- Posted on March 3rd, 2023
Creative Climate Leadership Benelux 2023: Participants Announced
We are pleased to share the full applicants list of who will be joining us for our first ever Creative Climate Leadership (CCL) programme in Benelux.
What is Creative Climate Leadership?
CCL is an international training and transformation programme to empower artists and cultural professionals to take action on the climate and ecological crisis with impact, creativity, and resilience.
CCL will be held at Koningsteen Centre in Belgium from 27 – 31 March 2023. This year’s candidates work in areas as varied as cultural policy, music, architecture, visual arts and storytelling.
Creative Climate Leadership Benelux 2023 – Full List of Participants
Ashley Thompson
(she/her)
Ashley Thompson is a communications professional who believes in the power of communications to translate intricate messages about the climate crisis into an accessible language to engage culture towards climate action. She has had extensive communications experience working for organisations focused on sustainability, bringing awareness to Sustainable Development Goals or highlighting projects working on climate action.
Carmen Garcia
(she/her)
Carmen Garcia’s background and interests are located at the intersection between governance, human rights and culture.
With an international relations academic background, she worked for the European Union for 15 years in Brussels and several continents.
David Labi
(he/him)
David is an ethical storyteller. London-born, he’s lived in Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Berlin, and now Brussels.
He’s written and directed for TV, film, and theatre, worked in branding for top global brands, edited magazines in three continents, and designed immersive experiences for all kinds of audience. Since 2017, his ethical storytelling agency Good Point has helped cause-driven organisations like Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam, and UNHCR. Through projects like Pieces of a Man, his tragicomic one-man show about his Holocaust Survivor father, David is currently focused on using performance and interactive workshops to explore complex issues with creativity and joy.
Ekaterina Kaplunova
(she/her)
Ekaterina Kaplunova combines multiple roles, practices, and functions in various cultural domains.
She is trained as a visual artist at LUCA School of Arts and a.pass, both in Brussels. Since 2018, she works at Bozar Center For Fine Arts, where she coordinates a participatory project for the youth Next Generation, Please!
Elena Marchevska
(she/her)
Elena Marchevska is a practitioner-researcher interested in creating work that can help us to think through new historical discontinuities that have emerged in post-capitalist and post-socialist transition.
Her research centres on the relationship between performance, politics of migration and environmental humanities. Her artistic work explores borders and stories that emerge from living in transition.
Ezgi Cemre Er
(she/her)
Ezgi Cemre Er is an artist, climate activist and a young professional working in the arts and culture field.
She is currently working with Giulia Bellinetti, for sustainable institutional transformation and development of sustainability policy in Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Firat Sezgin
(he/him)
Firat Sezgin is a Turkish producer based in Utrecht.
He is the owner of the Dutch production company Institute of Time which is an interdisciplinary film and XR production company. Focusing on creative projects around climate change, Institute of Time aims to bring a different perspective to our current life and uncertain future with storytelling. His work has been exhibited in festivals such as Venice Film Festival IFFRotterdam IDFA Hot Docs and more.
Francesco Spina
(he/him)
Francesco Spina is Sustainability Officer at ENCATC, the European network on cultural management and policy.
He’s currently graduating from a Master in Cultural management at Université Libre de Bruxelles and Universiteit Antwerpen. He was born and raised in Bologna (Italy), where he got a degree in Orchestral conducting and a degree in Management and marketing. During his undergraduate studies, he intensively advocated for arts students with national policymakers. He then moved to Belgium to work with European cultural networks. His personal research interests include degrowth theories, inclusion through digitalisation and public funding of arts.
Fraser Sharp
(he/him)
Fraser Sharp is a consultant at Ramboll Management Consulting, based in Brussels, where he works as part of a team on projects for the EU institutions in the analysis of policies, strategies and legislation, primarily in the area of social and environmental sustainability.
Over the past 15 years he has also led an active musical life as a percussionist, pianist, singer and composer. In particular, he has participated in a number of key musical experiences, such as playing percussion in national, amateur and youth orchestras in the UK, singing in top chamber choirs in both Scotland and Brussels, and developing a composition portfolio.
Jackie Malcolm
(she/her)
Jackie invites organisations, publics and individuals to explore, learn, think and act collectively and somatically, within complex systemic environments, for regenerative and emergent futures.
She brings 30 years of experience in the cultural sector and draws on principles from embodied practices and somatic inquiry.
Laure Winants
(she/her)
Laure Winants is a research-based visual artist from Brussels working with photography and experimental printing techniques in dialogue with scientific researches.
Her current projects cross the boundaries of science, art and the new technology instrumentation upon the scientific manipulation on the field, and draw upon collaborative relationships with geographers, geologists, seismologists, and speculative philosophers in order to generate new perspectives
Leanne Hoogwaerts
(she/her)
Leanne is a policy officer at the arts association Kunsten’92 in the Netherlands.
Previous work includes delivering the arts programme for London’s Olympic Park, developing a cultural strategy for Westminster City Council, and project management at architecture and urbanist practice OOZE. Leanne is a member of the board for Culture Action Europe.
Lisa Klompe
(she/her)
Lisa is a project manager exhibitions at the Fries Museum and at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.
Since 2022 she is also their first sustainability coordinator. The museum has started a Green Team and ambitions to become more sustainable are high. Lisa hopes to enforce change towards a greener future not only within the walls of these museums but also outside of it.
Lizzie Reid
(she/her)
Lizzie is an Amsterdam-based creative/art director wanting to use her skills to fight for social and climate justice.
Lorena Jauregui
(she/her)
Lorena Jauregui has a varied trajectory: starting with architecture studies, working in Mexico, Austria, USA, and the Philippines with NGO’s dedicated to green building as well as conservation.
Lorena has been teaching for over a decade: starting with architectural design, sustainable building methods, and other multidisciplinary subjects promoting environmental awareness and care.
Mathias Arrignon
(he/him)
Mathias Arrignon is a French artist driven by listening as a way to foster environmental awareness and interested in new sonic narratives for art, radio and film. His work has been presented at Southwark Park Galleries, Without Form Space, Resonance FM, Sonic Matter and Phonurgia Nova. In 2020, he won a Sound of the Year Award granted by the New BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Michelle Sun
(she/her)
With a BA in Transcultural Music Studies and a MA in International Relations, Michelle has been working on the role and potential of culture in international relations and cooperation from various perspectives.
She has published several articles on the topic, and has worked within others for UNESCO in Paris, the Goethe-Institut in Nairobi and the European Commission as well as EUNIC in Brussels. On a personal level, her profound interest in topics of human rights, gender and sustainability led within others to years of experience in working with refugees and active engagement for the climate.
Nicolas Cotman
(he/him)
24-years old business engineer, the young cultural entrepreneur aims to help the sector reach its full potential & have a greater impact.
With a passion for the cultural sector, Nicolas launched his own freelance organisation in cultural event production, artist management, and consultancy with the goal of making a meaningful impact on communities, audiences, and the environment.
Rie Alkemade
(she/her)
Rie Alkemade is a cultural project and relations manager.
She is working for the Cultural Relations Platform. Her focus is on cultivating sustainable global partnerships and networks at a people-to-people level through intercultural dialogue and through mutual co-collaboration.
Rosanna Lewis
(she/her)
Rosanna is an advocate for arts and culture responding to global challenges, including climate action.
She has worked for British Council for nearly ten years, and is the author of The Missing Pillar: Culture’s contribution to the UN SDGs. Rosanna is also Board Member of IMPACT – Arts and Culture for Conflict Transformation, Artists with Elbows, and Horizons Institute. In her spare time, she is a semi professional singer.
Ruben Arnaerts
(he/him)
As project manager at Pulse Cultural Network for Transition, Ruben Arnaerts connects people in the creative sectors to exchange and collaborate on sustainability challenges and turn them into opportunities, thereby inspiring the respective audiences through the power of imagination.
As a human being he is interested in literature, culture, psychology and fermentation.
Sarah Suib
(she/her)
Sarah Suib is a consultant and the founder of Hint Studio, Brussels.
She is also a designer and mender. She got her first lesson in sustainability from her grandmothers. Now, she works with small and medium sized companies to integrate sustainability and circularity strategies in their products and practices.
Sarah Van Looy
(she/her)
Sarah is a freelance photographer.
She specialises in portraiture and documentary storytelling, often with a focus on themes such as the environment and identity.
Syed Jazib Ali
(he/him)
Jazib is a UK-based Documentarian hailing from the lower Himalayan region of Kashmir.
His sharp eye for human interest stories has helped create an alternative narrative and space for people from marginalised backgrounds to hold power accountable. Jazib’s advocacy work strives to bring inclusive sustainability, societal equality and fair human rights. His work is recognised globally as part of COP26, COP27, global campaigns and internationally acclaimed film festivals.
Katrien Reist – van Gelder
(she/her)
Katrien researches the relationship between art and culture and systemic change.
She is co-coordinating of artists’ think tank State of the Arts, freelancer for RAB/BKO, the Brussels network for arts organizations and member of CCQO Antwerp.
DOWNLOAD FULL PARTICIPANT BIOS
The Aims of the Programme
Creative Climate Leadership will:
- Explore the role of culture and creativity in responding to climate change and environmental challenges;
- Bring together a range of expert guest speakers to share case studies, research, approaches and practical solutions for environmental sustainability in the cultural sector;
- Enable each participant to develop their leadership and ideas;
- Prepare participants to apply their learning and new skills when they return to their work, and support ongoing learning and exchange through an alumni network.
- CCL recognises the unique role of culture to influence new ways of being, doing and thinking, and supports creative professionals to apply these abilities to the climate challenge through a programme of events, training programmes and policy labs.
We are planning a wide range of leadership development programmes this year, if you would like to stay up to date and be notified when other applications for CCL open up, please sign up to the Julie’s Bicycle newsletter.
