2022

Birgitta Hosea is a time-based media artist working with expanded animation and experimental drawing to create durational images, live performances, experiential installations and short films that expand the concept of animation out of the screen and into the present moment. Included in the Tate Britain and Centre d’Arte Contemporain archives, she has received an Adobe Impact Award, a MAMA Award for Holographic Arts and an honorary fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts. Currently Professor of Moving Image at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, she was previously Head of Animation at the Royal College of Art. She has written a number of publications on performance drawing and experimental animation.

An Irish director known for his unique style, Johnny Kelly was a graphic designer before embarking on an MA in animation at London’s Royal College of Art. Working with Nexus Studios, Johnny has directed commercials and other miscellany for brands such as Apple, Facebook, Google, BMW, and Coca-Cola. Johnny garnered the Grand Prix for Film at Cannes Lions for his Chipotle film “Back to the Start” and he’s a proud member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Nothing however has topped the Ronald McDonald toothbrush and cup he won for a colouring competition in 1984.

Edwin Rostron is an artist, animator and curator based in London. He runs Edge of Frame, a blog and ongoing programme of screening events focusing on experimental animation, and teaches on the Animation MA Programme at the Royal College of Art. His work has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals internationally, and he has curated programmes for festivals such as London International Animation Festival and Flatpack Festival, and for Barbican, BFI and Whitechapel Gallery.

Lily Luahana Cole is a British model, actress and environmentalist, writing regularly for media including The Guardian, Vogue and the FT. Her first book, Who Cares Wins: Reasons for Optimism in our Changing World, was published by Penguin in 2020. Lily spent four years researching this work, and interviewing hundreds of people around the world who are working on environmental solutions, from technologists and scientists, to activists and indigenous leaders. In tandem with the book, she has produced a series of podcasts interviewing leading experts, activists and founders on topics such as technology, food, gender and capitalism.

Edwin Heathcote is the architecture and design critic of The Financial Times, Keeper of Meaning at The Cosmic House, founder and editor or reading design.org and the author of around a dozen books.

Mark Miodownik is the UCL Professor of Materials & Society. He received his Ph.D in turbine jet engine alloys from Oxford University, and has worked as a materials engineer in the USA, Ireland and the UK. For more than twenty years he has championed materials science research that links to the arts and humanities, medicine, and society. This culminated in the establishment of the UCL Institute of Making, where he is a director and runs the research programme. Mark also recently set up the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub to carry our research into solving the environmental catastrophe of plastic waste. Mark is the multi-award winning author of New York Times bestselling book Stuff Matters. He regularly presents BBC TV and radio programmes on materials science and engineering. In 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2018 he was awarded an MBE for services to materials science, engineering and broadcasting.

Edith Bowman has worked as a TV and Radio broadcaster for over 20 years. Her radio work has spanned all the major stations, presenting shows on BBC Radio 1, 2, 6 and 5Live as well as Virgin Radio. As a TV host and producer she has fronted a versatile mix of shows for BBC, Channel 4, Sky Arts, MTV and the list goes on.

From hosting music festival coverage and the BAFTA Scotland Awards to presenting dozens of movie premieres Edith has incorporated her genuine passion for, and in-depth knowledge of, music and film in to her work. In 2016 she launched her own podcast “Soundtracking” allowing her to combine these two loves – ARIA & New York Festivals Radio Award Winning Soundtracking With Edith Bowman has become the go to music and film podcast where you can hear Edith talk to directors, producers, actors, writers and composers about their relationship with music both professionally and personally.

Sam Lee plays a unique role in the British music scene. A highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. Sam’s helped develop its ecosystem inviting in a new listenership interrogating what the messages in these old songs hold for us today. With his latest critically acclaimed album, Old Wow, he’s summonsed up a truly compelling and emotional album that takes his work to yet another level. Likewise in 2021, Sam releases his debut novel ‘The Nightingale, notes on a songbird‘ telling the epic tale of this highly endangered bird and their place in culture folklore, folksong, music and literature throughout the millennia.

Gavin Starks is a musician with a unique background in business, technology, science and media. As founder of the IcebreakerOne.org he is leading a radical transformation of how we make data work harder to deliver a Net Zero Future. A serial entrepreneur, Gavin has created organisations that have led the global movement towards open data, distributed 25% of the world's music, aggregated the world's environmental standards, kick-started European webcasting, and built a cooperative historic harbour on the Thames. He has raised substantial venture and philanthropic investments, creating 100s of jobs and generating significant social, environmental and economic impact. With a background in astrophysics and electronic music, he spends his spare time developing ways to sift through the Binary Dust.

Saad Eddine Said is a curator who initiates and builds bridges and creative partnerships between local communities, artists, activists, social entrepreneurs, innovators, cultural organisations and governmental institutions. His work focuses on co-creating impactful and artistic takeovers that are aimed at re-thinking, re-imagining and re-shaping the structure and future of institutions and communities in towns and cities nationally and internationally. Saad Eddine Said is the Co-Founder and previous Co-Artistic Director of the charity Terre Sans Frontiere (Morocco) and worked as the Director of HOME Slough (UK). Saad has recently taken the position as Artistic Director and CEO of New Art Exchange.

Liz Moreton is Director of Creativity and Social Change at Battersea Arts Centre. She has spent the last fifteen years developing programmes which use art and culture for social transformation. Liz set up The Co-Creating Change Network – a network of over 100 people who are exploring the role artists and cultural organisations can play with community partners to co-create social change in the UK. Liz co-leads The Agency a National partnership programme, running for eight years, which uses a creative process developed in the favelas of Rio to support young people from underserved areas of England, Wales and Northern Ireland to develop their own social initiatives for change.

Kate is Director of Kate Pakenham Productions, an independent production and creative/executive consultancy company working across the commercial and not-for-profit theatre sectors. Kate has a particular interest in artists and story-telling that challenges the status quo, and believes in the power of great theatre to make positive cultural change. Recent productions include Kaleider’s THE MONEY at County Hall (2021); the transfer of The Gate Theatre, Dublin’s production of HAMLET, starring Ruth Negga, to St Ann’s Warehouse, NY (2020); and the Olivier-Award winning, EMILIA, by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (2019). Consultancy clients include Digital Theatre, The Gate Theatre, Dublin, The Kiln, The National Theatre and The Space. She is on the Board of Sheffield Theatres.

Oreet Ashery is transdisciplinary visual artist who works across established arts institutions and grassroots social contexts. Ashery's distinct multiplatform projects combine video, performance, sound, photography, fabrics and writing. The work is situated, participatory and expands the remits of contemporary practice. Ashery narrates stories of marginal and precarious identities, combining autoethnography, collective-knowledge, and biopolitical fiction. In recent years she questioned how the boundaries between illness; life and death; body and self are affected by digital technologies. Ashery won the Jarman Film Award in 2017 for her web-series Revisiting Genesis looking at death, dying, care and digital afterlife. In 2020 Ashery was the recipient of the Turner Prize Bursary for her exhibition Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, at the Wellcome Collection. The exhibition included her newly commissioned film Dying Under Your Eyes, exploring intimate surveillance and dedicated to the recent death of her father. In 2019 Ashery published her monograph How We Die Is How We Live Only More So with Mousse publishing, co-edited with George Vasey.

Anne Barlow is Director of Tate St Ives where she oversees its programme of exhibitions, displays, artist residencies, new commissions, learning and research. Barlow was formerly Director of Art in General, New York, Curator of Education and Media Programs, New Museum, New York, and Curator of Contemporary Art and Design, Glasgow Museums, Scotland. Across these roles, she has curated numerous exhibitions and public programmes, and overseen international collaborations with museums and nonprofit art organizations. Barlow was Curator of 5th Bucharest Biennale (2012), Co-Curator, Latvian Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale (2013), and guest project curator for The Jerusalem Show VII (2014) and 2nd Tbilisi Triennial, Georgia (2015). She has published with Tate, the New Museum, Henry Moore Institute, and Sharjah Art Foundation among others, and has acted on selection panels including the kim? Residency Award, Latvia; Exposure 8, Beirut Art Center, Lebanon; MAC International 2018, Belfast; and the British Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale.

Cherie Federico is the Director of Aesthetica, the internationally acclaimed British art and culture brand that began with Aesthetica magazine in 2002 and is now multi-platform reaching over 500,000. A passionate champion of new talent, Cherie is Director of the BAFTA-Qualifying Aesthetica Film Festival. She is also Director of the Aesthetica Art Prize, and Future Now, a symposium comprising panel talks and portfolio reviews, with sessions led by the Tate, V&A, and Getty. Winners and finalists have gone on to be included in exhibition at the Whitney Biennial, Barbican, Whitechapel and win various awards and bursaries. She also holds an Honorary Doctorate from University of the Arts London.