Dusty Gedge

The Juggling Coach and Environmentalist

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Dusty has been instrumental in promoting green roofs in the UK. This grew out of work with the London Biodiversity Partnership and his work on conserving the black redstart. This work culminated in the formation of Livingroofs.org, the UK's first independent green roof organization. Livingroofs.org is the number one website on green roofs in the UK had has campaigned successfully for a distinct living roof policy in London.

As a Live Public Speaker

Dusty is entertaining, irreverent speaker. He is currently working on a new talk, which aims to combine his work on green roofs, nature and juggling to demonstrate that process and change are possible.

He currently provides seminars, training and talks at a variety of venues throughout the UK and across the world.

He has spoken at -

SPRA AGM 8th April
London Remade 18th March
Green Roofs Bristol City Council 6th March
Green Architecture Brighton 1st March
Ecobuild 27th February
EFB Green Roof Conference 31st January

Juggling, Acrobatics and Accelerated Learning.

Dusty has been a professional Juggler / Circus Performer for virtually all his life. He started out as a street entertainer with the Banana Bros in Devon while studying theatre at Dartington College of Arts.

He then worked with the Theatre of Public Works and Circus Senso touring nationally and in Europe.

In 1988 he nearly joined Cirque de Soleil but pulled out at the last moment as he didn’t think his acrobatics was on a par with the Canadian Gymnastic team who had just won Gold at the Seoul Olympics. The whole team was to join the company!!!!

He has worked with a variety of community circus companies.

In the mid nineties he began running training courses for Corporates and still does so doing on average 20 events a year through his Speaking Agents. Recent clients have included the Dublin Airport Authority. The basis of his corporate juggling is: "We can all unlearn habits and create new ones if we take risks and trust in our ability to change and learn".

Fun, humorous and involving everyone they are more often than not the most memorable part of a conference event.

Through juggling he became involved in accelerated learning with the Quantum Training - working in schools teaching learning and juggling. He still occasionally visits schools providing support in this area.

More About Dusty Gedge

Livingroofs.org has also been active in working with other cities in the UK such as Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham. Livingroofs has sponsorship from all the main green roofing companies in the UK.

Dusty has designed a number of seminal green roofs in the UK including:

Barclays HQ Canary Wharf,
Grays Inn Road, London
Komodo Dragon House, London Zoo

Recently he has been working closely with a nimber of architects on there personal projects including Justin Bere of Bere Associates . His property includes four distinct greenroofs and was recently seen on Countryfile.

He is currently working on another project at Crossway, Staplehurst with Richard Hawkes. This is Richard's own home and the idea is to bring nature into the development. The project can be seen at http://www.eightassociates.co.uk/work/

Dusty as lead consultant with the Green Roof Consultancy has provided specifications and designs for over a 100 projects and training for CIRIA and a number of local authorities, project teams.

As well as running annual green roof tours to Switzerland with his colleague Dr. Stephan Brenneisen, he regularly speaks at conferences in the UK and throughout the world. These have recently included presentations in Chicago, Portland and Washington, Korea, Budapest and Basel.

He is co author of BUILDING GREENER recently published by CIRIA and the Living Roofs Technical Report commissioned by the GLA to support the new London Plan.

He is working closely with CIRIA/Livingroofs.org to deliver the Third World Green Roof Congress in London in September 2008.

Alongside co-author John Little of the Grass Roof Company, Dusty is currently writing a DIY Guide to Green Roofs which will soon be available on line.

Juggling testimonials

"Thank you for the tremendous effort you put in to the 'Surprise Yourself in 40 Minutes' workshop at our divisional conference last week; people enjoyed the session enormously. Getting 1,200 Royal Mail managers to achieve a three-ball cascade is no mean feat!" - Robert Branch, Director & General Manager, Royal Mail

"Thanks for conducting such an excellent juggling session at the SMA conference last week. It achieved more than I had hoped and the delegates loved it" - Brian Darnley, Production Director, AVC Eclipse

"Many thanks for presenting such a great, fun workshop at our conference last week. I think that without exception, everyone thoroughly enjoyed your session and is now well on the way to acquiring a valuable new skill." - David Muir, Health at Work