Out of the Shadows – Artist, Facilitator and Speaker Information

Workshop Facilitators

• Lauren-Loïs Duah of RESOLVE   

RESOLVE is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the UK and across the world, all of which look toward realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment. 

RESOLVE’s project portfolio ranges from architecture/urban design projects to community support work, from artist installations to research publications. They have worked critically with numerous art institutions including S1 Gallery (Sheffield), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), Tate Liverpool (Liverpool), Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt & SAAVY Contemporary (Berlin), Kunstverein Braunschweig (Braunschweig), Qattan Foundation (Palestine), and Wellcome Collection, V&A Museum, The Barbican Centre, and Mosaic Rooms (London). 

Lauren-Loïs Duah is part of RESOLVE collective. She is a cross-disciplinary artist & designer, whose work focuses on the ways in which creativity, craft, and design can be used as a dynamic liberatory tool to build positive community practices. Her creative practice is rooted in diasporic storytelling and connecting to ‘home’ through a Pan-African lens utilising traditional craft techniques, different scales of design, and place-based making. 

• Eden Igwe

Eden Igwe is a filmmaker, artist, director and producer based in suburban southwest London. Eden makes narrative films, documentaries and video experiments, to be viewed in cinemas, galleries, museums or anywhere where there is an attentive, engaged audience. Her directed short film ‘Kingdom of Benin’ has been installed permanently at the Horniman Museum since its completion in 2024.

Eden directed the televised short film ‘Beats from Heaven’, a commission by Warner Brothers Discovery’s ‘Black Britain Unspoken’ series, earning a Special Mention at the 2023 UK Seasonal Short Film Festival. Driven towards compelling and emotionally grounded storytelling, Eden also works on mapping the subconscious through experiments in video and found archive. When not working on her own film projects, Eden works part-time in theatre hospitality, part-time as a freelance AD department runner on commercial film and TV sets – including a period as a runner at Twickenham Film Studios – and part-time producing for other artists and dramatists, producing a sold-out fringe theatre production in 2025. 

• Becky Lyon  

Becky Lyon is an artist, PhD researcher, London National Park City Ranger and a former recipient of Orleans House Gallery’s Emerging Artist programme.  Becky’s work explores what nature has to teach us and she is interested in the politics of nature in England. Her work takes the form of mixed media installations, moving image work, sculpture and publishing and she has exhibited in the UK, South Korea, Germany and Italy.   

She is an experienced facilitator and has run workshops for the likes of Camden Art Centre and TATE Exchange, The Barbican and London Festival of Architecture. She runs The Department of Artecology and Ground Provisions. She has two first class masters degrees in MA Art & Ecology (Goldsmiths) and MA Art & Science (Central Saint Martins) and is currently researching for her PhD “Touch as method for critical ecological stewardship in England: a hands-on artist-led intervention” at Goldsmiths University of London.  

Becky has 18+ years of experience project managing and delivering cultural programmes for global brands from PepsiCo to adidas, LEGO group and Reebok.  

 She is of mixed English and Jamaican heritage and is invested in increasing diverse representation in the outdoors through her work with LNPC and All The Elements. 

• NattySpeaks  

NattySpeaks is a London, South East-based alternative hip-hop artist working across freestyle rap, spoken word, and beatboxing. His practice combines socially conscious lyricism with live audience engagement, exploring themes of identity, society, and lived experience. Natty has performed at major UK festivals including Glastonbury Festival, Boomtown, and Nozstock, and is also a social activist, using his platform to promote community, awareness, and positive change.   

• Shaye Poulton Richards 

Shaye works across theatre, video games and immersive experiences. She participated in the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames, Artist Make Space programme 2025 and was Artist-in-Residence PTEQ Central School of Speech and Drama 2025. 

• Dan Tsu 

Dan Tsu is a creative director, event producer, educator and founder of groundbreaking disability programme Levelling The Field (Glastonbury Festival, Brockwell Live, Mighty Hoopla), The Beat Bank (a food bank for music) and acclaimed underground movement Lyrix Organix. 

A multi-disciplinary strategic consultant (Youth Music), facilitator (British Council), Lead Lecturer (BIMM) and former Senior Programme Manager (Roundhouse), Dan designs/delivers youth programmes across creative careers, music industry, social action and event management. 

Dan is best known for Glastonbury Festival’s legendary Rum Shack – working with the likes of Akala, Kojey Radical, Kae Tempest and Mike Skinner. The acclaimed Lyrix Organix is renowned for boundary-pushing education programmes and live events that intersect live music, poetry and hip-hop, to promote youth and social action. He has worked from Ukraine to Cuba, Ethiopia to Mexico. In 2025 he was nominated for Youth Music’s ‘Inspirational Music Leader’ Award. 

• Mike Vanis

Mike Vanis is an interaction designer and engineer with a background in computer science. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Northumbria University’s Interaction Research Studio, where recent projects include the Room of the Future at the Museum of the Home. He is co-founder of VAST, a technology consultancy working with clients including Hermès, the Natural History Museum, and Google. In 2015, he co-founded Unit Lab, a creative studio making science accessible through installations, products, and workshops. 

Panellists

Creative Careers and Technology: what’s the future?
12-1pm 

• Dan Tsu  

Dan Tsu is a creative director, event producer, educator and founder of groundbreaking disability programme Levelling The Field (Glastonbury Festival, Brockwell Live, Mighty Hoopla), The Beat Bank (a food bank for music) and acclaimed underground movement Lyrix Organix.  

A multi-disciplinary strategic consultant (Youth Music), facilitator (British Council), Lead Lecturer (BIMM) and former Senior Programme Manager (Roundhouse), Dan designs/delivers youth programmes across creative careers, music industry, social action and event management.  

Dan is best known for Glastonbury Festival’s legendary Rum Shack – working with the likes of Akala, Kojey Radical, Kae Tempest and Mike Skinner. The acclaimed Lyrix Organix is renowned for boundary-pushing education programmes and live events that intersect live music, poetry and hip-hop, to promote youth and social action. He has worked from Ukraine to Cuba, Ethiopia to Mexico. In 2025 he was nominated for Youth Music’s ‘Inspirational Music Leader’ Award. 

• Mike Vanis 

Mike Vanis is an interaction designer and engineer with a background in computer science. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Northumbria University’s Interaction Research Studio, where recent projects include the Room of the Future at the Museum of the Home. He is co-founder of VAST, a technology consultancy working with clients including Hermès, the Natural History Museum, and Google. In 2015, he co-founded Unit Lab, a creative studio making science accessible through installations, products, and workshops. 

• Shaye Poulton Richards 

Shaye works across theatre, video games and immersive experiences. She participated in the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames, Artist Make Space programme 2025 and was Artist-in-Residence PTEQ Central School of Speech and Drama 2025.   

Art & Social Change 
3-4pm 

• Lauren-Loïs Duah 

Lauren-Loïs Duah is part of RESOLVE collective. She is a cross-disciplinary artist & designer, whose work focuses on the ways in which creativity, craft, and design can be used as a dynamic liberatory tool to build positive community practices. Her creative practice is rooted in diasporic storytelling and connecting to ‘home’ through a Pan-African lens utilising traditional craft techniques, different scales of design, and place-based making.    

• Heather Ackroyd 

Heather Ackroyd of Ackroyd & Harvey is internationally acclaimed for creating works that intersect art, activism, architecture, biology, ecology and history. Ackroyd & Harvey often work with living plant material. In their multi-award winning photographic work, blades of seedling grass provide a highly light-sensitive surface that the artists use to create a unique form of photography, imprinting complex images in the living material through the controlled production of chlorophyll.  

They have received the Royal Academy Rose Award, Wu Guanzhong Prize for Art & Innovation, L’Oreal Art and Science of Colour Grand Prize, NESTA Pioneer Award, Wellcome Trust Sci-Art Award, and exhibited worldwide including the Hayward Gallery, London; Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas; WOMADelaide, Australia; Le Centquatre-Paris, France; Festival Images, Switzerland; Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy; Void, Derry, N. Ireland; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA; Mostra SESC des Artes, Brazil; Chicago Public Arts Program, USA; Rice Gallery, Houston, USA. 

• Lucy McDonald 

Lucy McDonald is a practising artist, facilitator, producer and researcher who has worked across a wide range of projects, workshops, community engagements and events with people of all ages. She is an experienced play expert, with extensive knowledge of working in and with communities, galleries, museums and public spaces. 

All of Lucy’s work is anchored in values of accessibility, co-creation, care and connection. She has a special interest in participatory projects for intergenerational groups, especially those whose voices are often unheard or excluded. Her practice is trauma-informed, with extensive experience working alongside children, young people and families who are care experienced. 

Her creative practice explores themes of belonging, creative play, games, nature, memory-making and joy, underpinned by a belief in the power of art to positively impact wellbeing through social engagement. 

Lucy is co-founder and director of Well Social CIC, a community interest company rooted in creative wellbeing. Based at Stoneford Community Garden in Dagenham East, Well Social CIC brings communities together through participatory workshops and collaborative projects, with outreach delivered across London and Essex. 

Lucy has worked on projects and commissions with Tate, National Trust, Whitechapel Gallery, Young V&A, National Gallery, Royal Museums Greenwich and London Transport Museum, as well as Arts Council England–funded Creative People and Places programmes, including Havering Changing and Start Thurrock.  

• Paloma Durante (moderator)  

Paloma Durante is a Brazilian artist and educator, working at the intersection of art and pedagogy. Her practice explores how art can function as a shared space for learning, combining performance, walking practices, writing, and the design of participatory devices to create experiences that foster questions, encounters, and discussions around themes such as memory, language, and collective experience. 

Currently, she develops multidisciplinary projects that integrate curatorial strategies, collaborative workshops, and experimental participatory methods independently, including exhibitions and community-driven initiatives that invite audiences to co-create and actively engage with artworks. In parallel, she works in editorial and publishing, having contributed to presente magazine (2021), editing major publications on Anna Maria Maiolino’s poetic archive – including the catalogue PSSSIIIUUU… (Tomie Ohtake Institute) and Digo e Tenho Dito (Ubu Editora, 2022) -, and developing the upcoming Fio, Escrita Contínua by the artist Mariana Guimarães (Biblioteca Floresta Editora), overseeing both editorial and graphic-concept design. 

Her practice has been recognized internationally through residencies such as Artists Make Space (Richmond Arts Council, 2024–25, UK) and Enter Text (Arteles Creative Center, 2019, Finland), as well as through awards including the New Perspectives Award from MIS-SP (2017/2018, Brazil) for innovative projects in arts education. 

Speed Mentors

• Lauren-Loïs Duah

Lauren-Loïs Duah is part of RESOLVE collective. She is a cross-disciplinary artist & designer, whose work focuses on the ways in which creativity, craft, and design can be used as a dynamic liberatory tool to build positive community practices. Her creative practice is rooted in diasporic storytelling and connecting to ‘home’ through a Pan-African lens utilising traditional craft techniques, different scales of design, and place-based making.

• Dan Tsu

Dan Tsu is a creative director, event producer, educator and founder of groundbreaking disability programme Levelling The Field (Glastonbury Festival, Brockwell Live, Mighty Hoopla), The Beat Bank (a food bank for music) and acclaimed underground movement Lyrix Organix. 

• Becky Lyon  

Becky Lyon is an artist, PhD researcher, London National Park City Ranger and a former recipient of Orleans House Gallery’s Emerging Artist programme.  Becky’s work explores what nature has to teach us and she is interested in the politics of nature in England. Her work takes the form of mixed media installations, moving image work, sculpture and publishing and she has exhibited in the UK, South Korea, Germany and Italy.  

• Lucy McDonald 

Lucy McDonald is a practising artist, facilitator, producer and researcher who has worked across a wide range of projects, workshops, community engagements and events with people of all ages. She is an experienced play expert, with extensive knowledge of working in and with communities, galleries, museums and public spaces. 

• NattySpeaks  

NattySpeaks is a London, South East-based alternative hip-hop artist working across freestyle rap, spoken word, and beatboxing. His practice combines socially conscious lyricism with live audience engagement, exploring themes of identity, society, and lived experience.

• Paloma Durante 

Paloma Durante is a Brazilian artist and educator, working at the intersection of art and pedagogy. Her practice explores how art can function as a shared space for learning, combining performance, walking practices, writing, and the design of participatory devices to create experiences that foster questions, encounters, and discussions around themes such as memory, language, and collective experience.