Ann MacGarry
Education Officer
Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)

Ann MacGarry has been an Education Officer at the Centre for Alternative Technology since 1989. In that job she has developed and run workshops and courses, produced educational publications, activities and practical kits for teachers and pupils, run educational projects and done countless guided tours of the CAT site.

The topics covered have included sustainable building techniques, renewable energy, the impact of products, Eco-footprinting, energy saving and activities to explore what we mean by sustainable development.

She is currently working on a number of projects with schools for CAT. This involves a number of short courses for teachers and one-off sessions for other groups and then two larger long-term projects, one supporting sustainable designing through the teaching of Design and Technology and the other working through school pupils to educate the community to reduce our Eco-footprint and vision a sustainable future.

She originally trained to teach History, taught English in Kenya, worked in Education Social work, retrained to teach Design and Technology and greatly enjoyed teaching that in London Comprehensives for eight years but then could not resist the attraction of what she still sees as the most interesting job she could imagine, at CAT.