May East (also known as Maria Elisa Capparelli Pinheiro) is a British/Brazilian urbanist, educator, singer and songwriter. Over the years she has considered herself an artivist.

Early musical career

East comes from an artistic community stretching between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. East's art expressed a deep concern for Brazil's environment both in the major cities and the country's interior, specially the rainforests of the Amazon. East started her career as a singer in the band Gang 90 & Absurdettes in 1981. Their songs mixed new-wave with beatnik poetry and a female choir, inspired by the new-wave band

The B-52s The B-52s, originally presented as the B-52's (with an errant grocer's apostrophe, apostrophe; used until 2008), are an American band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976. The original lineup consisted of Fred Schneider (vocals, percussion), Kate ...

. Gang 90 is considered to be the predecessor of all Brazilian new-wave bands of the 80s. In 1982 she collaborated with the independent TVDO videoart group and in partnership with the producer Nelson Motta co-produced the TV program Mocidade Independente for TV Bandeirantes. In 1984 she released her first single, "Fire in the jungle/Índio", in Brazil,

The Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

and Japan with

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

. Fire in the Jungle became a soundtrack for the film Areias Escaldantes directed by Francisco de Paula. Some months later, her first album, ''Remota Batucada'' was launched. The music was an original brand of

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that came to prominence in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mos ...

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

, and new wave pop and was coined as "tribal ie-ie". East also released the albums ''Tabapora'' and ''Charites''. She moved to England and then to the Scottish community of

Findhorn Findhorn ( or ''Inbhir Èireann'') is a village in Moray, Scotland. It is located on the eastern shore of Findhorn Bay and immediately south of the Moray Firth. Findhorn is 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Kinloss, Scotland, Kinloss, and abou ...

, where she focused on ecological activism and began giving lectures and seminars. In the late 90s she released the albums: Cave of the Heart (with the Findhorn Community Chorus) and Cosmic Breath (with her ex-husband Craig Gibsone); and 1001 Faces (solo album) in 2002.

Career

East has played a role in developing relationships between the United Nations and the

Findhorn Ecovillage Findhorn Ecovillage, known in the past as the Findhorn Community, and also referred to as Ecovillage Findhorn, is an experimental and utopian community project based at The Park, in Moray, Scotland, near the village of Findhorn focused on ecol ...

, culminating in the establishment of CIFAL Scotland in 2006. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research affiliated training centre for Northern Europe operated for 10 years as a hub for capacity building, leadership and knowledge sharing between local and regional authorities, international organisations, the private sector and civil society under East's leadership. She is the co-founder and has served as Chief Executive of Gaia Education, an international consortium of sustainability designers and educators from research and development centers for carbon-constrained lifestyles. East was included three years in a row (2011, 2012, 2013) in the 100 Global Sustain Ability Leaders list, devised and produced by Ken Hickson, Chairman/CEO of Sustain Ability Showcase Asia and ABC Carbon. The list recognises 100 people around the world who have provided leadership in the field of sustainability. East received in 2019 the Women of the Decade in Sustainability & Leadership Award presented by the Women Economic Forum and All Ladies League. A UNITAR Fellow she has an MSc in Spatial Planning with specialisation in integrated approaches for the regeneration of abandoned towns in southern Italy, which makes the case for the reactivation of abandoned settlements, the so-called ghost towns in southern Europe, as an alternative housing solution that comes with embedded collective memory and offers ‘locally adaptable, culturally rooted’ opportunities for communities. She has contributed a chapter of her findings to the book ''From Conflict to Inclusion in Housing: Interaction of Communities, Residents and Activists''. East is one of the co-founders of the

Global Ecovillage Network The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is a global association of people and communities (ecovillages) dedicated to living " sustainable plus" lives by restoring the land and adding more to the environment than is taken. Network members share ideas ...

and has lived for 15 years in the Findhorn Ecovillage where she established a new strand of Education for Sustainable Development. She holds a PhD in Architecture and Urban Planning with the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee is a public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its ...

on the topic ''What if Women Designed the City?'' Since 2013 East has been contributing articles to ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...

'' ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', the Scientific Journal of the European Ecocycles Society and '' Sustainability (journal)'' published by ''

MDPI MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) is a publisher of open-access scientific journals. It publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open-access journals. MDPI is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article o ...

''Sources: * *

References

External links

''An Agreement for the opening of CIFAL Findhorn.'' UNITAR DCP announcement.
{{DEFAULTSORT:East, May Living people 20th-century Brazilian women singers 20th-century Brazilian singers Brazilian women educators 20th-century Brazilian educators 1956 births