Martha Awojobi

Martha is the founder and CEO of JMB Consulting, an anti-racist practice consultancy specialising in charity, philanthropy and social justice spaces. They created Uncharitable, the home for political education in the third sector which explores race, imperialism and the charity sector through published writing, art and events. 

Maff Potts  

Maff went from having his own challenges with mental health and homelessness to running the largest homeless provider in the UK. He spent 20 years working and volunteering in the social justice sector. This included turning the Millennium Dome into a homeless shelter, working as a government advisor building a new generation of homeless centres in England and as a CEO of a national charity and a housing association. He also set up “Power to Change” the community business funder for the National Lottery Community fund. Maff left the traditional forms of social change in 2015 when he set up the social movement Camerados in his bedroom. Camerados is a worldwide movement with over 240 “Public Living Rooms” in libraries, parks, community centres, hospitals wherever the community can find space. They are places of radical mutuality where people just lend each other their company and look out for each other with no agenda and no outcomes necessary. Maff is also a semi-pro Jazz piano player and runs a pop-up jazz club and a local festival. Maff’s favourite thing though is the musical after school club for 8–11-year-olds that he has run for 15 years called “Funky Friday”. 

Ella Saltmarshe 

I create culture that supports all life to get safe futures. I'm the director of The Culture Initiative, which both creates culture and cultural infrastructure.  Our work includes; the Long Time Project that exists to galvanise public imagination and collective action to help us all be good ancestors; the award-winning The Long Time Academy Podcast; Inter-Narratives- which cultivates shared narrative intelligence across movements and mediums, which was incubated by the Environment Funders Network; and new Deep Narrativeprogramme of work. 

I am writing a book about how we can be better ancestors that will be published by Harper Collins in 2027.  

I have pioneered a systems approach to change, co-founding systems change network, The Point People, working with the University of Oxford on systemschangers.com back in 2012, writing a Building A Language of Systems Change, co-designing the Systems Changers programme with the Lankelly Chase Foundation. I also founded the Comms Lab, to create change within the advertising industry, which has gone on to incubate a range of organisations and initiatives like The Purpose Disruptors. I’m also the co-founder of multiple voter turnout campaigns: SHEvotes, Time to Vote, and Its Our Time. 

Trained as an anthropologist, I spent the first part of my career working in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Latin America & Kosovo. And before all that I worked in call centres, bars, restaurants & ice-cream shops…  

Jemma Desai  

Jemma Desai works across film, visual arts and performance as a writer, artist and facilitator. Her work attempts committed engagement with abolitionist scholarship and praxis to consider the gap between intention and practice in imagining, making and circulating culture. She is a practice-based PhD candidate at Central School of Speech and Drama and has previously worked with BFI, British Council, LUX, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and The Flaherty Seminar. Current collaborations include United Screens, Blackstar Film Festival in Philadelphia where she is a Programmer and BAM in Brooklyn where she is a Fellow. 

Ellie Cartwright  

HOPE not hate are an anti-fascist organisation that focuses on the organised far right, the issues and policies that fuel it’s rise, and the communities that are vulnerable to far-right exploitation. As their Community Outreach Officer, I work to strengthen community resilience by providing a range of interventions, training programmes and tailored guidance that supports communities long-term.  

Chloe Naldrett  

Chloe is the co-director of Sustainable Entertainment: the first independent commercial theatre production company to commit to Green Book standards in all its shows, which she set up with director and writer Sean Foley in 2024.  Their slate of shows includes musicals, comedy and new commissions, all of which will be made in line with sustainable production standards. 

She has previously been Executive Producer at Birmingham Rep and Bristol Old Vic, was Associate Producer at National Theatre Productions for War Horse and One Man, Two Guv’nors and worked in the West End for six years at Mark Rubinstein Ltd.  

She has been an activist with Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Culture Declares Emergency, and has worked for the Bristol-based anti-advertising campaign Adfree Cities which is lobbying for a tobacco-style ban on high-carbon advertising. She is the mother of two teenage boys.

Ned Suesat-Williams 

Ned Suesat-Williams is co-director and social media officer at Crab Museum, with a background in teaching, archaeology and dressing up like a squid.  

Crab Museum is a free-to-enter independent, interdisciplinary science museum based in Margate, Kent. It blends science, humour, politics, philosophy, and crabs into a bewildering celebration of the vast weirdness of life on Earth. The museum houses permanent exhibits exploring evolutionary time, biology, anatomy, mythmaking, and ecology alongside interactive visitor-led microscopy sessions. Crab Museum believes in the interconnectedness of all forms of knowledge and applies that vision, via crabs, to the shared world we inhabit. 
 
Crab Museum has an outspoken and ‘unhinged’ social media presence with memes as dank as their takes are spicy. The approach to messaging attempts to reflect radical optimism and social critique as an essential aspect of a modern museum’s output - but it’s much easier to just look at it yourself. 

Jess Thom

Writer, artist and activist, Jess Thom co-founded Touretteshero in 2010 as a creative response to her experience of living with Tourettes Syndrome. Jess campaigns for disability rights and social justice and is on a mission to change the world ‘one tic at a time.’ 

Jess has written in the mainstream and disability press including The Guardian, The Observer and Disability Now. In 2012 she published Welcome to Biscuit Land – A Year In the Life of Touretteshero, with a foreword by Stephen Fry.  

In 2016 Jess took her award-winning stage show Backstage in Biscuit Land on an extensive national and international tour. In the same year she received a Wellcome Engagement Fellowship, became an Arts Council England Change Maker and received an honorary degree from the University of Wolverhampton.   

In 2017 Touretteshero hosted Adventures in Biscuit Land at Tate Modern as part of Tate Exchange, and curated Brewing in the Basement at the Barbican Centre. She also débuted her critically acclaimed performance of Samuel Beckett’s short play Not I.  

In 2018 Jess took her stand-up show Stand Up, Sit Down, Roll Over to the USA and Europe, hosted Heroes of the Imagination at the Southbank’s Imagine Festival, and Brewing in Battersea at Battersea Arts Centre. Her one-hour film Me, My Mouth and I was broadcast on BBC2 and went on to be screened in the USA, Russia, Chile, Switzerland and Canada. The year ended with Hacks for the Future, a residential theatre project for disabled young creatives in the Highlands in association with National Theatre Scotland.   

In 2019, Touretteshero received Elevate funding from Arts Council England, a programme which aims to strengthen the resilience of diverse arts organisations. Jess deepened her advocacy work, hosting numerous facilitated conversations around access for senior managers or organisations such as the Barbican and Shakespeare’s Globe. 

At the start 2020, Jess took Not I to New York City as part of the Public Theater’s prestigious Under The Radar Festival where it received a glowing review in the New York Times. During the Coronavirus lockdowns, Jess devised and delivered Digital Heroes of the Imagination with the National Youth Theatre and created a Pandemic Postcard for the Harbourfront Theatre in Toronto. 

In 2022 Jess filmed a short pilot of her Channel 4 sitcom Biscuitland which went on to be shortlisted for a BAFTA.  

In 2023 with support from the Collaborative Touring Network Jess took Burnt Out In Biscuit Land on 8 venue tour of the UK.  

Jess has spoken widely in the media about her life with Tourettes, including on Woman’s Hour, This Morning, and Russell Howard's Good News. She has given a TEDx talk at the Royal Albert Hall and features in the Annalisa is Awkward documentary on BBC Radio4. 

Latoyah McAllister Jones  

LaToyah McAllister-Jones, FRSA, has spent much of her career working at the intersection of culture, community, and social change. Over six years as Executive Director of St Pauls Carnival, she helped to anchor a major cultural event in its roots of protest, celebration, and community leadership, while navigating the complex realities of funding, governance, and representation. 

Alongside her work at Carnival, LaToyah serves as Deputy Chair at Bristol Old Vic, bringing a community-centred perspective to one of the country’s oldest theatres. Across her roles, she has seen how cultural institutions can both reflect and challenge the divisions in our society. 

Most recently, she co-founded Citizens for Culture, a project that places citizens’ assemblies at the heart of cultural policymaking. Through this work, she has been designing and facilitating participatory processes that bring people together across political, racial, and social divides — making space for citizens to shape cultural priorities in their region. 

At Meeting The Moment, LaToyah will reflect on what it means to try and be truly inclusive during incredibly divisive times. She will share her insights from assemblies that hold themselves accountable to diverse communities — and consider how the creative sector might adopt similar principles to foster trust, shared ownership, and meaningful change. 

Hen Wilkinson  

Hen is an experienced mediator and director of ‘Community Resolve’, an innovative Bristol-based conflict transformation organisation that works with community tensions and youth conflict in Bristol and beyond. The organisation has a particular interest in how cultural values affect group and community conflict. She is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Psycho-Social Studies of the University of the West of England.  

Jo Oliver  

Jo has supported organisations through complex disputes, litigation and media interest often involving challenging and sensitive discrimination and Human Rights issues. Much of her work has involved conflicts arising between different protected characteristics and the activities of employees and third parties on social media. Jo helps charities apply lessons-learned from these issues to assess and manage risk.  Jo works closely with colleagues from VWV's Charities and Reputation Management teams to provide wrap-around support to charities during times of challenge and scrutiny. 

Clare Reddington, CEO, Watershed  

Clare Reddington joined Watershed in 2004, establishing our creative technology programmes before taking up the position of CEO in 2018. She is a Visiting Professor at University of the West of England.  Chair of the Emma Rice Company, and a trustee of of RSC.  

Claire Stewart, Head of Communications, Watershed 

Claire spent her formative years on a remote island with no cinema or arts centre – which may explain why most of her career has involved culture and talking to people. After learning the ropes during a traineeship on Andrea Arnold’s debut Red Road Claire worked freelance in film and television production, before going on to hold positions in locations, events and communications for local film commissions, screen agencies and universities. She joined Watershed in 2008, where she manages a great team who help to deliver and promote all aspects of Watershed’s activities, manage and curate content, build new audiences and increase audience engagement among many, many other things.  

Kate Arthurs, Watershed Board Member 

Kate Arthurs is an independent cultural strategist specialising in international partnerships and social impact. At the British Council, she led arts programmes with Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, established the Cultural Protection Fund to safeguard heritage at risk, and worked as a cultural diplomat promoting UK arts internationally. She is a resident at The Studio, Bath Spa University's Enterprise and Innovation Hub, and co-convenes What Next? (West) to help shape the future of arts and culture. Kate co-owns Bath Backpackers, a community-focused independent hostel that promotes sustainable travel. 

Matt Golding 

Matt is a filmmaker, creative strategist and founder of BCorp content studio Rubber Republic. With a background in viral campaigns for major international brands from Disney, to eBay and Cancer Research UK, the studio now works exclusively for committed change-makers, and uses storytelling and shareable content campaigns to engage mass audiences with a better future. Currently Matt is leading content platform ANTIDOTE - sharing stories of collective action by ordinary people that are demonstrating better ways we all could live. 

Rhiannon White

Rhiannon is co-founder and co-director of Common Wealth. Rhiannon has worked with National Theatre Wales, National Theatre (UK) Chapter Arts Centre, Southbank Centre & Circus 2 Palestine. Rhiannon is a recipient of a Clore Cultural Fellowship and a Creative Wales Award. Rhiannon was a panel member on the Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society chaired by Julia Unwin.   

Common/Wealth are a site-specific political theatre company – based in Bradford and Cardiff. Most recent shows include Demand the Impossible a show that is part-performance, part punk-gig, part-sensory experience, exploring police injustice and the undercover infiltration of activist networks and Public Interest an immersive large-scale show exploring the real cases of Joint Enterprise to confront racist and classist discrimination within the justice system. 

In Autumn 2025 Common/Wealth published its first book, Do It Yourself: making political theatre 

Adam Carver 

Adam Carver (they/them) is a Birmingham based performance artist, producer & community organiser also known as their drag persona Fatt Butcher. Adam's work explores queerness, joy, healing, fatness, spirituality and the body. They describe everything they do as full-fatt - expect their work to be saturated with music, song, dancefloors, movement, drag, pastiche, bold visuals, parody, and occasional profundity. As Fatt they perform in cabaret, theatre venues and festivals across the UK, and shot to infamy as the first person to sniff poppers live on national television. They are currently developing ‘Congregational’, a new choral music performance for nightclubs exploring the nightclub as a queer spiritual space.  

Adam is also the director of Fatt Projects, a Birmingham based non-profit that uses queer performance as a strategy to advance queer joy and create change for LGBTQ+ communities in Birmingham and beyond. Their work has been commissioned by B’ham Commonwealth Games, B’ham Hippodrome, Cambridge Junction, FABRIC, Marlborough Productions, Home Live Art, Without Walls, & Fierce Festival. They also deliver training and consultancy to artists & organisations on mitigating and managing cultural backlash.