We are beyond thrilled to announce that our festival of hope, surprise, and inspiration is back in Barcelona. In fact, we’re so excited that we’ve gone a bit overboard with the programme — expect more speakers, more activities, more screenings, and more surprises!
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Tickets for our 2018 edition sold out fast and in 2019, we decided to turn the event into a 2-day festival of joy to build a better, greener future with and for all. 2020 saw us hold the free online Fixing the Future special education edition and in July, we launched our roaring Nature Talks.
With the support of Aigües de Barcelona, Holaluz and Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya, and the collaboration of Oxfam Intermón, we’re back at CCCB in Barcelona to reimagine our cities, clothes, food, oceans, culture, and more.
► Get your tickets for Fixing the Future Festival.
Life on our planet is facing crucial challenges, and it’s going to take our best effort to help solve them. That’s why we asked over 50 FutureHero speakers to join us — innovators, entrepreneurs, creatives, educators, artists, social pioneers are only some of the changemakers you’ll be meeting at Fixing the Future Festival.
Come join the discussions that are reshaping our world — expect two days of keynote interviews, debate panels, and 1-2-1 networking sessions that will surprise, move, and inspire you. Visual activists can discover new perspectives with thought-provoking screenings, while practical learning fans can pick a workshop and get hands-on experience. All Fixing the Future sessions are in English and Catalan.
Find out more about what’s cooking on the ► Fixing the Future Festival website.
Can’t wait already? Catch a sneak peek of our lineup below (more to be confirmed soon!) ?
Brian Eno | Sound & vision superstar
Musician, producer, visual artist and activist
“Our future depends on us having a healthy planet. But our actions are severely damaging the environment. We need to act now to keep our planet and communities clean, healthy and thriving for generations to come.”
Brian Eno is one of the leading contemporary musicians in Britain, known both for his individual music and for his many collaborations with artists as diverse as U2, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Coldplay and Paul Simon. He is closely associated with Ambient Music and Generative Music, both of which he named and pioneered. He is also a widely exhibited visual artist and an active campaigner for human rights and the environment. He is co-founder of EarthPercent, a charity providing a simple way for the music industry to support the most impactful organisations addressing the climate emergency.
Gabriela Bucher | System changer and head of Oxfam International
Executive Director of Oxfam International
The smile of a FutureFixer
“There’s no substitute for the structural shift needed to tackle inequality and the climate crisis.”
Gabriela Bucher grew up in Colombia and dedicated her career to fostering the power of collaboration to achieve equality. A champion for social justice, feminist leadership and human rights, she worked alongside children and communities affected by Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict and contributed to peacebuilding and youth active citizenship, influencing the country’s approach to restorative justice for children. Before being appointed Executive Director of Oxfam International, Gabriela worked as Chief Operating Officer of Plan International and led Fundación Plan Colombia.
Ece Temelkuran | Turkey’s mighty punk pen
Novelist and political commentator
Joy-pen letters only
“Sometimes there happens to be a particularly determined person in the audience who asks, ‘So where is the hope?’ My answer is always the same: ‘Follow the young women.”
Award-winning Turkish novelist and political commentator Ece Temelkuran has been described as a ‘marvellously punk writer’ and the author of books that ‘vibrate with outrage.’ Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Der Spiegel.
Ece won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book award for her novel Women Who Blow On Knots and the Ambassador Of New Europe Award for Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy. She’s also the pen behind internationally acclaimed How to Lose a Country. Her latest work Together: 10 Choices For a Better Now is “about what kind of world we want to live in now, and the joy we can take in finding our dignity again.”
Marina Testino | Sustainable fashion influencer & artivist
Creative Director of Point Off View, Inc.
“We keep focusing on and criticising the problems instead of investing our energy in figuring out solutions.”
Marina Testino is one of the world’s best-known sustainable fashion trendsetters. With fashion and photography in her blood and environmental activism in her heart, the influencer launched campaigns like #OneDressToImpress, during which she wore the same suit for 60 days to “challenge the fashion industry to be more conscious, transparent and circular and to invite women to feel free to wear what they want when they want, without the pressure to follow trends or social media or anything but their own values.”
Under her own label Point Off View, now a mission-driven micro agency focused on digital communication and sustainable transformation, she delivers forward-thinking creative direction and value-driven change for people and the planet.
Kennedy Odede | Kenya’s slum transformation champion
Founder and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO)
A 20-cent soccer ball started a country-wide slum transformation movement
“There is a growing consensus that the future should and must be created and led by Africans, because real progress requires it to be on our own terms. And yet, this is just talk until funders shift resources and power, at scale, towards local solutions.”
Forbes 30 under 30 and polyglot Kennedy Odede is one of Africa’s best-known community organisers and social entrepreneurs. A former street child, Kennedy lived for twenty- three of his thirty-three years in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, where he experienced the devastating realities of life in extreme poverty first-hand.
In 2004 he had a job in a factory earning $1 for ten hours of work. He saved 20 cents to buy a soccer ball and start Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), a grassroots slum transformation movement that puts local communities at the head and centre of programmes delivering healthcare, girls’ education, and clean water.
Kennedy is a senior fellow with Humanity in Action, an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, a Young Global Leader (YGL) at the World Economic Forum and an Obama Foundation Africa Leader. He is the New York Times bestselling co-author of the book Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in African Slum, which he wrote with his wife and business partner, Jessica.
Martina Puigvert | Circular chef
Head Chef of Les Cols
“We should ask where our ingredients come from and support processes that don’t involve species exploitation, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. Respect nature. Respect life.”
Martina Puigvert may have travelled far to study at Basque Culinary Center and Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns, but her plan was always to come back to her roots. Now head chef of her family business, Michelin-starred restaurant Les Cols, Martina launched the first R&D Department committed to achieving circular gastronomy to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis and minimise waste. From scratch to scrap, Martina’s kitchen philosophy is all about the restaurant’s garden and the deep emotional connection between food, land, and nature.
John Elkington | Godfather of modern sustainability
Author, founder and Chief Pollinator of Volans
Ever seen a green swan?
“If we are to make sense of this new century of ours, we must buckle up and break through – evolving new technologies, new business models and, most fundamentally of all, new mindsets.”
Serial writer and entrepreneur, John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He co-founded Volans in 2008 to bridge the gap between companies and exponential thinkers and innovators, convinced that it’s possible to achieve breakthrough change to create a sustainable future for all. His latest book Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism explores real solutions that might just save the world.
Samata Pattinson | Ethical clothing on the red carpet
Author, presenter, producer and CEO of Red Carpet Green Dress
“More people are becoming aware that your location has an impact on how you view sustainability. It’s time to recognise the contributions that different cultures around the globe have made to pioneering sustainability and sustainable innovation.”
Samata Pattinson is a British born Ghanaian writer, broadcaster, entrepreneur, and award-winning designer. As the CEO of Red Carpet Green Dress, a women-led global change-making organisation that brings sustainability to the forefront of the fashion and apparel industry, she’s fighting to fix the waste and inequality behind our clothes.
Sir Tim Smit KBE | Rock ‘n’ roll regenerator
Co-founder & Executive Vice Chairman of the Eden Project
Meet a regeneration hitmaker
“Sustainability is not about sandals and nut cutlets, it’s about good business practice and the citizenship values of the future”
Can the future be sustainable and also fun? Gold and platinum disc-awarded music producer Tim Smit applied his talent for entertainment to science when he co-founded the Eden Project in Cornwall. Once a sterile clay pit, Eden is now a cradle of life containing world-class horticulture and startling architecture that uses art, drama, and storytelling to engage people in local regeneration. Tim is working towards having an Eden Project on every inhabited continent by 2025.
Orsola de Castro | Fair fashion revolutionary
Co-founder and global creative director of Fashion Revolution
Pulling at the thread of unfair fashion practices
“We can engage you with your wardrobes, with your principles, with your gut feelings and show you something you can do.”
Designer, lecturer, and co-founder and Global Creative Director of Fashion Revolution, Orsola de Castro is one of the world’s top opinion leaders in sustainable fashion. Her global campaign sees participants from over 100 countries ask the hard questions to fix a broken industry, end environmental exploitation, and promote human rights.
Bella Lack | Titanic teen conservationist
Conservationist, writer, board director of Reserva: the Youth Land Trust and youth ambassador
It’s a kid’s world
“Yet another reason to protect the natural world is because there exists so much that we haven’t even discovered, and just imagine how many incredible species there are out there living on this planet right now that we have no clue about.”
18-year-old conservationist, campaigner, writer and film-maker, Bella Lack is board Director of Reserva: the Youth Land Trust, the world’s first youth-funded nature reserve, and youth ambassador for the Born Free Foundation, Save The Asian Elephants and the Jane Goodall Institute. She has worked on a feature-length documentary starring Jane Goodall, and her book, Children of the Anthropocene, is out in 2022.
Dan Barber | Changemaker chef
Executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, author of The Third Plate
The recipe for a sustainable food system
“I feel so fortunate to be a chef – I get to be the merchant of happiness.”
Kitchen philosopher Dan Barber is the chef and co-owner of farm-to-table Blue Hill and Green Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, and the author of The Third Plate. He also co-founded Row 7 Seed Company, which brings together chefs and plant breeders to develop new varieties of vegetables and grains and strike at the root of our broken food system.
Immandeep Kaur | Public square pioneer
Co-founder & Director of Civic Square
Power to the neighbours
“It’s possible to come together and re-create a world that we’re really proud of, but it’s going to take all of us.”
Community-building visionary Immandeep Kaur believes that the future isn’t made of single heroes. She co-founded Civic Square, a Birmingham, UK-based public square, neighbourhood lab, and creative + participatory platform focused on regenerative civic and social infrastructure within neighbourhoods. Immy is an Ashoka Fellow, a member of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab advisory team and a NESTA New Radical.
Yayo Herrero | Ecofeminist thinker & doer
Ecofeminist, activist, anthropologist, professor and engineer
“The ecofeminist perspective allows us to recognise the opposition and conflict between life and capital and can help reshape our political and economic logic.”
Yayo Herrero is one of Europe’s most influential voices in ecofeminism and political ecology. Author of over 30 books, she teaches at several Spanish universities and contributes to a variety of media outlets.
From lecture halls and street marches to directive boards (she led the ecosocial education foundation FUHEM and the Complutense University of Madrid Foundation’s Centre of Environmental Studies and Information), Yayo spent decades radically rethinking our political, economic, and social discourses to put life at the centre of our future. She’s now part of grassroots confederation Ecologistas en Acción and cooperative Garúa.
Lorena Ruiz-Huerta | Taking Spain to court over climate
Lawyer, activist, ecofeminist and former Member of the Madrid Assembly.
Nature rules
“The science is clear: we’re in an emergency that needs to be addressed urgently. If governments won’t react, justice will make them.”
Razor-sharp debater and lawyer for Greenpeace Spain, Lorena Ruiz-Huerta is an activist, professor in criminal law, and former Member of Parliament in the Madrid Assembly. She’s now spearheading the climate lawsuit against the Spanish government.
Bee Wilson | Bestselling supertaster & food educator
Author of six bestselling food books, chair of TastEd food education charity
Tastes and smells that make your heart beet
“We have no hope of changing children’s eating habits for the better unless we can help them learn new tastes.”
Bestselling author of The Way We Eat Now, broadcaster, and regular writer for The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, Bee Wilson is the chair of TastEd, which offers sensory food education to UK schools to help children build wider tastes – especially for vegetables.
Carlota Pi | Fair energy executive
Co-founder & Executive President, Holaluz
Renewables dynamo and crowd energiser
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you…then they try to acquire you!”
Named by Forbes as one of the world’s top 100 most creative people, the highly awarded, Google-accelerated co-founder and President of Spain’s first independent energy company, Holaluz, is proving that businesses too can be the change we want to see in the world. Her 100% renewable energy company ‘connects people to green power’ and recently launched The Rooftop Revolution, an initiative that turns untapped rooftop real estate potential into green energy.
Joe Murphy & Joe Robertson | Playwrights of hope
Playwrights and co-founding Artistic Directors of Good Chance Theatre
Will creativity save us?
“People carry with them and are their story, and there’s such a need to just talk. We all need to talk.”
‘The Joes’ know that when art and people come together, the most wondrous stories can interweave in the most desperate places. In 2015 they founded the Good Chance theatre company and built its first temporary space in the Calais Jungle. The theatre starred actors from all corners of the world living in the refugee camp, as well as the likes of Jude Law, Toby Jones, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
The award-winning hope amplifiers went on to open their show The Jungle in London and sell out in New York and San Francisco, and are now harnessing the healing power of theatre around the world. Their most ambitious project to date, The Walk, is an 8,000 km moving festival of welcome from the Turkey/Syria border to the UK. At its heart is Little Amal, a giant puppet representing the hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children who have been forced to flee their homes.
Ed Gillespie | Future-fixing Futurenaut
Broadcaster, author, serial green entrepreneur and Greenpeace UK board Director
Futurenaut and future positive
“You can either be bad and deny reality, be blind and delay action, or you can be bright and think with pragmatic optimism.”
After circumnavigating the world without taking off once and co-founding award-winning international change agency Futerra, Futurenaut and green energy guru Ed Gillespie uses wit, straight talking and a pinch of comedy in his systems-shifting speaking, writing, consultancy and facilitation work. He co-hosts The Great Humbling and Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts podcasts, is a serial investor in ethical buisnesses and a member of the Greenpeace board of Directors in the UK.
Watch Ed tell it like it is and inspire us to get involved ?
Laia Dotras | Passionate primatologist
Co-director of Jane Goodall Institute Spain
Change is apesolutely necessary
“There’s still hope for change, and change is within each and every one of us.”
Unstoppable Primatologist Laia Dotras has endured days without water nor electricity to rock conservation fieldwork. Her soul-stirring passion earned her a new Krio name as she went door to door in the schools of Sierra Leone to raise climate and deforestation awareness. She’s now the Co-director of the Jane Goodall Institute in Spain and keeps inspiring students at the University of Girona.
Alina Bassi | Engineer of change
Chemical engineer turned entrepreneur, founder of Kleiderly
Circular economy at its finest
“It did not make sense to me that we use so many natural resources and energy to produce [clothes] and ship them halfway around the world to then send them to landfill or incineration two years later. I thought there must be something else we can do about this.”
Chemical engineer and Forbes 30 under 30 shortlister Alina Bassi was shocked in realising how large our problem with textile waste is. She decided to fuel change herself and founded Kleiderly, an award-winning venture that transforms textile waste into a brand new plastic alternative. Alina is an advocate for women in STEM and a founding member of Founderland, an initiative supporting women of colour founders to raise investment.
Dr Montserrat Vilà | Top ecology researcher
Ecologist and research professor at Doñana Biology Station
Ask Montse about the alien (species) in your backyard
“While moving goods and people around the globe we are mixing the biota of the planet and this can have negative impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being.”
Dr Montserrat Vilà is a world authority in ecology. With more than 200 scientific publications, she is among the top 1% most cited researchers in her field. She’s a research professor at Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC), where she investigates the causes and consequences of global change.
Aldo Sollazzo | Knight in CO2-absorbing armour
Founder and Director of Noumena and Director of Reshape
Can your clothes breathe?
“Technology can be a torch to light up darker spots. It’s up to us to shine it where it’s most valuable.”
A versatile technologist, Aldo Sollazzo boasts expertise in robotics, image analytics, computation, architecture, and more. As Director of Noumena, he leads a multidisciplinary team towards the definition of new design strategies informed by tech-driven applications. He’s also the Director of Reshape, a platform where designers, manufacturers and innovators come together to explore implications and applications of technology in society.
Aldo leads the Master in Robotics and Advanced Construction and the Global Summer School at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), is a former mentor of the Fab Academy programme and makes clothes that capture CO2. In 2019, the President of the Italian Republic awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy for the promotion of national prestige abroad.
Catalina Balseiro | Innovation wavemaker
Chief Innovation & Knowledge Officer of Aigües de Barcelona
“At the end of the day, we use technology to overcome challenges and we must be very careful with the type of questions we ask ourselves.”
Chemical & environmental engineer Catalina Balseiro thinks that open innovation is key to building a more sustainable relationship between cities and the environment. Catalina’s work is all about the blue in our planet — she’s the Chief Innovation & Knowledge Officer of Aigües de Barcelona, which provides water to over 3 million people, and previously worked as Head of Innovation with water and waste management company SUEZ Spain.
Catalina also participates in education programmes with Esade, Change2Growth, la Escuela del Agua y EUNCET, and is a member of the IND+I Club and the Innovation Committee of 22@ Network BCN.
Ariane Conrad | The Book Doula
Bestselling editorial consultant and collaborating author of world-changing books
Helping luminous books see the light of day
“I’m struck by how seldom people who are working towards change will sit down and actually articulate: what does the world look like when we win? After our long love affair with critique and deconstruction, we desperately need to be visualizing and constructing positive alternatives.“
After spending a decade directing communications and fundraising for NGOs, since 2007 Ariane has been supporting diverse leaders and visionaries in creating compelling and accessible nonfiction books. She’s birthed a great number of pages filled with creative world-changing ideas, and 4 New York Times bestsellers including Find Me Unafraid by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner (2015) and The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones (2008.) She also runs an annual retreat for the development of nonfiction books and memoirs called the Storia Summit. Her latest feat The Deeper the Roots by Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs is out in November 2021.
Find Ariane’s How-To-Get-Unstuck/Unf*cked Reading List for Fixing the Future on the Atlas.
Deli Saavedra | Europe’s wildest scientist
Biologist and Rewilding Europe’s Head of Landscapes, President of Sol Solari Foundation
Europe’s wildest scientist
“Rewilding is one of the most powerful nature-based solutions and one of the most effective tools to fight the double emergency of our times: biodiversity loss and the climate crisis.”
Deli Saavedra dedicated his career to give land and power back to nature. He’s the wild mastermind behind the reintroduction of the Eurasian otter and the black vulture in Catalonia and has been working with Rewilding Europe since 2012. He spends his free time developing environmental cooperation projects in West Africa at the head of Sol Solari Foundation.
Jon Alexander | Citizens champion
Author, communications strategist and director of New Citizenship Project
Arrive a consumer, leave a citizen
“What would it look like to put the same creativity that goes into selling stuff, into involving people instead?”
To answer this question, advertisement disruptor and communication wizard Jon Alexander co-founded New Citizenship Project, a strategy and innovation consultancy on a mission to shift the dominant story of the individual in society from consumer to citizen. Jon is a Fellow of both the Young Foundation and the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of the OECD’s Future of Democracy Network.
Mymuna Soleman | Conversation curator
Founder of The Privilege Cafe
Roasting privilege
“I was frustrated of being invited into ‘white Zooms’, where I felt that the room was filled with power and privilege and no space for myself as a woman of colour to express herself openly and freely.”
A Somali-Welsh Muslim born, raised, and educated in Cardiff, Mymuna Soleman had enough of the lack of diversity and opportunities to express herself as a woman of colour in spaces filled with privilege. She decided to build a more inclusive society starting from The Privilege Cafe, a virtual informal and relaxed space where the hard questions are always on the menu. Her action-based approach working to highlight privilege and using it for good earned the Cafe the Welsh Government’s Community Grant to Consult on The Race Equality Action Plan.
Dr Mathilda Tham | Fashion maverick and metadesigner
Professor, designer, and author. Board member of Mistra.
Sustainability trendsetter
“I will never have the full picture or come up with the full solution on my own. But together, if we are brave, and rely on other people and come up with ideas with others, then perhaps we have a chance.”
Radical academic Dr Mathilda Tham is a design professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden, concerned with the question: “How do we want to live our lives?” in design and futures studies. She is also a board member of Mistra, the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, and her book Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion, co-edited with Kate Fletcher, is now out.
Soledad Gallego | Nature’s legal eagle
Senior Lawyer, Wildlife and Habitats, Marine and Mediterranean Lead of ClientEarth
The planet lawyered up
“Protecting and restoring our planet’s biodiversity is essential for humans to regain balance in our relationship with the Earth.”
As a nature defender, biodiversity protection litigator and water policy expert, Soledad Gallego has over 20 years of experience under her belt. With ClientEarth she harnesses the healing power of the law and works on legal cases to avoid adverse human activity impacts and protect terrestrial, freshwater and marine wildlife and habitats in the EU Mediterranean countries.
She’s the founder of Justicia Ambiental (‘Environmental Justice’) law firm, active in Madrid between 2008-2019.
Angie Tangaere | Community-led transformation specialist
Social Intrapreneur, the Southern Initiative
Transform your community from the people up
“It’s not about the process creating a whole bunch of prototypes, it’s about the process actually being a vehicle to empower people.”
Born in Papakura and raised in South Auckland with whakapapa to Ngāti Porou on her father’s side and Pākeha from Taranaki on her mother’s side, Angie Tangaere is shifting the focus of social transformation from intervention to empowerment. With The Southern Initiative, she develops and co-designs whānau-led initiatives that align to the aspirations and outcomes sought by communities, disrupting ineffective ‘business as usual’ systems.
Angie will join us live as a remote guest and will interact with the festival audience.
Melissa Mean | Community builder
Director of We Can Make at Knowle West Media Center, co-convener of the Redcliff Forum
The ultimate hands-on approach to housing
“We can only build better if we build with communities.”
Empowering urbanist and public participation champion, Melissa Mean worked on a range of community-centred development projects, from creating the UK’s largest urban beach on a disused carpark in Bristol to setting up a pop-up furniture factory for community manufacturing.
She is Director of We Can Make, a citizen-led housing programme and part of Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol. We Can Make unlocks micro-sites for affordable homes, using digital fabrication tech to localise production and build community wealth. In her spare time, Melissa is co-convener of the Redcliffe Forum, a neighbourhood group working to reclaim a dual carriage-way for homes, nature and public space. She also sits on the No Place Left Behind Commission which is examining how policy and practice can enable regenerative development in communities.
María Salamero Sansalvadó | Sustainability helmswoman
Director of Institutional Relations, Social Action & Sustainability of Aigües de Barcelona
“Water to me is much more than a job, it’s an approach to life.”
Engineer Maria Salamero Sansalvadó spent over 20 years in the water sector with Agbar, working on anything from operations and technology to research and innovation. She founded the research centre Centro Tecnológico del Agua (CETaqua) and educational centre Escuela del Agua.
She’s a member of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the BIT Habitat Business Council, as well as vice-president of 22@Network’s Business & Environment Committee. Maria serves on the board of the Catalan Association of Industrial Engineering as a member of the Equity, Technology & the Future Committee and the Sustainable Development Goals Working Group.
Carolijn Terwindt | Nature’s creative defender
Lawyer, author, activist, artist
Can you hear the North Sea sing?
“Those affected have a right to be heard.”
Tireless lawyer and inspired poet and musician Carolijn Terwindt spent years defending the rights and amplifying the voices of those who often go unheard. She now works with the Embassy of the North Sea to create a European network of researchers, artists and dreamers who all seek to listen to the voice of nature’s creatures in the search for an appropriate form of representation of their interests.
Anna Badia | Sustainability dreamer
Chief Sustainability Officer of Veritas
Sustainable shopper
“I’m committed to bringing what I most enjoy to the table, which is finding sustainable alternatives for all areas of a company — and most importantly, to never stop dreaming.”
A realisation of the fashion industry’s environmental impact pushed Anna Badia to leave her field and steer both her personal and professional life towards sustainability.
She changed her 200m2 apartment for a 35m2 minimalist cabin and now, she’s Chief Sustainability Officer of Veritas, Spain’s first organic supermarket chain on a mission to “make the best organic, certified, sustainable, fair food available to all.” Anna’s dedication also made Veritas the first supermarket in the country to receive a B Corp Certification.
Bethany Koby | Technology disseminator
Social entrepreneur and tech, design, education evangelist and commentator. Co-founder of Tech Will Save Us
Laptop rescuer
“Never before has our mission to help kids to re-shape their world using 21st-century skills been more important.”
After finding a discarded working laptop in a skip, Bethany Koby and her husband decided to address society’s flawed relationship with technology and launched the STEAM experience business Tech Will Save Us. She’s now an award-winning social entrepreneur, educator, creative director, designer and mother on a mission to create new models and experiences that are good for people and the planet.
Bethany is on the board of trustees at the Institute of Imagination (iOi), part of the advisory board for the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), a founding professor at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and the co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of family invention studio Fam.
Akil Scafe-Smith | Collective space reimaginator
Researcher and urban designer, co-founder of RESOLVE
Fixing our cities together.
“The best cities are the ones that inhabit you.”
As one-sixth of interdisciplinary design collective RESOLVE, Akil Scafe-Smith designs spatial solutions that turn just and equitable visions for our future into physical and systemic interventions. An integral part of this means reimagining our cities and designing with and for young people and under-represented groups in society.
Akil is also a researcher at the London School of Economics and a trustee at Participatory City and the Kiondo Charitable Trust.
Susan Nakyung Lee | Citizen voice booster
Student and member of the Global Assembly core delivery team
Democracy for all.
“More and more people my age around the world are growing disenchanted and cynical about the systems that allow people who look nothing like us to pull the strings for our futures. We’re not just frustrated about rising temperatures and declining ecosystems, we’re also frustrated about the constant recycling of outdated political solutions.”
Susan Nakyung Lee is a student and democracy practitioner from Seoul dedicated to shortening the distance between everyday people and global decision-making processes, with a focus on iterative pilot testing and youth activation. She co-founded the World Citizens’ Assembly initiative and is part of the core delivery team of Global Assembly, “the first global citizens’ assembly that anyone on earth can join.” She is currently finishing her studies in Political Science and Religion at Amherst College.
Susan will join us live as a remote guest and will interact with the festival audience
Lucy Houliston | Young conservationist & muddy walks enthusiast
National Geographic Young Explorer, conservationist and digital content producer
“Weird, wonderful, and rare creatures.”
Lucy Houliston, a weird wildlife aficionado and National Geographic Young Explorer, is a board member of Reserva: The Youth Land Trust, which puts young people at the heart of ecosystem conservation by creating entirely youth-funded nature reserves. Lucy also serves as a board member of the London Wildlife Trust’s Young People’s Forum, and is Digital Content Producer at the Sloth Appreciation Society.
Dennis van Berkel | Climate litigation tide riser
Legal counsel to the Urgenda Foundation and Director of the Climate Litigation Network
“If countries are not going to go through with increasing climate mitigation ambitions and taking action, it’s just inevitable that people will go to court and demand that their rights are respected.”
In 2015, the Urgenda Foundation won the world’s first legal case in which citizens established that their government has a legal duty to prevent dangerous climate change. Thanks to trailblazing litigators like Dennis Van Berkel, plaintiffs across the planet are now opening faster tracks to a sustainable future by taking governments to court over climate change mitigation efforts.
These days, Dennis is turning the tide into a movement through the Climate Litigation Network, which builds litigation bridges worldwide to support those seeking to increase national climate mitigation ambitions.
Vicente Guallart | Future city prototyper
Architect, author and urban planner
“We cannot continue designing cities and buildings as if nothing had happened.”
Author and former Chief Architect of Barcelona City Council, Vicente Guallart uses the principles of global connectivity and local self-sufficiency to invent the city of the future – and build it in the present. Director of Guallart Architects, he co-founded and directed the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and recently won the Xiong’an Architecture Design Contest by planning China’s first post-pandemic ‘Self-Sufficient City.’
Ismaël Essome Ebone | Cameroon’s recycling revolutionary
Founder and CEO of Madiba & Nature
“Plastic has become an invasive species and is the scourge of the 21st century.”
Winner of the UN Clean Marine Award, Ismaël Essome Ebone is the young entrepreneur behind Cameroonian nonprofit Madiba & Nature, which uses plastic waste to build ecological canoes that support fishing communities. Find out why fishermen laughed when Ismaël first ventured out in his ‘ecoboat’ made of recycled plastic bottles – and how he shut them up. This is the circular economy in action.
Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo | Ghana’s ‘Plastic Man’
Co-founder and President of Plastic Punch
“Cleaning up the oceans is fundamental, but it cannot be the main strategy to deal with the problem of rubbish ending up in our seas. The problem needs to be tackled at its source, on land and at home.”
After seeing the deadly effects of plastic pollution on Ghana’s turtle population, Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo decided to clean up local beaches and turn dumping grounds into safe havens. The ‘Plastic Man’ started Plastic Punch, an NGO that strikes at our plastic pollution problem with citizen science and grassroots initiatives, and inspires behaviour change and sustainable waste management practices.
Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo is a trained Merchant Navy Officer with a B. Sc. in Nautical Science from the Regional Maritime University, Accra.
Richmond Kennedy Quarcoo will join us live as a remote guest and will interact with the festival audience.
Sandra Sotelo Reyes | Dancing at the intersection between climate & gender justice
Gender Justice in Resilience & Climate change Advisor of Oxfam Intermón
“Only feminist climate policies are climate-resilient policies.”
Sandra highlights how women and men are exposed to different risks – and differently to risks – even in the same household. With a background in gender-based violence (GBV), she’s currently part of the Oxfam Climate initiative and the Peace, Climate and Resilience team. Sandra worked in several conflict-affected contexts, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Chechnya.
Sandra is a dance maker and art project developer. Like Donella Meadows, she believes that “Resilience is like dancing with the system.”
Hassun El-Zafar | Staging truth to power
Science communicator, creative director and producer
“What audiences choose to do with the seed our art may sow in them may be beyond our control, but the stories we choose to tell, that can be in our control.”
Hassun El-Zafar is an award-winning science communicator, creative director and producer with a passion for bringing to life boundary-pushing stories like There is no planet B and My name is Rachel Corrie. He specialises in community engagement, science-art fusion & decolonial narratives.
Hassun serves on the advisory board of Union of Justice, a POC-led organisation set to “reverse the climate crisis and help build a Europe and world that is equitable, just and sustainable.”
Kate Fletcher | Fashion and sustainability pioneer
Professor, designer, and author, co-founder of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion
“Clothes are an incredible way into understanding a new relationship with nature.”
Kate Fletcher is a fashion and sustainability pioneer, design activist and nature enthusiast. Kate is a Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. She is the most cited scholar in fashion and sustainability, and her work defines and challenges the field. She has written and/or edited eight books translated into seven languages. Kate is also co-author of Earth Logicwith Mathilda Tham. Her latest work is about design, nature and clothing and the joys of running in the hills in a skirt.
Steven Wise | Going wild in the courtroom
Lawyer, professor, author, and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project
“I became a lawyer because I wanted to speak for the voiceless and defend the defenceless. And I never realised how voiceless and defenseless the trillions of nonhuman animals are.”
After two decades spent as an animal protection attorney and repeatedly asking himself “Why do humans have rights?”, Steven Wise founded the Nonhuman Rights Project in 1996. With chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins and whales as clients, the groundbreaking project works on litigation, legislation, and education for the same rights to be recognised to all autonomous animals, human or otherwise.
Professor Wise has worked in institutions across the US and around the world, and taught the first class in “Animal Rights Law” at Harvard Law School. He is the author of four books.
Steven will join us live as a remote guest and will interact with the festival audience.
Carol Blázquez | Wearing waste with flair
Head of Innovation & Sustainability, Ecoalf
“We want everyone to know that it’s possible to produce and buy high-quality recycled clothes.”
Decades in the industry led Carol Blázquez to put sustainability at the heart of her fashion career. The designer joined Ecoalf and is now the brand’s Head of Innovation and Sustainability. From raw materials to the final product, Carol is the green creative making Ecoalf’s garments good for people and the planet. She’s also led the company’s large-scale commitments, like the 2018 B Corp certification (first in Spain to be given to a fashion brand) and Ecoalf’s NET ZERO 2030 commitment.
As part of the Ecoalf Foundation, she’s on a mission to clean our oceans and convert PET waste into top-quality yarn and fabric to use in the Ecoalf collections.
Carolina Álvarez-Ossorio | Marketing with purpose
Head of Marketing & Communications, Ecoalf
“A fantastic product needs to have a story, but above all needs to have a positive impact.”
Over 12 years of marketing experience in global luxury beauty and lifestyle brands made Carolina realise what truly matters: “how you do things and people.” She started her career in Estée Lauder Companies and after developing products and international campaigns designed on individual needs, today she says that her focus shifted towards “putting our feet down and understanding what’s happening in the world.” Now at the head of the Marketing and Communications team at Ecoalf, Carolina works to stop the fashion industry’s careless exploitation of our natural resources and provide knowledge and inspiration for everyday people to “do things in a different way, in a better way.”
Carolina will join us live as a remote guest and will interact with the festival audience.
Dörte de Jesus | Telling a more joyful fashion story
Founder and Editorial Director of The Lissome Magazine
“What you find in traditional fashion media didn’t seem relevant to me anymore because we no longer have time for superficial things. We’re living in essential times, in times of massive change – times when we have to ask ourselves ‘what kind of world do we want to create?”
Dörte de Jesus left the glossy world of traditional fashion media at ELLE magazine in 2015, and set out to create a platform with a holistic outlook on sustainability in the fashion industry that places human and planetary well-being first. Whilst typical fashion magazines act as a catalyst for driving more materialistic desires, The Lissome aims to create a bond between people, craftsmanship and the gifts of nature, and uses fashion as a means for telling progressive and thought-provoking stories in a gentle, joyful and inclusive way.
The Lissome was nominated for the German Federal Ecodesign Award in 2020.
Top manta | “Legal clothing made by illegal people”
Barcelona’s Popular Union of Street Vendors
“It’s not about just doing it, it’s about doing it right.”
Barcelona’s street sellers wove together the city’s first union of its kind, the Popular Union of Street Vendors (Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes in Spanish) and launched their own fashion brand, Top Manta. The label clearly stands against big brand culture by “benefiting hundreds of people, not just one” and denounces the “racism, persecution, and punishment” that vendors suffer every day.
The cooperative’s name rebrands the large blankets (manta in Spanish) street sellers use to carry and showcase their products. Their logo resembles both the manta and the boats that many board to cross the Mediterranean. Top Manta helped 120 vendors leave the street and created 25+ jobs. Their new line of trainers is out now.
Cassie Robinson | Social pioneer
Funding strategy, emerging futures and collective imagination
“We need discovery and experimentation in order to enable a different post-pandemic future to emerge —to invest in work that counterbalances the gravitational pull of the present, and that contains the seeds of the future we want to see.”
Cassie Robinson is an advocate and influencer for social innovation, operating inside and outside of government and with many pioneering initiatives and agencies. She’s currently working on the Emerging Futures programme with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and leading Our Collective Imaginations. Alongside this Cassie is an Associate Fellow at Leverhulme Centre for Future of Intelligence, Co-founder of the Point People and founder of Stewarding Loss.
An experienced strategic designer, Cassie is a Nesta Creative Pioneer, sits on the Board of Organise HQ and Atlas of the Future, teaches at various institutions, and is one of the International Futures Forum Clan.
Shakila Islam | Amplifying youth voices for climate justice in Bangladesh
Activist and Chief Coordinator of YouthNet For Climate Justice
“We are unheard, not voiceless.”
Shakila Islam is a youth leader and activist from Bangladesh who’s amplifying the voices of the young people and communities most affected by our crises: from the climate emergency to COVID-19 and the Rohingya refugee humanitarian crisis.
She is Vice-Chair of the Protiki Jubo Sangshad (Bangladesh Model Youth Parliament), chief coordinator of YouthNet for Climate Justice, and a founding member of Fridays for Future Bangladesh. Shakila advocates for the most affected communities and people, especially women and girls, and has represented Bangladeshi young people at the ICPD25 Nairobi summit’s SRHR & climate session.
Judith Càlix | Tasty tales
Director of CUINA Magazine
“I noticed an interest in a simpler, more authentic cuisine. Instead of looking for frills, we’re returning to nature.”
Judith Càlix leads CUINA, the go-to publication for foodies in Catalonia. After studying Journalism and Social Media at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, she spent over 10 years publishing stories that you can taste and smell. She’s the author of a variety of mouthwatering books.
Judith Carrera | Shaping the future of culture
General Director of CCCB
“Culture is an essential good.”
Judit Carrera boasts over 20 years of experience at the beating heart of culture. She’s spearheaded a variety of national and European projects and worked with the likes of the Open Society Foundation, the British Academy, the European Time to Talk network, the Collège d’Études Mondiales in Paris, the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Circle) in Madrid, ICREA (Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies) and PEN International Catalan Centre, among many others.
After leading the Debate and Education team at CCCB, she’s now the multidisciplinary and certified sustainable cultural centre’s General Director.
Dr Joaquim Garrabou | Sea watcherure
Marine conservation ecologist and scientific coordinator of Sea Watchers
“Nature will go on with or without us but if we want to continue living on this planet, we must work with it and not against it.”
Joaquim Garrabou looks under the sea to find nature-based solutions to climate change. The marine conservation ecologist’s work focuses on adaptation plans for coastal areas as well as sustainable uses of marine resources, giving a voice to the ‘silent world’ that’s fighting to survive below the surface. With Observadores del Mar (‘Sea Watchers’) he unleashes the power of citizen science for marine conservation.
Joaquim is a senior researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences-CSIC in Barcelona and the coordinator of T-MEDNet network and the Marine Biodiversity Conservation Group MedRecover.