2024

Award winning alto-saxophonist and MC Soweto Kinch is one of the most exciting and versatile musicians in both the British jazz and hip hop scenes. Undoubtedly, one of the few artists in either genre with a degree in Modern History from University of Oxford, he has amassed an impressive list of accolades and awards on both sides of the Atlantic – including two MOBO Awards for Best Jazz Act (2003, 2007), and Mercury Prize Nomination for Album of the Year (2003).
More recently, Kinch has extended his work in music media becoming the main presenter for BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Now, fronting BBC Four documentary Jazzology (2018), and being awarded an Honorary Associateship at Hertford College, University of Oxford (2018) and The Royal Academy of Music (2020).

Sheila is a London based trumpet and flugelhorn player who leads renowned band Kokoroko and has featured on several projects such as Sampha, Little Simz, Yussef Dayes, Stormzy and others.
Sheila is also a visual artist and loves to paint. Her painting plays an important and central role in her solo music project where she aims to explore her musical voice as well as through her paintings provocatively question the of hyper sexualisation of black women throughout history.

Gilles Peterson is a broadcaster, DJ and record collector who hosts a weekly Saturday afternoon show on BBC Radio 6Music that’s one of the broadcaster’s most popular music shows, helms independent record label Brownswood Recordings, and is the founder of online radio station Worldwide FM. Gilles also hosts the Worldwide FM radio station on the GTA V computer game.
Throughout his career, Peterson has promoted the new frontiers of jazz, hip-hop, and electronic music. Starting by installing illicit transmitters and hosting shows for pirate radio station Radio Invicta, he later joined the newly-founded Jazz FM and, after that, joined the pirate-turned-legal station KISS FM. In 1998, he was hired by BBC Radio 1, where he hosted a weekly show until his move to his current slot on BBC Radio 6Music.

Alex de Rijke is a founding Director of dRMM Architects, having established the practice in 1995 with Philip Marsh and Sadie Morgan. He is a design champion at dRMM, responsible for the concept, construction and delivery of our timber projects. These include Sliding House, Kingsdale School, Charlton WorkStack, Tower of Love, Endless Stair, WoodBlock House, Maggie’s Oldham, and the Stirling Prize-winning Hastings Pier. Committed to timber advocacy and making design culture more public/less elitist, Alex contributed as a design judge to Plimsoll Production’s six-part series, ‘Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker’ for Channel 4 TV, which screened in 2021.

Mirella Di Lorenzo is currently the Associate Dean International for the Faculty of Engineering and Design at the University of Bath. Mirella’s interdisciplinary expertise lies at the interface of bioelectrochemistry, microengineering, microfluidics, sensing technology and material science. Her research addresses some of the world’s most pressing development challenges, such as the water-energy-food security and global health, by developing eco-friendly and sustainable solutions affordable to all.

Sarah Mineko Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator and author. She leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact initiatives and organizations. Her latest book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, proposes a bold set of regenerative design principles for addressing our compound environmental and social crises.

Louisa Dent joined Curzon Artificial Eye in 2008 as Managing Director, overseeing the acquisition and release of titles including THE CLASS, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, STILL ALICE, FISH TANK, 45 YEARS, AMOUR, THE HANDMAIDEN, COLD WAR, PARASITE and TRIANGLE OF SADNESS.

Clare Sillery is the Head of Documentary Commissioning output for BBC One, Two, Three and iPlayer. Recent series include Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, Parole, House of Maxwell and Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams. Single films include Our Falklands War and The Real Mo Farah.

Raul Niño Zambrano is the Creative Director of Sheffield DocFest, a role that was granted after successfully delivering the 29th edition as the Head of Film Programmes in June 2022. He was previously a Senior Programmer at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) where he started as a programmer in 2008. During his thirteen years at IDFA, Raul conducted a ground-breaking study on the position of women within the documentary world (The Female Gaze, 2014) and initiated the IDFA Queer Day (2013, ongoing).

Dzifa Benson Is a multidisciplinary artist and arts journalist covering theatre, fiction, non-fiction, music and poetry in The Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian.
She was an editor in residence at Granta Publications and is a poetry editor/reader at Curtis Brown Creative. Dzifa studied dramaturgy with acclaimed US dramaturg Mark Bly’s on his Dramaturgy Intensive Workshop at the John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and has a Masters degree in Text & Performance from RADA and Birkbeck, University of London.

Alice Birch is a multi-award-winning Playwright and Screenwriter. Theatre includes THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA (National Theatre); [BLANK] (Clean Break / Donmar Warehouse); ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE (Royal Court Theatre, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Award) and REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN. (RSC / Soho Rep, co-winner of the George Devine Award). Film includes THE END WE START FROM (BBC Films / Sunnymarch / Hera Pictures); THE WONDER (Netflix / Element / House); MOTHERING SUNDAY (Film 4 / Number 9 Films) and LADY MACBETH (British Film Institute (BFI) Films / BBC Film, winner of Best Screenplay BIFA. TV includes DEAD RINGERS (Amazon / Annapurna); NORMAL PEOPLE (BBC / Element / Hulu); CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS (BBC / Element / Hulu) and SUCCESSION (HBO).

Vicky Featherstone is the Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre. Her credits for the Royal Court include: Cuckoo, all of it (& Avignon Festival), Jews. In Their Own Words [co-director], The Glow, Maryland, Living Newspaper, Shoe Lady, On Bear Ridge (& National Theatre Wales) [co-director], Cyprus Avenue (& Abbey, Dublin/MAC, Belfast/Public, NYC), The Cane, Gundog, My Mum’s a Twat, Bad Roads, Victory Condition, X, How to Hold Your Breath, God Bless the Child, Maidan: Voices from the Uprising, The Mistress Contract, The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas; Untitled Matriarch Play, The President Has Come to See You (Open Court Weekly Rep).

Adelaide Bannerman is a curator, and the curatorial director at Tiwani Contemporary, London and Lagos, who are focused on contemporary, international art from the African continent and its diaspora.
Since 1998, she has largely worked with London and South-East England based arts organisations who work with international agendas, that have included: ICF International Curators Forum, Invisible Dust, Autograph, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), Tate, Live Art Development Agency (LADA), Platform London, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Arts Council England, the African and Asian Visual Artists Archive and the 198 Gallery. She is also a trustee of PUBLICS, Helsinki, Finland and the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, London.

Maria Fusco is a working class writer. Her work spans the registers of critical, performance and theoretical writing, most recent pieces are the experimental opera-film, History of the Present, co-made by Margaret Salmon and Who does not envy with us is against us, a book of essays about class. She is Professor of Interdisciplinary Writing at the University of Dundee.

Zadie Xa has developed an expansive practice that addresses the nature of diasporic identities, global histories, familial legacies and interspecies communication. She explores these themes through immersive installations that appeal to the sensory experience of the viewer, often incorporating painting, sculpture, textile, sound and performance elements.
Born in Vancouver, Canada and now based in London, Xa draws upon her Korean heritage as she seeks to elevate narratives that have been erased or repressed by the West and occupying powers. For her, art offers a means to analyse socio-political conditions and cultural behaviours through a lens of masquerade, play, costuming and storytelling. Embracing a highly collaborative mode of working, she has developed ongoing exchanges with dancers and musicians, and has worked closely with the artist Benito Mayor Vallejo since 2006.