Adah Parris is a Nowist, Artist and Activist. She is also Chair of Mental Health First Aid England (MHFA UK) and a Fellow of The Royal Society of the Arts.

An enthusiastic curator of people, patterns and stories, her work sits at the intersection of ecology, technology, innovation and art. Adah focuses on changing how we experience the world by asking, “What type of Ancestor do you want to be?”

In 2020, Adah was long-listed as one of the Most Influential Women in UK Technology. In 2019, she was recognised as one of TED Talks Global Emerging Innovators. In 2018, she was recognised as one of the UK’s Top 100 Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Leaders in Technology.

Rob is Head of Consulting for Included, an impact-led diversity and inclusion consultancy.

In this role, he leads a team of multi-disciplinary consultants on cultural transformation projects and works hand in hand as an advisor and colleague to senior leaders and frontline employees across multiple sectors in the UK and globally.

Prior to this, he was an in-house diversity and inclusion specialist at the Royal Academy of Engineering, where amongst other achievements, he led the design and launch of the inaugural £1M programme to fund innovative approaches to tackling the diversity crisis in UK higher education engineering institutions.

Rob’s first leadership role was as executive director of the award-winning music education charity Music Masters which tripled in size and established a national reputation under his seven-year tenure. He is an associate of the Royal Academy of Music and advises on several boards across education, social impact and culture.

Kate is a cultural relations specialist and cultural diplomat, with experience working internationally across all art forms, most recently leading the British Council’s worldwide arts programme as Global Director of Arts. She instigates exchange and creative dialogue to build trust between people and partners, with experience working across the UK and in Belgium, Spain, Mexico, Vietnam and South Sudan. She led the team that shaped and ran the UK government’s flagship £30m Cultural Protection Fund, protecting culture at risk internationally from conflict and climate change. Her previous roles have focused on arts evaluation and strategy. She is a 2021 John F Kennedy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Dr Peter Campbell is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Liverpool’s Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. His research considers social research methods and their application in the field of cultural policy, as covered in his 2019 monograph ‘Persistent Creativity: Making the case for art, culture and the creative industries’. His work in this field has considered the impacts of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Sistema England, and the European Capital of Culture programme. He is currently working on AHRC-funded research considering the role played by the arts in post-conflict societies.

Geoffrey Crossick was Director of the AHRC Cultural Value Project whose report, Understanding the value of arts and culture, was published in 2016. He is an urban social historian and Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. He was previously Vice-Chancellor of the University of London and Warden of Goldsmiths after being Chief Executive of the Arts & Humanities Research Board. He is currently Chair of the Crafts Council and a member of boards in the higher education and cultural sectors, including Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Horniman Museum and the National Film & Television School. He is a member of the DCMS Science Advisory Council. He speaks in the UK and internationally on higher education and research strategy, the arts and humanities, and the creative and cultural sectors.

Seetha is Chief Executive of ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for the UK’s screen industries, responsible for helping build an inclusive workforce and future-proofing the screen sector. She is also a member of the Creative Diversity Network board and the Royal Television Society Education Committee and was formerly VP of Pearson Qualifications International. She worked in television in senior roles including BBC Online controller and launching BBC HD and in a variety of production roles at the BBC and Channel 4. She began her career as the first woman reporter at the Financial Express in New Delhi, India.

Jo McLean has been a leader in the creative sector for over 10 years and brings a wealth of experience in organisational growth and sustainability. Jo has held positions as Executive Director of Clod Ensemble and Performing Medicine (London) and CEO of The Touring Network (Highlands and Islands), as well as being one of the UK representatives for the European arts network INSITU.

In 2019, she completed a Saltire Fellowship in the US and Scotland, where the focus was on entrepreneurship. Previously a professional orchestral musician, Jo has toured nationally and internationally with world-class orchestras. Jo values the importance of understanding and facilitating how people relate well to each other and recently became a registered 4 seasons practitioner. She is also currently Chair of CHARTs and a Director of Tourbook CIC.

Shreeya’s background is within Investment Banking currently working within Lloyds Banking Group. Before that, she worked in investment management within Aviva Investors. Her passion has always been been working to increase diversity and inclusion in the society that we live in which led to her co-founding Untold Ltd, a social enterprise platform that focuses on creating change from conversations by engaging in grassroots project. Partnerships include Reading University, the local council and other authorities.

Tajpal Rathore is an actor, writer, producer, presenter and dramaturg who previously worked in TV and film for ten years before moving into theatre in 2013, when he founded Tribe Arts, an award-winning, philosophically inspired, radical-political, actor-led theatre and media production company based in Leeds.

Pier Luigi is Professor of Cultural Economics, IULM University Milan; Co-Director of the Computational Human Behavior (CHuB) Lab of Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, and Senior Researcher, metaLAB (at) Harvard and Head of the Venice Office of the OECD. He has been the Special Adviser of the European Commissioner for Education and Culture, Tibor Navracsics. He is a member of the Europeana Research Advisory Board, of the Advisory Council for Research & Innovation of the Czech Republic, and of the Advisory Council of Creative Georgia. He works and consults internationally in the fields of culture-led local development, policy design and evaluation, and is often invited as keynote speaker in major cultural policy conferences worldwide.