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Anna-Louise Pickering

Anna-Louise

is a writer, photographer and conservationist, who has dedicated her life to the welfare of endangered, sick and vulnerable creatures. In 2019 she was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Animal Star Awards. She is Patron of The Wildlife Art Society International and The Born Free Foundation. 

For over 25 years Anna-Louise worked alongside Pollyanna as her business partner. Anna-Louise is the co-founder and president of the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation which raises funds for conservation internationally. She continues to work with Pollyanna’s incredible archive of artwork, and is committed to continuing her unique legacy.

Anna-Louise has become a familiar face on television. She is a regular guest on the Create and Craft channel, appearing live on air to share stories of the inspiration behind Pollyanna’s work. She can often be heard on BBC radio, and is also a popular speaker presenting talks throughout the UK and in Canada about her life and work with Pollyanna, and her expeditions to study endangered species. Her enthusiastic and often lighthearted presentations help to bring awareness of specific conservation issues to her audiences, inspiring in them the need to protect and appreciate our environment.

Anna-Louise began her career in theatre and television. At the age of eighteen she was a founder member of the Leigh Kingston theatrical production company working on several successful London productions.

She has also worked for the BBC and independent film companies. In 1988 she joined Pollyanna as her personal assistant, and in 1990 became a partner in the business, and subsequently a director of Pollyanna Pickering Ltd. In 2004 she was named ‘UK Personal Assistant of the Year’ and has since spoken about her work at international conferences in London and Dubai, to the members of The Fine Art trade Guild, and to Post Graduate Students at the University of Derby.

In 2006 she was honoured with the Department of Trade and Investment’s Women in Business Achievement Award for her role in Pollyanna Pickering Ltd. .

Pollyanna was passionate about only painting animals she had seen and sketched in their natural habitats, a quest which lead to her painting on all seven continents. Anna-Louise accompanied her on every journey, documenting the journeys photographically, and writing the text for their popular books.  She has travelled by dog sled in the High Arctic, camping on the ice at temperatures of -40, canoed through crocodile infested rivers, and been charged by a wild tiger in search of her subjects. She has trekked in the Bale mountains of Ethiopia to photograph the Simien wolf– the only wolf in Africa, and the rarest wolf in the world.  She and Pollyanna were the first western women ever to travel into a remote area of the Tibetan borderlands, where they worked in a hospital for sick pandas.  The resulting photographs and articles about these expeditions have appeared in publications worldwide highlighting the plight of threatened species and environments.

An award winning photographer, her work has been used by publications as diverse as Hello! Magazine and the South China Morning Post. She acted as official photographer to Pollyanna on her expeditions and her photographs have subsequently been reproduced in magazine articles, books as well as illustrating Pollyanna’s popular lectures. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries in the UK and Italy.  She was the official photographer at the Artists For Conservation Wildlife Art Festival staged in China in 2017.

Anna-Louise was honoured to be a finalist in the 1998 Women of achievement Awards when she was recognised for the photography and writing of the book ‘Giant Pandas and Sleeping Dragons’. Since then she has collaborated on six books with Pollyanna, winning critical acclaim for her writing.She is a regular contributor to Bare Essentials – an Australian eco-travel magazine – as well as numerous other publications.

Alongside her late Mother she co-founded the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation, a small but effective non-profit organisation with the aim of both alleviating the suffering of individual animals and conserving endangered species and habitats.

Anna-Louise is a Patron of The Wildlife Art Society International. She is also proud to be a Patron of The Born Free Foundation, Cats in Need, The Howarth Art Gallery, North Derbyshire Animal Support and Parrotaid.

She also holds the post of Honorary Life President of The Chesterfield Art Society, and is an Honorary Member of Rotary. She has acted as regional spokesperson for the World Society for the Protection of Animals and was a member of the development board of new Derby Arts Centre QUAD. She was a longstanding Trustee of the African/Asian Conservation Trust, a conservation organisation based in Ireland, and was proud to be an official delegate representing Europe at the Artists For Conservation Wildlife Festival in China in 2017.

Anna-Louise is committed to continuing the work of the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation as President and co-founder.

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