People block test

She collaborates regularly with choreographer Sonya Lindfors and is a member of Miracle Workers Collective that represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale. Abdulkarim is also a founding member of the Nordic Feminist Network, including policymakers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sami regions. Abdulkarim’s and Eeva Talvitie’s book, About ten myths on feminism was published in Finnish in 2018. Her second book will be published in collaboration with photographer Uwa Iduozee. She made her debut as a screenwriter in the short film Dream Job produced by Tuffi Films.

Abdulkarim received the Minna Canth prize in 2019, awarded annually to a person shaking the Finnish society. She is a member of the Obama Foundation Network.

Lucy Neal was co-founder and director of the LIFT Festival with Rose Fenton from 1980-2005. Since then she has developed a creative practice as an artist and writer. Active in the grass roots Transition Town movement, her handbook Playing for Time – Making Art As If the World Mattered (Bloomsbury 2015) maps collaborative arts practices in response to planetary challenges with 60 artists and community activists. Lucy is currently one of 4 artists working on Walking Forest, a 10 year artwork that culminates in the planting of an intentional woodland in 2028, exploring connections between forest ecology, women and activism. She is a founder ‘declarer’ of Culture Declares, a global movement of artists and cultural organisations declaring a climate and ecological emergency and a director of Forever Fishponds, a campaign to reclaim a Field in Tooting, SW London as a flourishing green space for the local community. She is co-author of The Turning Word, Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre and was awarded an OBE for services to drama in 2005.

Rose Fenton was co-founder and director of the LIFT Festival with Lucy Neal from 1980-2005. Following LIFT Rose worked internationally as a freelance producer and arts adviser before becoming the Director of Free Word, an international arts organisation exploring the power and politics of words.

Now, alongside being a yoga teacher and reflexologist working in her local community, Rose is active in Culture Declares Emergency (CDE) a growing global movement of people in arts and culture declaring a climate and ecological emergency and who pledge to tell truths, take action and seek justice.

Rose is co- author of The Turning Word, Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre. In 2005 she was awarded an OBE for services to drama.

Genevieve is a musician, facilitator and community organiser. Her debut album was a favourite of Radio 6 Music and Jazz FM, and she has performed internationally. She is the co-founder of Hertha Records, a women/non-binary collective of artists releasing original and independent music, and which also produces Shut Up and Play festival. She uses music as a tool for self expression, building community and liberation and has worked across London with hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds through workshops, choirs, 1-1 mentoring and in performance settings. Alongside this work she is involved in the climate justice movement as an organiser and facilitator, most recently in building the movement for a Green New Deal and ending fossil fuel sponsorship of cultural institutions. She also really really loves pasta.

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (b.1983, based in Vilnius) works as a filmmaker, theatre director and visual artist. In her creative practice, Barzdžiukaitė explores the gap between objective and imagined realities, while challenging an anthropocentric way of thinking in a playful way. Her recent full-length documentary film-essay Acid Forest was awarded at the Locarno International Film Festival among others, was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Lincoln Center in NYC, American Film Institute festival in LA and many other events and venues for cinema and contemporary art. Sun & Sea is her latest collaboration in the medium of performance.

Vaiva Grainytė‘s (b. 1984, based in Lithuania and Canada) text-based practice shifts between genres, interdisciplinary theatre works and publications. As a writer, playwright, and poet she takes action as an observant anthropologist: challenged by Grainyte’s poetic interpretation, mundane social issues take on a paradoxical and defamiliarised nature. Her book of essays Beijing Diaries (2012) and the poetry collection Gorilla’s Archives (2019) were nominated for the Book of the Year awards, and included in the top twelve listings of the most creative books in Lithuania. Her oeuvre has been translated into over 10 languages. Her bilingual, cross-genre collage novel, Roses and Potatoes (2022), intellectually and ironically deconstructs the stereotypical concept of happiness embedded in contemporary culture.

From 2017-2019 Tom was an Associate Artist and resident composer at Flute Theatre. Since 2019, he’s been an Associate Artist with Compass Collective and the NYT. He is a collaborator with The PappyShow and Squint, is a frequent guest practitioner at Guildhall, and is an Education Practitioner with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. He is currently a commissioned artist with WAC Arts. 

Tom made his professional stage debut in Trevor Nunn’s King John at the Rose Theatre Kingston. He has since worked with Mischief Theatre, the Barbican, Chichester Festival Theatre, the Orange Tree, The Yard, MIME, the Bridge Theatre, Attic Theatre and English Touring Theatre. He was a part of the Globe’s Touring Ensemble from 2020-21. 

Lina Lapelyte’s (b.1984, works in Vilnius and London) performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia. Her works engage trained and untrained performers often in an act of singing that takes the form of a collective and affective event questioning vulnerability and silencing. Her works were exhibited at 13th Kaunas biennial, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels; Tai Kwun, HK; Glasgow International; Riga Biennial – RIBOCA2; Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th. Venice Biennale; Cartier Foundation gallery, Paris; CCA Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Baltic Triennial 13, Tallinn; Moderna Museet, Malmo; FIAC, Paris; Hayward touring show, UK; Serpentine, London; Her upcoming solo shows include Lafayette Anticipation gallery in Paris and Space gallery, London.