An artistic touch has been added to Canberra’s oldest environmental organisation with the appointment of the Canberra Environment Centre’s new executive director, Fiona Veikkanen.

A former ANU School of Arts student and sculptor, Fiona hopes to bring her passion for visual arts to the environmental cause.

“I have such a passion for communicating through community and I’m looking forward to combining creativity with real practical sustainable solutions that help our environment,” Fiona says.

“I would love to partner with other community organisations including art organisations; art has power to communicate in a way that words don’t.”

The Canberra Environment Centre has been operating since 1974 and recently moved from demountables at the ANU to Gungaderra Homestead in Harrison, where Fiona plans to establish a new community garden.

The move also saw the downsizing of the Centre’s largest dedicated environmental library in the ACT, which consisted of more than 5000 printed items. Many of these are now housed and maintained at the ACT Heritage Library.

“The collection is reduced but now it’s actually more accessible because the amount of resources you have to put into maintaining a collection is enormous,” Fiona says.

“Instead of us using all our input into those systems, to donate them to the ACT Heritage Library and have it managed by their database actually makes that material more accessible. Our video content recently climbed up to 4000 YouTube followers. That’s what people in 2023 want.”

Many prominent environmentalists, environmental practitioners and academics have been associated with the Canberra Environment Centre over the years, including former ACT MLA Kerrie Tucker, and naturalist and historian Ian Fraser.

Fiona, a former educator at the National Gallery of Australia, hopes to share her passion for community connection, growing local food and composting (she helped the Polish Club restaurant reduce waste and compost 180kg organic waste a week) with the Canberra Environment Centre.

For more information, visit www.canberraenvironment.org

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