This presentation was given in the final session of the Ekopia Enterprise Fair 2025. Click here for the recording of the session. This post gives the text of the script as well as the slides as a pdf.
Alex Walker – a man of many seasons
Alex arrived here as a young man, and recent graduate, in his 20’s in 1981.
Apparently, he was a geographer – or so he told us a couple of weeks ago at the Community Learning Circle evening that focused on the economic history and development of the community.
I had thought – as some of his public profiles say – that he was a research assistant at the Department of Management Studies at the University of Glasgow, where he received a M. Phil. (Master of Philosophy) degree in Town and Regional Planning in 1979.
Be that as it may, his geographical talents certainly helped him navigate and structure the changing financial management landscape of the community and its connections with the world.
He joined the Accounts department, and from all accounts (pun intended) was a godsend. Until shortly before this time the accounting system had apparently consisted of two drawers. The right-hand drawer was for incoming cheques and money in hand, and the left-hand drawer for payments due. The Hall was being built during that time and Lyle would come in and ask how much was in the right-hand drawer, and if there was money there would basically take most of it.
There was a collective faith that the money would appear for what was needed.
However, the financial situation of the community was actually not great at that time. An expansion phase in the 70s along with the construction of the Universal Hall, meant there was an increasing debt. Guest numbers were in decline. The bank manager warned that the community was on the verge of bankruptcy.
A cultural shift was necessary. Alex – together with Francois Duquesne and Giles Chitty – was instrumental in bringing in a more worldly system of accounting that helped get things onto a more even keel. And then the purchase of the Caravan Park in 1983 changed the landscape yet again.
Alex, Debbie, Vita Accounts Department 1983
Shortly afterwards, this photo appeared in an article in OneEarth magazine about the improving financial situation and what the Accounts department had achieved. To make the photo more interesting – Alex as focaliser of the department, along with Debbie Hill and Vita de Waal set up this image outside the then Accounts home base. Despite what looks like a fairly chaotic situation, things were in fact pretty ordered. An apt depiction of the process… order out of chaos.
From then onwards Alex has been deeply involved with a variety of existing and new organisations that have helped the community expand and grow. He has been instrumental in initiating and nurturing new directions, exploring possibilities.
His ability to translate vision into financial and legal structures has been invaluable throughout the 40+ years he has been fostering thriving healthy community not just here on this peninsula but elsewhere in Scotland.
It is impossible to mention all the pies his fingers have been in, but hopefully it is possible to at least touch on most things. Hopefully we have gathered the facts accurately!
In the 80s, he was focaliser of Accounts and part of the Foundation Management Group. In 1983 he became a director of New Findhorn Directions, a position he held until two years ago. NFD is the Foundation’s wholly owned trading subsidiary. In 1986 he became a Foundation Trustee, a role he held for 8 years.
Another aspect of Alex became evident in 1987/8 when he took a starring role in Jeremy Slocombe’s annual Christmas play. These were always take-offs of current community events, based on one or another well-known movie. That year the play was ‘TheWizard of Us’, in which Alex was – not the Tin Man, but the Cash Man, following not The Yellow Brick Road, but the Tentative Plan.
On to the 1990s
The decade in which he launched himself as an author and editor, with the publication of The Kingdom Within, an invaluable compilation of articles and writings that covered the history of the development of this settlement to that point. The book is a tribute to the scholar and historian within him. It continues to serve as an essential reference point for new arrivals and for those interested in an overview of the first 40 years of this community. (As an aside – if you find current decision-making structures/procedures convoluted or confusing you might be interested in reading Alex’s chapter on The Problem of Individual Empowerment versus Collective Responsibility.)
A further aspect of his being can be glimpsed in another book, the ‘Dream Club’ published in 2002 under the pseudonym of Alistair Glass. The book is set on a place called ‘the peninsula’, which bears some resemblance to the physical location we are gathered in today.
In the latter years of the 90s Alex took on the role of the Chair of Management for the Findhorn Foundation. It was a time of reinvention, and the restructuring of governance and decision making.
The 90s also saw his overseeing the movement out of NFD of a number of organisations that were operating within the company, such as the Findhorn Press and AES. Another of these was the Phoenix Shop, which David Hoyle who was managing director at the time, envisioned as being owned by the community as a whole.
Together Alex and David, along with Jan Boultbee and Susan Tulloch, masterminded the creation of Ekopia as what would now be called a Community Benefit Society. In 2001 it came into existence with Alex becoming Chair soon afterwards, a position he holds to this day. Shortly afterwards the Ekos were launched, the UK’s oldest local currency scheme.
If we were to go into all the projects that have emerged through the support and guidance of Ekopia we might all be very late for our dinners. Time constraints limit what can be said today but some projects bear mentioning simply to give you a flavour.
As Chair of Ekopia, Alex, has worked with a wide range of partners at different points to raise funds to support community enterprises, often helping to create new structures to hold those enterprises. These included the creation of Title Holders Association in 2004; the Wind Park in 2005 (of which Alex is a director); investments in NFD Eco-chalets and Newbold; enabling the purchase of Station House from the Foundation and transferring its ownership into a housing cooperative; launching financing to support the Moray Steiner School and more recently buying Drumduan House to save the school from going into administration (the school has now bought the house back): enabling financing for the Trees for Life and the Hive buildings, and buying the Art Centre building through community share issues.
Ekopia also supported the community’s first ‘Dragons Den’. And speaking of dragons another of Alex’s major accomplishments was serving for a number of years as Dungeon Master for the teenagers’ Dungeons and Dragons group.
Alex’s passion for, and dedication to, social justice and community benefit have been vital in making affordable housing accessible within our community. His commitment to affordable housing has been extraordinary, not only in this community but throughout Scotland. Weaving together local and national, he has travelled across Scotland attending meetings and advocating for affordable housing and community.
In 2008, Richard Lochhead MSP, then Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, invited Alex to join the Rural Development Council, which advises the Scottish Government on rural issues. This work indirectly contributed to the creation of the Scottish Rural Housing Fund.
It is this fund from which the team of Park Ecovillage Trust, NFD and Ekopia have secured substantial public funding for affordable housing, from the West Whins development onwards. Without Alex, our community would have had very little knowledge of the fund.
His relationships with the Scottish Government team, as well as with the Moray Council, have been key to unlocking and facilitating our success with affordable housing, enabling us to handle housing allocation ourselves using our own requirements. Alex continues to be an essential part of this team. By next year they will have secured funds for 32 housing projects in our community.
And it is not only here in our community that his contribution has made a difference.
In addition to his time on the Rural Development Council, he served for 22 years as a Board member of the Development Trusts Association Scotland. While there he played a key role in supporting community buy-outs and encouraging the development of social investments.
Throughout the years he has also lectured widely on the prospects for a low carbon economy and the philosophy of sustainability.
Although Alex has held a multitude of high responsibility positions, he maintains a quiet ‘in the wings rather than in the spotlight’ persona, so many will be unaware of the debt we owe him for so much of what we take for granted today. Hopefully today may help to change that.
In 2016 Alex gave a TEDx talk in which he quoted Jeremy Slocombe.
The universe responds to action, individuals respond to love, and crucially, community responds to clarity.
Alex brings that quality into all that he does, and we have all benefited.
And on that note ….
On behalf of our community, and all those both near and far that you have served, it is with much pleasure and gratitude that we present this year’s Ekopia Lifetime Achievement Award 2025 to Alex Walker.
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Photo credits: We thank Findhorn Foundation, Mark Richards, Adriana Bijman, Cornelia Featherstone and Greenleaf Design and Build for the images used in this post.
A Canadian who booked visit Findhorn for 2 weeks in Dec 1977 and is still here. So much for having a plan when spirit deems otherwise!! A mom, a gardener, a tree listener, a game guide and trainer.
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