Priscilla Gordon-Duff - Convenor
My association with Ardtornish and the Raven family began in 1994 when I met Andrew Raven at a Rural Forum AGM in Perth. Both graduates of the Land Economy Department of Aberdeen University, we shared similar approaches to land management and rural development. We continued to work together through involvement in the Forestry Commission Scotland when I was the first Chairman of Grampian Forestry Forum and Andrew was a Forestry Commissioner until his untimely death in 2005.
I value my association with the people and landscape of Morvern which has developed through my involvement in The Andrew Raven Trust. Initially a Trustee (2013), I now have the privilege to act as Convenor for the Trust (2016), and have been inspired, informed and challenged in these roles. I continue to experience and explore rural issues through my daily life in Banffshire; as a Director of Drummuir Home Farms; as a Trustee of the Macaulay Development Trust and as the chairman of local environmental charity ‘Drummuir 21’.
Susanna Beaumont
Susanna Beaumont is a curator, creative producer and mentor who works with artists and designers to deliver site-specific projects, commissions and exhibitions in Scotland and beyond. In 2018 she launched Design Exhibition Scotland to celebrate and champion contemporary designers and makers and their work.
An energetic thinker and innovator, Susanna is passionate about advocacy, reaching a wide public audience and supporting adventurous ideas and individuals. In 2023 she curated Design for Our Times, a celebration of material innovation at V&A Dundee and worked with Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute on a series of park bench commissions. She is currently creative producer for Scottish Furniture Makers Association's touring exhibition Ash Rise, developing with designers and artists a series of drinking fountains and working towards an exhibition at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh celebrating the life of geologist James Hutton (1726 - 1797) and the vital importance of soil health.
Nigel Leask
Nigel Leask holds the Regius Chair of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow. He has published extensively in the area of Romantic literature and culture, with a special emphasis on Scottish literature, travel writing, and empire. Through his long friendship with Angus Robertson and Andrew Raven, he has spent a great deal of his adult life in Morvern, and his family have leased Acharn Farmhouse, Ardtornish, since 2002. Residence in Morvern, and attendance at Andrew Raven Trust weekends, have helped inspire his interest in Highland literature, history and environments, further informed by study of Gaelic.
His two most recent books are Stepping Westward: Writing the Highland Tour 1720-1830 (Oxford 2020), which was shortlisted for the Saltire National Book Prize 2020; and (with Anne Dulau and John Bonehill) Old Ways New Roads: Travel in Scotland 1720-1830 (Birlinn 2021). Nigel is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Vice President of the Association of Scottish Literature.
Rob MacKenzie
Rob MacKenzie is a (not very practical) crofter’s son from the Isle of Lewis and (so) is now Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Birmingham. Rob’s expertise is in air, forests, clouds, and climate. In 2013, Rob became the inaugural Director of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research, providing fundamental science, social science and cultural research about forested landscapes – urban and rural - anywhere in the world. Rob first encountered The Andrew Raven Trust in 2016 when he took part in (and learnt loads from!) the What makes a good wood? weekend. He has been an ART trustee since 2020 and has Chaired the Research Advisory Committee of the Fund4Trees charity since 2015.
Alasdair Reid
Alasdair Reid joined the Scottish Parliament's Information Centre (SPICe) in 2003 and has led parliamentary research and supported scrutiny of a broad range of environment and sustainable development issues since then. Al is currently a senior researcher with responsibility for land reform, climate change and energy policy. Prior to becoming a public servant, he had a varied career in environmental consultancy, and as an outdoor instructor working in Scotland, Antarctica and France.
Al has a longstanding interest in Scotland's land and communities and the impacts of and responses to the twin nature and climate crises. Al first came to Morvern to attend the Soil Matters: Managing Scotland’s Soils in the 21st Century weekend in 2019.
Isla Robertson
Isla Robertson is a writer working across theatre, audio drama and short film. Her recent work has been focussed on pressing issues facing Scotland’s rural landscape and people. These include an audio drama about soil, peat and farming called ‘Digging Deeper’ written with support from the British Society of Soil Science and an audio play ‘How to Swim’ about community-owned renewable energy written through a development partnership with Mull Theatre.
She lives in Morvern and has been a trustee of The Andrew Raven Trust since 2017. She has very fond memories of Andrew Raven from her childhood.
Sally Thomas
After a decade working as a policy planner in local government Sally moved into the Civil Service in 1999. She led the development and delivery of Scotland’s innovative Land Use Strategy and established two highly successful pilot projects to test the concept of integrated regional land use decision making. Sally also led the delivery of Scotland’s Biodiversity Strategy, and response to international biodiversity obligations.
From 2017 to 2020 Sally was Director of People and Nature, and Chief Scientist at NatureScot. As part of the leadership team for a major public body, she was responsible for ensuring that nature lay at the heart of decision making, most crucially in support of Scotland’s response to the twin challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change.
Sally is a Chartered Town Planner and a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. She is also a Trustee of Plantlife International and a member of the Scotland Committee for the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Amanda Raven - Honorary Patron, former Chair and founding Trustee
Amanda Raven (nee Game) is an Independent Curator and Writer with a specialist interest in contemporary craft and design. Formerly a Director of the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, she now divides her time between Oxford and Morvern exploring new ways of connecting designers and makers to contemporary culture.
Her Morvern home is a contemporary Studio designed and built (2014) using local skills and locally sourced materials. Her knowledge and interest in sustainable rural development was fostered through the work and life of her late husband Andrew Raven OBE (1959-2005) first visiting Ardtornish Estate, his family home, with him in 1979. Andrew’s recognised ability to create shared, imaginative space, across interest groups, to consider sustainable futures is continued in the work of the Trust.
Faith Raven - Founding Trustee
Faith Raven first came to Morvern in 1930, aged one month, when her parents, Owen and Emmeline Hugh Smith, from London, bought the Ardtornish Estate on the seaboard of Morvern and the Sound of Mull in North Argyll. She has spent a good part of the year at Ardtornish ever since, though also living in South Cambridgeshire, as her husband, John Raven was a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and taught in the university.
Faith has a MA in History from Oxford and diplomas in Social Administration from the LSE and in Criminology from Cambridge. She inherited the Ardtornish Estate in 1967 and immediately put the ownership into trust to ensure the estate’s continuity. The mother of five children, her interests also include oral history, photography, screen printing, engraving and gardening. Both her garden at Ardtornish and at Docwra’s Manor in Cambridgeshire are open to the public.