About us

Here are some of the current members of the Ashley Vale Action Group and some of the skills and experience they bring to the project:

Simon Groves

Simon is a civil engineer with Bristol City Council. He has an MSc in Soil Science and is an associate member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. He has extensive experience in programming, planning, estimating and pricing construction projects and in managing contracts and subcontractors, measuring and setting out.

Mike Harvey

Mike is a furniture designer and maker who has lived in this part of Bristol nearly all his life. He was educated at the local schools and has lived opposite the former scaffolding yard for the last 22 years. He studied Interior Design at the Royal West of England College of Art and in 1968 he set up what was possibly Bristol's first contemporary furniture workshop. Since then he has continued designing furniture and kitchens from his own workshops, for fifteen years in parallel with Functional - a shop selling contemporary household accessories. He has also taught on the construction course in the 3D Design Department at what is now the University of the West of England's Faculty of Art, Media and Design.

Barbara Mackay

Barbara is a self-employed builder specialising in residential projects such as house renovations and loft conversions. She moved to Ashley Vale from a goat farm in France in the 1980s and set about renovating and rebuilding her house in Watercress Road. She holds a qualification in lead bossing and welding and is an active green campaigner.

Jackson Moulding

Jackson Moulding currently works for the Centre for Sustainable Energy, as a Community Project Manager, running a number of projects promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency within the UK. He has an MSc in Environmental Pollution Control and has extensive experience in eco-management. Before taking up his current post, he worked for Bristol City Council, coordinating a project with the Municipality of Tbilisi, which involved travelling to Russia, Denmark and Georgia focusing on Air Quality and Sustainable Waste Management.

The current directors (as of September 2006) of AVAG are:

Mike Harvey (Chair), Patrick Edwards (Secretary), Barbara Mackay (Treasurer), Simon Groves, Marc Mackay, and Jan Walters.