Collective Encounters Adult Theatre for Social Change
Established in 2004, Collective Encounters is a professional arts organisation specialising in using theatre as a tool for social change through collaborative practice. Collective Encounters works with people on the margins of society, telling untold stories and tackling pressing social and political concerns. They work within the Liverpool City Region with those who have been directly affected by poverty and inequality. Professional artists lead their activities, working in partnership with a number of individuals and agencies from a diverse range of sectors.
Website: www.collective-encounters.org.uk
Hamja Ahsan
Esra Akcan
Esra is a University Professor in Department of Architecture at Cornell University. Providing evi-dence about the growth of inequality in the global capitalist system and geopolitical hierarchies; pro-ducing ideas for a more just architectural practice.
Twitter: @esraakcan
Dauvit Alexander
Josh Allen
Josh has been on the left since his teens, and has at different times been a rank-and-file student, housing, and trade union activist. He produces Walk Midlands, an online guide to day walks doable without a car right across the English Midlands.
Website: walkmidlands.co.uk
Substack: walkmidlandsnewsletter.substack.com
David Archibald
Tabitha Arnold
Tabitha Arnold’s maximalist, narrative tapestries speak to the radical past and ongoing struggle that threads all working people together. Shes inspired by the history of the international labour movement, as well as her own experiences as a worker, organizer and artist coming of age during a wave of unionization and class-consciousness. Arnold’s textiles have been featured in Hyperallergic, Jacobin magazine, and on issue covers of Dissent magazine. She is a MacDowell Fellow and part of the American Craft Council’s 2022 Emerging Artist Cohort. Instagram: @tabithakarnold Website: www.tabithaarnold.com
Alon Aviram
Arturo Bandinelli
Arturo is a Shooting Director, Editor and Colourist based in London, but he also works all around Europe and sometimes beyond. He has gained experience on a range of different formats from commercials to music promos, from corporate videos to drama and documentaries.
Carolina Bandinelli
Johnny Barracuda
When he’s not contorting his native language into shapes that please him, Johnny Barracuda can be found fronting rascally rockers ‘Soho Dukes’. He’s neither Sylvia Plath nor Iggy Pop, but he thinks he is. JB doesn’t care what the neighbours think. The fact he’s allowed anywhere near Facebook, YouTube and
www.sohodukes.com
is astonishing.
Liam Barrett
Dave Beech
Dave Beech is an artist and writer who was a member of the Freee Art Collective between 2004 and 2018. He completed his PhD at the University of the Arts, London, on the economics of art. Dave was Professor of Art at Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg (2015-19) and is Reader in Art and Marxism at Chelsea College of Art. He is the author of Art and Labour (Brill, 2020), Art and Postcapitalism (Pluto, 2019) and Art and Value (Brill, 2015). He exhibits internationally.
Instagram @davebeechartist
Twitter: @davebeechartist website: www.davebeech.co.uk
Henry Bell
Melissa Benn
Melissa Benn lives in London. As a writer she has contributed numerous essays, features and reviews to a wide range magazines and journals and has also published nine books – two novels and several books on the politics of education and women’s lives. She is a longstanding campaigner for a more equal and better funded education system; from 2014-2018 she was Chair of Comprehensive Future, a cross-party group calling for fair admissions, and in 2020 was a co-founder of the Private Education Policy Forum, a group committed to investigating and reforming the private/state school gap.
Twitter: @Melissa_Benn Website: www.melissabenn.co.uk
Kelly Bewers
Billy Bindley
Billy Bindley is an artist and works as a designer and lecturer. He runs Tendencies Bulletin, a publishing project commissioning work on poetry, art, football, fashion, politics, and people, for those with socialist tendencies.
Instagram: @dontwillkit / @TendenciesBulletin
Matt Bonner
Janine Booth
Janine Booth is a Marxist motormouth and disaffected middle-aged woman, who tours the country and beyond, ranting, rhyming and revolting. Janine is also an author, trade unionist, socialist-feminist, neurodiversity trainer and campaigner. And she supports Peterborough United and rides a scooter. Her most recent poetry book is ‘Amplify’. More:
Website janinebooth.com
John Bowden
Dr Charmaine Brown
Dr Charmaine Brown is a long time Peckham resident. Her teaching journey started with the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and continued as Education Manager at the Peckham Literacy Centre (The Bookplace). She is currently a senior university lecturer in initial teacher education. She is involved in a range of equality initiatives which is applied in her other professional role as Judicial Office holder for the Ministry of Justice and within her community.
Email: c.brown@greenwich.ac.uk Website: drcharmainebrown.com/
Lottie Brown
Matthew Brown
Matthew was born in the 1970s and was brought up in Lancashire. He is currently the Labour Leader of Preston City Council and promotes transformative economics more widely in the UK and beyond with The Democracy Collaborative. He joined the Labour Party as a teenager 30 years ago after being inspired by the principled socialism of Tony Benn. He gained a degree in Politics with Economics at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). Twitter: @MatthewBrownLab
Paul Ashley Brown
Lorna Brunstein
Lorna Brunstein is an artist based in the Bristol area working in mixed media installation. She draws from her family history and her experience as a second generation survivor to make work attending to human rights and issues of social justice. She explores themes of identity, memory, loss and displacement. The notion of inherited trauma is at the core of her work. Travelling to sites of memory informs her work and she recently accompanied the Unite Against Fascism campaign group on their annual educational trip to Auschwitz three years running, contributing to their programme from a second generation perspective. Twitter: @suitcasestones Website:Lorna Brunstein
John Bryan
Nick Burton
Nick is a walk leader, author and campaigner for countryside access. Working in the professional sphere of health and wellbeing, he appreciates the significance of walking and nature and believes they should have a higher priority for investment. Nick helped devise a series of Pendle Radicals Walks and leads guided history walks in Lancashire exploring Quakers, Gandhi, Chartists and Suffragettes. He is the current chair of the Friends of Clarion House.
Website: allroutesnorth.co.uk
Facebook: Pendle to Parliament
Nick Burton
Paul Butler
Paul was involved in the creation, repair and restoration of a number of major mural projects in London as well as many smaller community murals. He was born in Bristol in 1947. He describes his family as ‘posh but poor’. His early memories are of ‘good bits’ but it was in some respects an ‘awful childhood’ because of his chronic and severe asthma and eczema.
Website: forwallswithtongues.org.uk/artists/ paul-butler
Paul Butler
Phil Chamberlain
Phil is currently at the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath where he is the managing editor of Tobacco Tactics. He investigates and exposes the unethical and illegal activities of transnational tobacco companies, from bribes to the use of front groups, from lobbying activities to the manipulation of science. He is about to start his PhD on how multinationals subvert activists by trying to hold them accountable. Twitter: @philchamberlain Website: tobaccotactics.org + radpresshistory.wordpress.com
Danielle Child
Commoners Choir
The Commoners Choir are a strange yet open and inclusive choir that meets in Leeds. They come from all over the place, and try to act more like a band or a gang than a choir. They sing their own songs, about the world immediately around them, about inequality, hope and Tory politicians. They have two albums and various other bits and bats, including their own zine titled Commontary. They are happy to invite you to join them, but read their manifesto first.
Website: commonerschoir.com
Angela Christofilou
Ragged Cinema
Núria Araüna Baró and David Archibald
Ragged Cinema is a film collective based in Catalunya and Glasgow, established in 2021 by Núria Araüna Baró and David Archibald. During lockdown they made a short film, in their respective home cities, Glasgow and Vilanova i la Geltrú in Catalunya. Exploring how activ-ists and academics might work at distance to develop creative conversations through dialogical filmmak-ing. In 2022, they began a documentary project on the memory of the Spanish Revolution, but were distracted by the possibilities of working with feminist activists in Cuba, Catalunya and Scotland.
Craig Clark
Chris Clarke
Chris is a multidisciplinary Creative Director, Graphic Artist and Musician based in London. As Global Editorial Creative Director at The Guardian, he leads awardwinning print and digital design teams. A U.W.E Bristol graduate, Chris focuses on design as a tool for social change. He co-founded RoomFifty, an ethical art gallery, and MakeRoom, a creative fulfillment service. With a background in typography and activism, Chris has contributed to major redesigns, campaigns, and charitable collaborations throughout his career.
Instagram: @chrisclarkecc
Instagram: @moderntechnologyband
Ellie Clement
Joanne Coates
Joanne is a working-class visual artist and farm labourer based in the North East of England. Her work involves blending photography, installations, and audio to examine rurality, hidden histories and inequalities tied to class. A graduate of London College of Communication, Coates grounds her practice in lived experience and actively collaborates with communities. In 2024, she was selected as the UK House of Commons Election Artist and received the Baltic Vasseur Artists’ Award.
Website: joannecoates.co.uk
Instagram: @joannecoates_
Rachel Collett
Matthew Collings
Matthew is a British art critic, writer, broadcaster, curator, lecturer and artist. He is married to Emma Biggs with whom he collaborates with on their joint art projects. Instagram: @matthew.collings Website: emmabiggsandmatthewcollings.net
Owen Collins
Tony Collins
Tony has been involved in left-wing politics since he was a teenager in Hull in the 1970s. He is a historian at De Montfort University and has published a number of books, including Sport in Capitalist Society (2012), Rugby League: A People's History (2020) and Raising the Red Flag: Marxism, Labourism, and the Roots of British Communism, 1884–1921 (2024).
Instagram: @collinstony
Siân Cook
Margaret Corvid
Margaret Corvid is a writer living in Plymouth, U.K. Her poetry books include Singing In The Dark Times and Noun Poems.
Liz Crow
Ap Dafydd
Ap Dafydd is a Socialist republican and the bloke that sells SHAG fanzine by the speed camera on matchdays, you know, the one with the beard, he’s by the bin and the bus shelter on the tech end corner. Influences: Welsh Socialist Republicans/Comrades at the football/ Karl Connolly/Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers/TAL fanzine/Dial M for Merthyr/John Jenkins/James Connolly/STAND against modern football/The Russian revolution/Karl Marx/Watching football in the rain/Public Enemy.
Twitter: @SHAG23997980
Zahra Dalilah
Hannah Davenport
Hannah is the trade union reporter for Left Foot Forward covering workers’ rights, housing issues, industrial action as well as environmental issues. You can read many of her articles on the Left Foot Forward website. She also freelances as an editor and as a project officer working with young people in media content creation. Previously working in advice and support services, she moved into community radio and journalism in Bristol and now finds herself in South East London.
X: @hannah11dav
Mavis Davies
Rebecca Davies
Rebecca Davies is from London and lives in Stoke-on-Trent. Her work explores the role of art in making change, as a device and platform to represent and communicate complex stories and politics. She has run participation projects with Turner Contemporary, Tate, South London Gallery, and was lead artist of the Whitechapel Gallery Community Workshops for 3 years. Rebecca and artist Anna Francis set up The Portland Inn Project CIC in 2016.
Instagram: @rebeccamariadavies Website: www.rebeccadaviesartist.co.uk Website: www.theportlandinnproject.com
Sophie-Ann Davies
Paul Davis
Paul is an artist whose images disrupt an impassive relationship to life on earth. In his own words, Paul finds life preposterous, but still madly beautiful. He enjoys being bombarded by ungraspable science, unfathomable behaviours and is intrigued by the yet unknown. He publishes books such as ‘Us and Them’ a Visual Essay into American and British culture. Instagram: @paulcopyrightdavis Website: copyrightdavis.com
Victoria Samantha Dawson
Shaun Dey
Shaun Dey is a video-activist and co-founder of the London based collective Reel News, using film to help bring about social change and working with the numerous campaigns and struggles which are not only fighting back, but winning too – not just in the UK, but across the world. In particular Reel News has become well-known for supporting rank and file workers’ struggles and has been involved in a number of victories, as well as doing a lot of work on climate justice and a working-class response to climate change.
Twitter: @ReelNewsLondon Website: www.reelnews.co.uk
YouTube: youtube.com/user/ReelNews
Hanna Dhaimish
Sherif Dhaimish
Sherif Dhaimish is an editor, curator and publisher based in south-east London. Originally from Pendle, he is the founder of Pendle Press, a cultural preservation project that focuses on unique stories primarily from the north-west of England. Publications to date include Full Nelson, Church Bingo and A Libyan Artist in Exile Hasan 'Alsatoor' Dhaimish. He holds a BA in Communication Studies from the University of Leeds and an MA in Critical Theory from King’s College London.
Website: pendle-press.co.uk
Instagram: @sherif_dhaimish
Beauty Dhlamini
Patrizia Di Bello
Patrizia Di Bello is a Professor at Birkbeck, University of London, and a trustee of the Feminist Library and MayDay Rooms. In the late 1970s, she was active in the Federazione Anarchica Italiana, especially the feminist group in Milan. She considers teaching and mothering important aspects of her activism.
Website: Patrizia Di Bello
Dee Dickens
Teresa Dillon
Teresa’s work spans performance, storytelling, installation, public art, sound, written works and academic research. She critically explores themes of surveillance, survival, maintenance and failure, examining technology as a system that reconfigures making and imagining. A Humboldt Fellow, she has exhibited internationally and curated shows for the Science Gallery, Dublin (2012) and transmediale Berlin (2016). She has initiated programmes with Urban Hosts and Repair Acts. She is currently Professor of City Futures & Fine Art at the University of the West of England.
Website polarproduce.org Website urbanhosts.org
Christopher Dodd
Oliver Dodd
Oliver Dodd is a journalist and PHD Researcher at the University of Nottingham in England working on Colombia’s armed conflict and peace processes. Oliver regularly writes about Latin American politics and Colombia’s armed conflict for newspapers and magazines, such as The Morning Star newspaper. He has been interviewed regularly about his research by various platforms including television, radio, research institutes and podcasts. He is a Co-director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ).
Website: ArmedStruggle.com
X: @OliverCDodd
Danny Dorling
Noel Douglas
Noel Douglas is an artist, designer and lecturer. He was a main organiser and design activist within the anticapitalist ‘movements of movements’ and the anti-war movements between 1998-2005. In 2011 he co-founded Occupy Design, and continues to this day with various forms of art and design activism, working within and for the movements for Climate Emergency, Social Justice and revolutionary change on the street, in unauthorised campaigns like Brandalism, and in various galleries and museums internationally.
Twitter: @signsofrevolt
Instagram: @noeldouglas Website: www.noeldouglas.net/
Tiernan Douieb
Rick Dove
Rick Dove is a black, queer, and disabled writer and activist from South London. Widely anthologised since 2016, Rick also has two solo collections with Burning Eye Books; Tales From the Other Box (2020), Supervillain Origin Story (2023), and he was crowned UK Poetry Slam Champion in 2021.
Simon Downham-Knight
Daniel Draper
Daniel is a Liverpool-based filmmaker. Director of feature documentaries Nature of the Beast (2017); about Dennis Skinner, The Big Meeting (2019); about the Durham Miners’ Gala and Manifesto (2022) and a forthcoming film about Walton Constituency Labour Party.
Website: www.shutoutthelight.co.uk
Nadia Drews
Nika Dubrosky
Nika is an artist, author and co-founder of Anthropology for Kids and The Museum of Care. Her children's books and critical writing are translated and published in several languages. She has exhibited at among other locations the St. Petersburg Manège, Galeria Nova Zagreb, ShowRoom London, Media Udar, Fabrica Moscow and apexart New York.
Website: museum.care Website: davidgraeber.institute
Della Duncan
Cat Dunn
Cat is a Black researcher, lecturer, and Storycatcher. She is committed to effecting positive change through her work in Indigenous curating and social justice. Her independent curatorial practice, which challenges identity and social justice, is deeply influenced by her Barbados heritage. Dunn's work focuses on generating discussions around the social identity experienced by women from the global majority.
Instagram: @catdunnexhibitions
Jaimie D’Cruz
Theresa Easton
Theresa is an artist printmaker based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Community art projects and social engagement are a driving force behind her work and influence in her studio practice. Her political activism blends naturally with her art practice. She uses zines, posters and placards as campaign and educational tools. She is an active trade union member in Artists Union England, a trade union for visual artists formed in 2014.
Website: www.theresaeaston@wordpress.com
Gigi El-Halaby
Najlaa Elageli
Najlaa is an architect with over twenty years of experience. She founded Noon Arts Projects in 2012 to spotlight contemporary MENA region art and collaborated on projects such as the Shubbak Festival and The Africa Centre. She has curated over 24 projects worldwide, including notable exhibitions like "Pop Art from North Africa", "Retracing A Disappearing Landscape" and "Totalitarian Props". El-Ageli is respected for her quality exhibitions.
Website: noonartsprojects.com
Akwugo Emejulu
Dan Evans
Dan is a former support worker and trade union rep who is now back in academia as a lecturer. His research focuses mainly on social class and Welsh/British politics. He has written for the New Statesman, The Guardian, Jacobin, Open Democracy and Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. He runs the Welsh politics pod-cast Desolation Radio and has recently published the book A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie (Repeater, 2023).
X: @dai_alectic
Tim Evans
Neil Faulkner
Neil was an Archaeologist, Historian and Leading member of Anti*Capitalist Resistance. Political theorist and writer. Author of A Radical History of the World, A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, Creeping Fascism: what it is and how to fight it, and System Crash: an activist guide to the coming demo-cratic revolution.
Barry Fentiman Hall
Susan Fenton
Sue Fenton is Green Party councillor for Trinity Ward in Stroud. Sue is a founding member of the Big Red Band, which led the Tolpuddle procession in 2023. She is also a freelance writer and editor. She loves Stroud for its stunning scenery and green spaces and for its environmental and social progressiveness. In her spare time Sue enjoys genealogy, gardening, songwriting and exploring the area with an OS map to keep finding new walks.
Facebook: facebook.com/TheStroudRedBand
Fokawolf
Wes Foster
Wes is a photographer and writer based in Leeds, UK. His work is focused on the relationship between text and image, communities and social space and culture. This focus comes from a fascination with design and how architecture, town planning and design have shaped community space, often without input from the communities. He sees language (written or visual) as a means of collaboration and breaking down barriers.
Website: wesfoster.co.uk
Instagram: @_wesfoster_
Neil Fox
Matthew Frame
Matthew Frame is an award-winning artist, illustrator and educator whose work explores narrative, ornament and the grotesque through intricate hand-drawn imagery. His practice spans film, literature, politics and ecology, blending analogue techniques with conceptual depth. Internationally exhibited, he is also the founder of Jaune Press, an independent publishing house producing visually rich, idea-driven works. Based in London, he balances his studio practice with education, advocating for critical thinking and the expanded possibilities of illustration in his role at Greenwich University.
Website: mrmrframe.com
Instagram: @mrmrframe
Libby Freeman
Maria Fusco
Maria Fusco is a working-class Belfast-born writer based in Scotland working across critical, performance and theoretical writing. She is the author of eight books and four large scale performances. Her work has been commissioned by Artangel, BBC Radio 4, Book Works, Routledge and the Royal Opera House. Her self-reflex-ive work examines the failure of social mobility, the collapsing of accepted registers of voice and the fore-fronting of feminist and experimental ways of being in the world. She is Professor of Interdisciplinary Writing at the University of Dundee.
Website: mariafusco.netInstagram: @fuscowriting X: @fuscowriting
Kayleigh Garthwaite
Katherine Gibson
Katherine Gibson aka J.K. Gibson-Graham. Professor Katherine Gibson is internationally known for her research on rethinking economies as sites of ethical action. She trained as a human geographer with expertise in the political economy. She is also a Feminist economic geographer, theorist of post-capitalist possibilities, co-founder of the Community Economies Collective.
Website: www.communityeconomies.org/index.php/people/katherine-gibson Website: www.communityeconomies.org/index.php/people/jk-gibson-graham
Bill Godber
Donkor Godfried
Donkor is a British/Ghanaian visual artist, blending styles and media to explore creolization, focusing on culture, language, and social interaction. His practice includes drawing, painting, collage, and video. Donkor has exhibited internationally, including biennials in Venice, Havana, and Dakar, and shows at Tate Modern and the Philadelphia Museum. In 2010, he designed the Ghana National Football Team’s World Cup kit. His work is in major collections including the Smithsonian, Whitworth Museum, and Stedelijk Museum.
David Goldblatt
Nik Gorecki
Nik is the co-manager at the long-standing radical booksellers Housmans Bookshop in King’s Cross. He also art directs Housmans’ internal projects such as the annual Peace Diary and external projects such as the poster campaigns for London Radical Book Fair.
Website: www.housmans.com
Andy Gray
Ed Gray
Ed is an artist living in Rotherhithe, South London and works from a studio in Bow, where he paints London life from drawings made in the city streets. His focus has always been London, but he has also lived and painted in Mexico City, New York, and Bermuda, and made working trips to depict life in Cape Town, Tokyo, Bangkok, Beijing, Rio, São Paulo, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Website: edgrayart.com
Instagram: @edgrayart
Rosemary Grennan
Lee Griffiths
Lee is Wheel of Death Operator (CEO, if you like, but we don’t like corporate job titles) at Friction Arts in Birmingham. Friction exists to help create a world where equality and creativity are flourishing. Friction, as well as creating energy, aren’t afraid to rub people up the wrong way. Lee, Friction, and partner Sandra Hall have been making artworks and projects with people from the most diverse communities for over 30 years in and around Birmingham and on five continents (so far).
Website: frictionarts.com
Neil and Mike Grindley
Ed Hall
Ed has been making Trade Union campaign and exhi-bition banners for over 30 years. They are handmade, stitched, appliqued and often with painted scenes as the centrepieces. He is an architect and studied at Sheffield University. He gained his Trade Union expe-rience as the Branch Secretary of Lambeth Unison in the 1990’s.
Website: www.www.edhallbanners.co.uk
Chip Hamer
Jonny Hannah
Jonny was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied at Liverpool School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He now lives in Southampton where he works on big left-wing projects for organisations such as the Museums of Northumberland, creating Darktown Social Clubs in Hexham, Ashington, Berwick and Morpeth. He also looks the business too with shiny brogues and snappy braces.
Instagram - @darktownresident
Simon Hannah
Dr Jo Hassall
Jo teaches on BA (Hons) Illustration at Leeds Beckett University. Her research explores ways in which playful acts and visual props can be used to host inclusive sites of learning, using performative illustration and humour as a tool for provocation and connection. She draws on feminist collage strategies and radical pedagogies in a drive for social justice. She has collaborated on projects with creatives, activists and institutions including being co- founder and band member of feminist art collective F=.
X: @jo_hassall
Nick Hayes
Dr Sebastiane Hegarty
Sebastiane Hegarty is an artist, writer, and lecturer. As a visual artist working primarily with sound, his work explores the relationship between time, place, remembering and loss. His work has been transmitted, exhibited, heard and unheard across the UK, Europe and the Americas. In 2022, his essay, Withdrawn from Use, was published in the Journal Organised Sound (Cambridge, 2022) and the text work, ‘I am not imagining this…’ was nominated for Best Imagined Sound in the Sound of the Year Awards, 2021. Instagram: @sebastiane_hegarty Twitter: @sebastiane_h
Anahi Saravia Herrera
John Hewitt
John Hewitt trained as a fine artist and printmaker and has completed a PhD on the role of memory in reportage drawing. Since 2015 he has made over 4,000 observational daily sketchbook drawings. Based in the Pennine borderlands of Saddleworth, one of his recur-rent threads of subject interest is the traces of radical history across the Yorkshire-Lancashire axis. Until recently John was a Senior Lecturer on the Illustration BA Hons at Manchester Met and also taught at the Royal College of Art.
Instagram: @w_john_hewitt
Keiron Higgins
Michael Hindley
Michael Hindley studied German at London University and the Free University of West Berlin. He was a Labour MEP from 1984 to 1999. He now freelances as a writer and lecturer on international politics.
He is the author of The Semi Detached European (Manipal Universal Press, 2021)
Twitter: @HindleyLancs
Email: mhindley1947@gmail.com
Richard Huw-Morgan
Mary Ikoniadou
Dr Mary Ikoniadou is a Senior Lecturer at Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University and teaches on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design course. Her research inter-ests revolve around visual and cultural politics and she writes on design and cultural history with a focus on periodical studies and refugee publishing. Mary has taught contextual studies, art and design theory, history and studio practice to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the UK. Prior to her academic career, she was a graphic design practitioner in London, working with cultural institutions, artists, curators and publishers.
Instagram: @mary.ikon
Juliet Jacques
Sohail Jannesari
Migration researcher and activist. Founded the Migrant Connections Festival, Walk and Talk Migrant Welcome Tours and the anti-colonial group Speaking Status. He conducts participatory research around the effects of the asylum process on mental health and outcomes for survivors of human trafficking.
Twitter: @SohailJannesari Website: www.sohailj.com
Jennifer Jasmine White
Maxwell Jeffery
Max is a researcher and facilitator working in a range of environmental and community projects, member of Learn to lead CIC and Landstory. He is also the Art Director for Stir Magazine. Currently he is completing a philosophy MA focusing on disability and the social impacts of internet technologies.
Email: max@stirtoaction.com
Charles Jepson
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson is a Swedish/Colombian writer and climate justice organiser whose writing currently focuses on the multiplicity of belonging. Her debut novel How We Are Translated (2021) was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second book, The Nerves and Their Endings: essays on crisis and response was published in 2022. She is based in Edinburgh and currently organises with Climate Camp Scotland and Fossil Free Books. She works part time as Digital Campaigns Manager for Lighthouse, Edinburgh’s radical bookshop.
Instagram: @JessJohannessonX: @JessJohannesson
Matt Johnson
Craig Johnston
Craig is a working-class academic with research interests that lie in the study of youth justice, exclusion and theories of the social and sociality affecting individuals and communities. He has 30 years’ experience working in the fields of Youth Justice, Social Work, Psychology and Education with young people from working-class communities across the UK and USA. He is co-founder of the Alliance of Working Class Academics, online Editor of the Journal of Class and Culture.
X: @DrCEJohnston
D.D. Johnston
Jessie Jones
Jessie is a writer and editor based in Liverpool. Her work focuses on the intersection between art and activism, her work appearing in Lunate, Verso blog, Left Cultures, STAT Magazine and others. She is also Head of Audiences for Rule of Threes Arts, focusing on the At The Library programme, a community arts programme of arts workshops, commissions and events based in Sefton Libraries.
X: @jessieflojones
Instagram: @what.shesreading
Rhian E Jones
Clive Judd
Clive Judd is an award-winning writer, theatre director & bookseller. His debut play 'Here' won the Papatango Prize in 2022 from a record 1553 scripts & was staged at the Southwark Playhouse in November 2022. Clive’s story 'We can collect the keys', a collaboration with the artist Patrick Wray, was published by Exit Press in 2022. He co-runs the award winning and much celebrated independent bookshop Voce Books with his wife Maria in Birmingham.
Website: vocebooks.com
Instagram: @vocebooks
Neil Keating
Carol Kenna
Carol trained in fine art at Ravensbourne College of Art, Bromley, where she met her lifelong friend and collaborator Stephen Lobb. Carol exhibited paintings commenting on Vietnam and Northern Ireland in the London Group. She and Stephen jointly created mazelike structures for Art Spectrum and the Serpentine Gallery. Following a course in town planning and a scholarship to North America, she and Stephen set up Greenwich Mural Workshop in January 1975 to work with local communities, utilising multi arts media as vehicles for social change.
Website: forwallswithtongues.org.uk Website: greenwichmuralworksop.com
Peter Kenyon
Hamed Khosravi
Hamed Khosravi is an architect, writer, and educator. He studied architecture in Tehran, holds a Master’s from TU Delft and IUAV, and a PhD from 'The City as a Project' programme at the Berlage Institute and TU Delft. He is a Senior Lecturer in History & Theory of Architecture at London South Bank University (LSBU). He teaches at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) where he is co-head of Projective Cities MPhil programme.
Website: www.hamedkhosravi.comInstagram: @_hamedkhosravi
Alex Kidd
Tim Kiely
Tim Kiely is a criminal barrister and poet based in East London. He is the author of three pamphlets, including most recently ‘No Other Life’, a winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize 2023. Buy them at timkielybooks.bigcartel.com and find him on social media @timkiely1
Scott King
Ruth Kinna
Ruth Kinna is a university lecturer working in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at Loughborough University and a UCU rep. She is Co-editor of Anarchist Studies and author of Anarchism - A Beginners Guide.
Nate Kitch
Gabriel Kuhn
Gabriel is an Austrian-born writer, translator, and union organizer living in Sweden. Among his book publications are Soccer vs. the State: Tackling Football, Radical Politics and Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics.
Website: www.lefttwothree.org
Ashok Kumar
Esther Leslie
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck. Born into a Trotskyist family, she absorbed Dunayevskaya, Lenin and CLR James ab initio. Her teenage years were offered up to x-ntrix anarchism, punk, the Anti-Nazi League and left groupuscules. German-Jewish ancestry kindled scrutiny of German thought and praxis, its hope and horror, from Marx to Nazism. She ditched her left group of choice, which had long disappointed her for its cultural conservatism and unimaginativeness, shortly before it imploded in the 2010s.
Website: militantesthetix.co.ukX: @afoggyplace
Michelle Lester
Rada Lewis
Rada is a holistic graphic artist born and bred in Bulgaria on both sides of 1989, who has been living in the West for the last 35 years. Rada works mostly on community, trade union and political campaigns but enjoys making politically charged paper puppets and artists books too.
Website: radalewis.com Instagram: @rada__lewis
Patricia Macdonald
Katherine Mackinnon
Katherine grew up in Glasgow in a family of socialists. She is a writer and historian who uses archival research, collaborative writing, oral histories and community arts to explore the politics of migration and collective memory. She is co-founder of Radical Glasgow Tours and a committee member of Glasgow Red Sunday School. She is also a keen knitter and is currently working on a red (of course) cabled jumper.
Website: radicalglasgowtours.com Website: kmackinnon.org
Naho Madsuda
Alan Male
Alan Male is Professor Emeritus and former Head of Illustration at Falmouth University. He has written several internationally published books about illustration and has presented a number of invited keynotes and public lectures around the world. As a practitioner, Professor Male has illustrated more than 170 books by commission and won a number of global awards. Current research interests include the history and influence of illustration on society with an emphasis on politics, religion, propaganda and sensationalism.
Website: Alan Male
Deej Malik-Johnson
Polly Manning
Polly Manning is a writer from Carmarthenshire. She's currently working on her first collection of short stories, and in the autumn will begin postgraduate studies in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Twitter: @polly_manning_
Siôn Marshall-Waters
Steve Marsling
Steve joined the YCL in 1969 and became involved in the campaign for a TUC Youth Conference. He later became a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Southwark. He co founded the Toothless Campaign, after both dentists left the small town of Leiston, where he now lives. He Coordinated and wrote articles for the Educational resource pack, London Recruits, published by Manifesto Press. He features in the film about the Recruits, both as himself now and a very fine young actor playing him then! It will be on general release next June.
Email: marsling@btinternet.com
Yassamine Mather
Erin Mathias
Erin Mathias is a south-west Walian writer and researcher living in Cardiff. She's worked in the arts, education and local government and recently started doctoral research in the field of forensic linguistics. She also co-edits independent Welsh magazine The Paper, writes short stories and scripts whenever she finds the time, and is currently compiling her first short story collection
Keally McBride
Siobhán McGuirk
Siobhán is a researcher, writer and editor of Red Pepper magazine. She has a PhD in cultural anthropology and is a specialist in migration and borders, sexuality and gender, social justice movements and arts and culture. She uses collaborative and creative methods in her work and as a driver towards queer liberation and border abolition. Her latest book is Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry (PM Press, 2020).
Website: siobhanmcguirk.com
Instagram: @dr_mcguirk
Dr Lisa McKenzie
Darran McLaughlin
Darran McLaughlin is a bookseller, former Momentum NCG member, co-founder of Bristol Transformed, and manager of Bookhaus, based in Bristol.
Website: www.bookhausbristol.com
Twitter: @McDarran
Keira McLean
Esther McManus
Esther McManus makes books and comics that explore collective and personal relationships to history. She is interested in print’s historical role in the production and distribution of knowledge, informed by her background in silkscreen and risograph printing.
Website: www.esthermcmanus.co.uk
Instagram: @esther_mcmanus
Rachael Miles
Mario Minichiello
Mario’s activism has been conducted as a practising artist for over 30 years. Starting as a contributor to City Limits Magazine, the Weekend Financial Times, and the Guardian Newspaper, eventually working for BBC Newsnight as a political and Reportage Artist. Mario has provided a different point of view to that of mainstream media and news organisations. Working as an international visual journalist, his work has a strong storytelling quality that conveys a deep sense of meaning and impact.
Instagram: @mariominichiello
Eliz Mizon
Maria Mochnacz
Maria is a photographer and video maker and trained in fine art and photography. She has been working with musicians and bands since 1991, but also does fashion and fine art work. She is most well known for her work with PJ Harvey. As well as producing her photographs and videos she is closely involved in styling.
Website: www.mariamochnacz.co.uk
Lucy Morris
Colin Murphy
Colin Murphy is a Belfast-based stand-up comedian. He is best known for his television work hosting and co-writing The Blizzard of Odd and The Unbelievable Truth, and as resident panellist on The Blame Game for BBC Northern Ireland and The Panel for RTÉ.
Twitter: @thatcolinmurphy Website: www.thatcolinmurphy.com
Sue Nike
Alex Niven
Alex Niven is a writer and lecturer from the North East of England. A columnist at Tribune and a contributor to the Guardian, Pitchfork and the New York Times, his most recent books are New Model Island, The North Will Rise Again and Newcastle, Endless. He helped to start the publisher Repeater Books in 2014. Alex also is a lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle University and an editor at Repeater Books.
X: @alex_niven
Henry Normal
Alistair Oldham
Alistair is a Senior Lecturer at UWE Bristol in docu-mentary and factual multiplatform production. His film titled the ‘The Bristol Bike Project’ is a short film about cycling, recycling and political asylum. It has been translated into fourteen different languages and has played at over forty film festivals around the world.
Website: www.vimeo.com/36595608
Craig Oldham
Deirdre O’ Neill
Deirdre is a working-class lecturer and filmmaker. She is the co-coordinator of the Inside Film projectinsidefilm.org and the founding and principal editor of the Journal of Class and Culture. She has co- directed (with Mike Wayne) three films Listen to Venezuela listentovenezuela.info, Condition of the Working Class conditionoftheworkingclass.info and The Acting Class theactingclass.info/home-mob.
Website: insidefilm.org
X @deeinsidefilm
Clare Patey
John Phillips
John is an artist / designer / curator based in UK and France. He co-foundered and worked at Paddington Printshop in 1975-89 and was director of London Print Workshop/londonprintstudio 1989-2022. He is director of lps21, the Museum of Unrest and a trustee of Wembley to Soweto Foundation. John’s work is held in a number of public collections including Victoria & Albert Museum, the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum.
Website: johnphillips.art Website: paddingtonprintshop.org
Kate Potts
Sean Prentice
Sean was born and raised in Northamptonshire, and has a background in visual arts and history, with an emphasis on overlooked oral histories and memoir. In recent years he has been writing poetry and making visual representations which speak about class struggle, disability, intergenerational trauma, and landscape from both a biographical and autobiographical position.
Instagram: @sean_prentice
Sean Prentice
Steve Presence
Steve is an Associate Professor in Film Studies in the Department of Creative and Cultural Industries at UWE. His work focuses on film and television industries or on activist film culture. He has published widely in these fields in various books, reports and peer-reviewed journals including Film Studies, Frames Cinema Journal, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and the Journal of British Cinema and Television and Screen.
Twitter: @StevePresence Email: stephen2.presence@uwe.ac.uk Website: www.radicalfilmnetwork.com
Blacklodge Press
Lina Protopapa
Lina Protopapa is a translator and literary critic based in Nicosia, Cyprus. Her translation of Constantia Soteriou’s “Death Customs” from the Greek received the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize while her translation of Nikolas Kyriakou’s “The Debt” was shortlisted for the same prize in 2020. Her work has appeared in Granta, adda, Fractal, Hartis Magazine, and on BBC Radio 4. She is a doctoral candidate in English Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Cyprus.
Instagram: @raphelmai
Twitter: @LinaProtopapa
Alberto Prunetti
Ajaz Qureshi
Ajaz is a British South Asian writer, teacher and artist from Nelson, Lancashire, who holds a BA in English Literature and MA in Creative Practice. His work explores identity, heritage and community, and has been featured internationally with recognition from Arts Council England, The Nature Writing Prize and the Lancashire Fringe Short Story Prize. He is an active community figure and director of To Whom Editorial, a writing and coaching service, and is deeply rooted in Lancashire’s cultural landscape.
Website: ajazqureshi.com
Instagram: @sincereintentions
Robert R. Raymond
Jennifer Reid
Jennifer is a performer of Victorian broadside ballads and Lancashire dialect work song. She will clog dance if you ask very nicely. Her work has taken her to Venice, Croatia, New York and lately Bangladesh, where she tested the idea that the Industrial Revolution never stopped, it just moved to Dhaka. She spoke at the first ethnomusicography conference on the Indian subcontinent about her research into Bangladeshi and Mancunian weaving songs.
Website: jenniferballards.com
River
Linda Roland Danil
Linda Roland Danil obtained a PhD from the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds in 2015. She is presently a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cambridge, where she is also writing a second thesis on, broadly speaking, immunity.
Website: www.researchgate.net/profile/Linda-Roland-Danil \
Linda Roland-Danil
Robert Rubbish
Robert is one of the founding members of Le GUN magazine. Born in 1973, Robert Rubbish Greene studied Communication Art & Design at Royal College of Art in London from 2003 – 2005. Historic London is an especially inspirational place for his work which brings together his interests in curiosi-ties, joke shops, facial hair, Victorian punk revivalism and gin.
Instagram: robertrubbish Website: www.robertrubbish.com
Clive Russell
Captain SKA
Captain SKA burst onto the music scene in 2010 when producer and trumpet player Jake Painter decided to put his political frustrations into music. In 2017 Captain SKA’s most well known tune ‘Liar Lair GE2017’ became an international news story reaching number four in the UK charts, and even prompting response from UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
Twitter: @captainSKA Website: www.captainska.com
Aidan Saunders
Belinda Scarlett
Belinda is the Manager at the Working-class Movement Library in Salford. The Working-class Movement Library is an independent library and archive preserving 200 years of working-class activism and its material culture. She has worked in heritage for fifteen years as a curator and project manager at the National Football Museum and Liverpool archives before taking on the role at WCML. She specialises in making archive collections accessible and improving representation in heritage collections.
Website: wcml.org.ukInstagram: @wcmlibrary
Eilis Searson
Emma Shankland
Shankland banner makers have been working with communities, trade unions, schools and individuals throughout the UK for over 40 years. Emma is a professional artist and collaborates with her husband Edgar Ameti. They continue the unique tradition of creating hand-painted fabric banners to fly amidst the crowds with messages of solidarity, hope, community organisation and change.
Website: www.durhambannermakers.co.uk
Instagram: @durhambannermakers
Marina Sitrin
Pippa Smith
Pippa co-founded Paddington Printshop before running away to join a travelling theatre company, Welfare State International. After 5 months living in a bell tent, she turned gamekeeper and became a Senior Officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain. She went on to co-found Same Sky, Brighton’s community arts organisation, and to work as a Creative producer for Brighton Festival and Dome. She continues to help make wonderful things happen in outdoor and indoor spaces in Brighton and Hove.
Serena Smith
Zie Smith
Zie is a Bristol-based artist, educator and activist. They hold an MA in Multidisciplinary Printmaking and they previously taught at the University of Wolverhampton. Zie’s practice uses artwork as a form of communication and protest around social issues. They predominantly make work with a DIY punk aesthetic using natural fibres and recycled materials. Zie has a research inter-est in queer (particularly sapphic) identity, specifically within textiles, zines, and self-published literature.
Instagram: @a_to_zie_prints
Paul Sng
Professor Shawn Sobers
Academic teaching photography at UWE Bristol. His work in film and photography is primarily people-based, rooted in personal narratives, hidden histories and untold stories. As a researcher his work has spanned a wide range of topics, including community media, creative education, the transatlantic slave trade, disability, walking and Rastafari culture.
Twitter: @shawnsobers Website: www.shawnsobers.com
Joe Solo
Bob Sproule
Bob Sproule was first taken to the Clarion House by his parents in the 1950s. He is a trade unionist, co-operator, Labour Movement activist, keen walker and collaborator of Pendle Radicals Walks. He is also a founding member and contributor to Pendle Radicals, a research and creative project exploring the stories of some of Pendle Hill’s extraordinary change makers, radical thinkers and non-conformists.
www.pendleradicals.org.uk
AP Staunton
Tenaya Steed
Tenaya is an artist and illustration lecturer interested in folk art and storytelling. Growing up on an English council estate (in a home that preferred the Irish), she saw and lived the creative expression in places deemed uncultured and unworthy. From UFO hoaxes in British ‘cultural deserts’ to a magazine by and for the dinlos and darlings of Gloucester. She is always striving to show how people outside of the art world connect with the poetry of life - and how much this matters.
Instagram: @tenayasteed Website: www.tenayasteed.com
Alfie Steer
Rob Steventon
Rob Steventon is a performance poet, comedian and promoter who first took up the mic in 2013. His night Punk in Drublic Poetry won the Saboteur award for best regular night, and his debut collection ‘How I Made My Millions’ was published by Flapjack Press in 2021.
Rebecca Strickson
Claire Stroud
Claire Stroud occasionally dabbles in poetry in between fighting injustice, changing the world and educating children.
Laura Taylor
Yvette Taylor
Yvette is a queer-feminist sociologist at University of Strathclyde. Yvette’s book Working-Class Queers: Time, Place and Politics (Pluto, 2023) moves back and forth through 20+ years of research and activism for, about and with working-class queers. She was a visit-ing professor at the Centre for Feminist Research at York University in 2020. Yvette’s other books include Working-class Lesbian Life (2007), Lesbian and Gay Parenting (2009) and Fitting Into Place? Class and Gender Geographies and Temporalities (2012).
Instagram: @queersocialjusticeX: @YvetteTaylor0
Fred The Ninja
Rhoda Thomas
Rhoda Thomas is a Board member of Women Publishing Wales and co-founder of Live Poets. Rhoda has read at Swansea Fringe, Merthyr Rising and Marxism. Her work appears in Socialist Review; Seventh Quarry; Red Poets; Sinew; Coronaverses; Land of Change; Gwrthryfel/Uprising and We Not Me/Ni Nid Fi. Her own collections include Imago (2021) and Choosing Sides (2025). Contact Rhoda on Facebook for details.
Vicky Thomas
Miles Thompson
Miles is based in Bristol and is both a clinical psychologist and an associate professor in psychology. He has spent all his life trying to work out how to be a small part in bringing about a more just world. Like many, he is still trying to find a right answer! He spreads his time across multiple different research and other projects. One recent project, linked to his story, is a series of short videos about People’s History in England (1215 – 1936; link below).
Website: mvdct.org.ukWebsite: bit.ly/3tLxdGX
Nick Toczek
Amy Todd
Amy is originally from Scunthorpe, but now lives and works in Manchester. She is currently busy with her PhD on the 1970s socialist feminist magazine Red Rag, her work at The Class Work Project, and the birth of her first child.
Angharad Tomos
Angharad Tomos
Angharad Tomos Writer. Welsh Language Society (past chair), anti-apartheid, peace movement, Nicaragua, anti nuclear, Palestine Solidarity, in North West Wales and still active on that front. At present part of a community based project in her village for young people and re-generation. Campaigning against austerity cuts of the County Council, and against second homes in Wales.
Tim Wells
David Westhead
As well as running The Wembley to Soweto Foundation, David Westhead has worked in the film and TV industry as both producer and actor for over 35 years. His numerous credits include the Academy Award nominated Mrs Brown, BAFTA nominated Donovan Quick, Golden Globe winning Gideon's Daughter, Emmy Award winning The Lost Prince, BAFTA Award winning The Lakes, Academy Award winning The Iron Lady as well as the multi-award winning dramas The Bodyguard, Strike and the satire W1A for the BBC.
Boff Whalley
Richard Whistance
Richard Whistance I am a 54-year-old performer and musician who, for 25 years, has played with the environmental activist band 'Seize the Day.' All band members are veteran social justice campaigners. My first protest was against Maggie Thatcher’s Poll Tax in the late 80s. Since then, I went on to protest against the Iraq war with 2 million others in London. More recently, the band supported the fight against fracking... and won! We are the 'Green Left' if you like.
Website: seizetheday.org
Richard White
Tom Widdicombe
Tom lives on Dartmoor. He is retired, but still running his small business buying and selling vintage hand tools. He joined the Labour Party in 2015 and left in 2019. He is the co host of the podcast ‘Thelma and Tom Look Left’, and also hosts his own podcast ‘Talking with the Hippies’.
Twitter: @tom909 Website: www.tomwiddicombe.com
Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann
Chris Williams
Chris Williams has spent most of his adult life in Leicester, mucking about with bicycles, shitposting on the internet, and separating as many Tories from power as he can. He used to be a historian of criminal justice; he's not sure if he 'is' anything in particular any more.
Jason Williamson
Alison Winch
Alison Winch was born in Leeds and works in London. She is a poet and lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, teaching and writing about digital media, popular culture, capitalism and patriarchy. She’s also mainly being with her two kids.
Website: Alison Winch
Dan Wooley
Matt Working Class History/Literature
Matt (Working Class History/Literature) At various points in his life Matt has been on top of occupied university buildings and doing some work-ers’/union organising. This includes being an active, but long-suffering, member of Unison until recently. Currently, he works on the Working Class History project, producing podcasts and spreading broader awareness of history from below. He also produces the sister podcast, Working Class Literature.
Website: www.workingclasshistory.com
Wankers of the World
Jessy Young
Jessy is an artist, designer and university lecturer. She has collaborated with Jen Conway for twenty years. As Conway and Young they are motivated by art and design’s critical, social, civic and political potential. In 2018 they published Milk Report which explores the politics and economics of care through the lens of feeding a baby. In 2024 they worked with Toni Mayo and Mike Williams to produce a DIY Instruction Manual for an Ad-hoc Creche crecheofcourse.com.
Website: conwayandyoung.com
Instagram: @conwayandyoung
Joe Zux
Porky the Poet
Porky the Poet is 63 and lives by the sea on the East coast of Scotland. He started as a performance poet in 1983, did some other things, stopped doing them and then became a poet again. He is an art school drop out and has a quite needy Labrador.