Dudley Stewart has been leading the Charleville Castle Project since 1996. He took up the mantle from Bridget Vance and broadened the vision, beyond physical restoration, to cultural regeneration.

The key to any restoration project is sustainability. The restoration work can be designed to achieve the highest standards of sustainability. But sustainability depends critically on long- term use and purpose. Dudley believes that lessons are to be found in the history of the castle that are important for the future - “The radical changes navigated by this castle over time are embedded in the memory and fabric of the building”.

Under Dudley, the castle has been dedicated to the global issue of sustainable development. - “Sustainable development has less to do with traditional green issues than it has to do with the development of the leadership skills and motivation of our young people to engage the issue constructively. The critical factor is interdependence – interdependence on a global scale”. Charleville Castle is dedicated to learning with a core focus on the development of inter-disciplinary, inter-cultural, and international teamwork and leadership know-how and skills, based on action-learning. The team at the castle is challenging other colleges and universities to join in the quest to develop new programs directed at these critical challenges.

In the early 1970s, Dudley won his first scholarship to improve his engineering skills in some of the top Engineering Schools in France. From there he was dropped into a leadership position in a disastrous famine situation in Bangladesh in the mid-1970’s issues. Projects ranged from autonomous farm and irrigation co-operative development to large scale “food for work” flood control barrage constructions and appropriate technology development and training.

By 1977 Dudley was leading a high-tech alternative energy company producing a range of new windpower technologies, paving the way for current large-scale developments. In the early 1980’s he served as the Windpower Advisor to Shell international where he set in train many new initiatives which have, in recent years, come into their own. The mid-1980’s saw Dudley as Regional Project Director for AppropriateTechnology and Economic Regeneration for Unicef East Africa, which included difficult challenges in Madagascar, Comores, Burundi, Rwanda, Zaire and Mozambique. Back from Africa, in the late-80’s, to economic regeneration efforts in Dublin and the switch of emphasis to internationalism and knowledge enterprise. After an exciting time, initiating new regeneration projects in Dublin (and Central Europe) Dudley decided to put this experience, together with that of his colleagues, to use in the advancement of a new educational and developmental model at Charleville Castle.

In all this time, great changes have taken place in terms of global priorities - what we know, how we learn and what we can achieve. But the challenge of sustainability has become greater. In a World, which is increasingly driven by commercial prerogatives, our challenge is to redirect attention to the basic issue of sustainability and the central issue of interdependence. This is the core mission of the Quest Team at Charleville Castle.