Biography:

Savita Custead is the Director of the Bristol Natural History Consortium, a collaboration of a collaboration between Avon Wildlife Trust, BBC, Bristol City Council, Bristol Zoo Gardens, Environment Agency, Defra, Natural England, University of Bristol, The University of the West of England, Wildscreen, and Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust . Through the charity, she directs the annual Bristol Festival of Nature, and the Communicate conference for environmental communicators. Prior to running the Consortium, Savita helped run dialogue and consultation projects for Ecsite-UK. This role included researching, writing and testing debate materials for young people on biomedical issues such as premature babies and vaccinations, supporting science centres to run events, presenting the results to bodies such as the Nuffield Research Council, and creating a facilitation skills training pack that is still used to train science centre staff. She has organised a wide range of debates for adults and mixed audiences, including the Bristol Green Capital debate in 2008 that attracted nearly 300 visitors and provided the basis for the Bristol submission to the European Green Capital. Savita has run training sessions in public engagement for researchers, museum staff, community practioners and PhD students, and has led public engagement projects for Research Councils, NGOs and universities..

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