Cathy Fitzgerald

Dr Cathy Fitzgerald is an ecological art practitioner, educator, mentor, consultant and researcher. She is an Irish-based New Zealander living in rural Ireland, the home of her ancestors. Since the mid-90s, her work with the pioneering Irish forest NGO Crann inspired her long interest in the developing art and ecology field. After her ecocreative PhD and knowing the immense shift ecological insights present to education, she founded Haumea Ecoversity as the most impactful means to engage with the ecological emergency. Over time, Cathy recognised the enormous cultural shift an ecological worldview represents to education and for the creative sector in particular. An informed ecoliterate creative sector will have a crucial role to inspire communities to live well with others and their environments. Importantly, Creativity has inclusive and imaginative means to explore new expansive values for living sustainably that science and politics are failing to achieve. Cathy's expertise as an educator and mentor arises from firsthand experiences: having a prior background in science; overcoming the learning and practical challenges in developing an internationally recognised and rewarding ecological art practice (her ongoing creative forest restoration practice Hollywoodforest.com); reviewing ecological art practice research in detail for her practice-led PhD, and her considerable experience in professional development for all art forms as the inaugural ArtLinks Director for the SE County Arts Offices (2007-2010). In addition, Cathy is an accredited sustainability-systems educator, having completed the UNESCO-recognised ESD (education for sustainable development)-Earth Charter programme in 2021. Since her PhD, Cathy has developed considerable experience in training over 150 mid-career creatives from Ireland and abroad in all creative fields, in transformative ecological literacy (ecoliteracy) and integrated ecosocial values courses through her unique online Haumea Ecoversity (https://HaumeaEcoversity.ie). Given the urgency of responding to the ecological emergency (to addressing environmental and social concerns), ecoliteracy training is essential to empower, inform and guide creative workers, curators, and cultural policy writers in becoming fluent in the values, ideas and actions needed to advance broader concepts of personal, collective and planetary wellbeing. Cathy also enjoys one-to-one mentoring.