
Alasdair trained as a graphic designer and painter at Edinburgh College of Art before joining the BBC in Glasgow working on sets for drama and light entertainment.

He then spent two years working for an American company in Amsterdam, mainly as an tutor/illustrator, before returning to Scotland as a freelance graphic artist. This was followed by a long period as senior designer for Manchester University, in charge of a small design team working on audio visual graphics, publications, and exhibition design for university clients like Jodrell Bank and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

In 1993 he joined Scottish Natural Heritage as senior designer at Battleby, Perth managing the design unit producing publications, exhibitions and nature reserve signs. Since then he set up his own design and interpretation agency working with a small group of specialists in the field.

He is married to a psychotherapist which is useful in times of stress, has three sons, a daughter and three grandchildren. His interests are painting, poetry and avoiding weeding. And of course - the countryside.

Kenny Taylor
Kenny Taylor is a Black-Isle-based writer, lecturer, broadcaster and musician. His enthusiasm for variety of wildlife and cultures has taken him on research and media-project travels throughout Britain and Ireland and to southern and central Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, the U.S. and Africa. His work is inspired by diverse sources, including folklore, music, natural and local history and science. He has written more than ten hardcover and softcover books, including "Natural Heartlands", which was shortlisted for the international BP/Natural World Book Prize.

Kenny is a frequent contributor to BBC Wildlife magazine and has written two features to date for National Geographic. He has had poetry and essays published in Northwords Now and Island, appeared in and presented many broadcasts and scripted 16 wildlife films, principally for the BBC, including scripts for Peter Capaldi, Geoffrey Palmer and David Attenborough. As an activist, he has been centrally involved in campaigns about the Cairngorms, the community-linked buy-out of the Isle of Eigg and GM crop trials in the Highlands. An honorary research fellow of the University of Aberdeen, he also chairs the native woodland restoration charity, Trees for Life, the Cairngorms Local Biodiversity Project and WordsInc, the organising group for the Black Isle Words Festival.

Joyce Gilbert
After ten years of working in medical research, Joyce decided to abandon her career as a biochemist and pursue her growing interest in environmental education.

Since then several jobs have given her the chance to work with poets, musicians, artists, writers and scientists and also to work with very different communities in rural and urban areas from industrial Sheffield to the remote Hebridean island of Islay. This unique set of experiences has led Joyce to believe that the key to drawing out people's empathy and love of the natural world is by learning in the outdoors through a combination of arts, science and philosophy.

Intrigued by holistic systems thinking and its role in promoting creativity in education, Joyce applied for Winston Churchill Fellowship in 1998. As a result she spent an inspirational four months in Canada which led to the idea of SpeyGrian.

Joyce is based in the village of Luncarty in Perthshire. In her spare time she enjoys hillwalking, cycling, sailing and canoeing and - in more leisurely moments - reading, listening to music and experimenting with textiles.

Kate Campbell
Kate has lived and worked in Scotland since 1990. She has always been interested in the outdoors, growing up in the wilds of Derbyshire and in California, USA. Kate has a background in environmental/outdoor education, with a Masters degree in environmental technology and a PGCE in science & outdoor education. Kate taught science, outdoor and environmental education for nearly ten years in Hampshire, Kent and North Wales before moving to Scotland.

Kate arrived in Scotland in early 1990, having escaped from teaching, but carried on working in the education/environment sector with Grounds for Learning, the Scottish Wildlife Trust and, laterally, Eco-Schools Scotland. Since April 2002, she has been Manager of the Eco-Schools Scotland programme, based with Keep Scotland Beautiful in Stirling.

Kate is married and lives with her husband and border collie, Mac, in Edinburgh. In her spare time, Kate enjoys travelling, cooking, gardening, music and doing anything dangerous in the outdoors - off-piste skiing, scuba diving, walking, climbing, cycling, bungy jumping. You name it, Kate will try it!

Kathy Dale
Kathy was inspired into a career in the outdoors at the age of nine, when she read Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell. Then living in Devon, she has moved further and further north over the years, finally settling permanently in Scotland in 1993, after a number of summers carrying out fieldwork in the Highlands and Islands. After completing an MSc at Edinburgh Napier University in 1994 in the Biology of Water Resource Management, she moved to rural Aberdeenshire, where she now works remotely for a small, multi-disciplinary, environmental consultancy based in Glasgow.

Kathy specialises in freshwaters and is particularly interested in aquatic plants. She was a part of the original SpeyGrian journey down the River Spey in 2000. This journey, and others she has done through SpeyGrian, moved her to connect much more with art and nature, and taught her to just "be" - recognising history, culture and spiritual meaning in the landscape whilst moving through it in a natural way. As an ecologist, she is particularly interested in the impact that people have on the landscape and the ecology of rivers, and is keen to learn from the past ways of living more holistically and "sustainably" in the future.

Kathy lives with her partner, two cats and fifteen hens. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening in her walled kitchen garden, cooking her produce, and doing numerous activities in the hills, such as cross-country skiing, mountain biking, walking, running and orienteering. On rainy days she has been known to play the fiddle!

Alistair Thompson
Alistair Thomson is Principal teacher of Art & Design at Alford Academy, Aberdeenshire.

He has adopted experiential learning strategies both inside and outside the classroom, and has successfully identified opportunities to contextualise it.

Most recent projects include Alford Academy's "Classroom at Sea", taking students from the school on an exploration of the waters around Mull in the company of a poet, the flora and fauna, and their own imaginations. He is also the local facilitator for Living Earth Foundation's Polar Pairs project, seeking to exchange practice and resources with schools in Arctic Alaska.