Realisation 2022

Oliver Burkeman is the author of the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, about embracing limitation and finally getting round to what counts, along with The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done. For many years he wrote a popular column for the Guardian, ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’. In his email newsletter The Imperfectionist, he writes about productivity, mortality, the power of limits and building a meaningful life in an age of distraction. He lives in the North York Moors.

Alastair McIntosh has been described by BBC TV as “one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners.” A pioneer of modern land reform in Scotland, he helped bring the Isle of Eigg into community ownership. On the Isle of Harris he negotiated withdrawal of the world’s biggest cement company (Lafarge) from a devastating “superquarry” plan. He then served, unpaid to avoid conflicts of interest, on the company’s Sustainability Stakeholders Panel for 10 years to help further corporate social and environmental responsibility.

Alastair guest lectures on nonviolence at military staff colleges including,for over two decades, on some of the UK Defence Academy’s most senior courses. His books include Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power (Aurum), Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service (Green Books), Poacher’s Pilgrimage: an Island Journey (Birlinn 2016, Cascade USA 2018) and Riders on the Storm (Birlinn 2020) which was long-listed for the Wainwright Prize in Global Conservation 2021. A Quaker with an interfaith outlook, focusing much of his work around spirituality, he lives in Glasgow with his wife, Véréne Nicolas. There he is a founding trustee of the GalGael Trust which works with with poverty, community and human potential, and an honorary professor in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His website is www.AlastairMcIntosh.com and Twitter @alastairmci.

Minna Salami is a Nigerian-Finnish and Swedish author and social critic who grew up in Lagos and has lived in Sweden, New York and London. She studied Political Science at the University of Lund in Sweden, and then Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London where she was awarded a distinction for her specialisation in African feminist theory. In 2010 she launched her multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan which has drawn over a million readers. Her debut book SENSUOUS KNOWLEDGE (Bloomsbury/Zed, UK) and (Harper Collins/Amistad, US) has been translated into multiple languages.

She is a frequently sought essayist and her bylines include the Guardian, CNN, Independent, Al Jazeera, World Literature Now and the Royal Society of the Arts. As a keynote speaker and lecturer, Minna has spoken at over 300 universities, cultural events, and conferences, on five continents including at some of the world’s most prominent institutions such as the Oxford Union, Yale University, and the Singularity University at NASA.

Minna has consulted governments on feminism and gender equality, and she sits on the boards of The African Feminist Initiative at Pennsylvania State University, The Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Sahel, and the Emerge network. She has served as a judge for the One World Media awards, a nominator for the Prince Claus Foundation and the Princess of Asturias Foundation. She holds an Honorary Fellowship in Writing from The Hong Kong Baptist University.

Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese British novelist, essayist and filmmaker. Her novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017 and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and Costa Award. Her most recent novel is A Lover’s Discourse, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020 and longlisted for Orwell Prize. Named as a Granta’s Best of Young British Novelist in 2013, she also directed a dozen films, including How Is Your Fish Today (Sundance) and UFO In Her Eyes (TIFF). Her feature She, A Chinese received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Festival 2009. She had her film retrospectives at London’s Whitechapel Gallery 2019 and Cinematheque Switzerland 2011. She was a visiting professor at Columbia University and Baruch College in New York. She divides her time between London and Berlin.

Jonathan Rowson is a writer, philosopher and chess Grandmaster who was British Chess Champion from 2004-2006. HE holds degrees from Oxford, Bristol, and Harvard universities, was former director of the Social Brain Center at the RSA and an Open Society Fellow. He is co-founder and director of Perspectiva, a research institute that examines the relationship between complex global challenges between complex global challenges and the inner lives of human beings. His latest book is The Moves that Matter – A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life.

Nick Shaftesbury graduated from the London Business School with a Masters in Business Administration in 2008. After an early career as a DJ and music promoter in New York City, he returned to the UK in 2005 and has since overseen the restoration of his family home, St Giles House. The project has won several national awards, including the 2015 Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Award for Building Conservation and the Historic England Angel Award, Best Rescue of a Historic Building or Site. The work has been documented in a book entitled, ‘The Rebirth of an English Country House’, which he co-wrote with Tim Knox, the current Director of the Royal Collection. He is the first Shaftesbury for 50 years to live in St Giles House, alongside his wife Dinah and their three children.

Elizabeth Oldfield is an experienced leader, speaker, writer and podcast host with a passion for intelligent public engagement on issues of faith, identity, and healing our common life. She appears regularly in the media, including BBC One, Sky News, the World Service, and writing in Prospect Magazine, UnHerd and The Financial Times.

She also hosts The Sacred, a podcast, events and visual content brand which creates space for a wide range of guests to reflect on their deepest values. For ten years she was Director of Theos, the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. She spent the first part of her career working at the BBC in television and radio, contributing to programmes including Beyond Belief and the Moral Maze, as well as Radio 3 and 4 documentaries. She is motivated by the dearth of real wisdom in public life, by a desire to increase empathy across our deep differences and the way spirituality can help individuals and societies flourish. She has a masters in Theology and the Arts and lives in an intentional community in south london.

Indra Adnan is Founder and Co-initator of The Alternative UK, a socio-political platform serving systemic transformation. AUK publishes a Daily Alternative news blog, develops cosmolocal agency networks (CANs) and connects planetary regeneration projects. Indra is concurrently a socio-psychotherapist, writer and consultant on soft power. Clients have included the Danish and Brazilian governments, World Economic Forum and NATO. Her book The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Age was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2021.

Amisha Ghadiali is a facilitator and host of the globally acclaimed podcast All That We Are. She is interested in where our inner and outer worlds dance. The podcast weaves together Activism, Spirituality, Creativity and Regeneration – to inspire us each to rise up, move beyond silos and create the future that we wish for. The global platform offers a space to explore what it means to be human at this time, beautiful leadership and core skills that are not taught in our education and cultural systems. Amisha is the author of INTUITION and The Future Is Beautiful (The Future We Choose). Her background draws on deep spiritual studies and initiation as well as over 15 years of experience working in Politics, Design, Tech and Sustainable Fashion.

Damian Hallam works with horses and is one of the UK’s leading coaches of dressage.
As a rider he has won over 15 National titles, represented Great Britain on numerous occasions, and won a silver medal for Great Britain at the World Young Horse Championships.  He coaches riders from those simply wanting to improve their relationship with their horse, up to World and Olympic level.  A former journalist, he is regularly consulted by the equestrian press on his fresh and humane approach to training horses. He is acutely aware of the need to examine how we interact with animals.  In a sport and pastime which involves two species, he has a particular interest in the close relationship between human and horse, ethics and the responsibility of the human, and the lessons we can learn from having a horse as our dance partner.  Endlessly curious, he is an avid gardener, woodsman and conscious dancer. Damian was brought up on a farm in Yorkshire. Now he lives in nature, through the changing seasons, in a wood on the edge of the New Forest with his husband Douglas, amongst an extensive animal family.

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Ed is a coach who specialises in working with entrepreneurs and those looking for a more autonomous meaningful life. He works with purpose led leaders to develop their own models of success in business and life. He is particularly interested in redirecting focus from shareholders to a broader set of beneficiaries. He uses coaching to generate honest conversations and change, working at the intersection of psychology and business. He is the author of the upcoming book The Modern Maverick, which helps readers unlock their potential for the benefit of all those around them and society as a whole. He holds degrees in Psychology from Oxford University and in Business from Harvard University and a Diploma in Performance Coaching from The Coaching Academy.

A farmer’s granddaughter and daughter of a rural land agent, Sarah Langford had left the countryside behind to live in the city and work as a criminal and family barrister. On maternity leave she wrote the bestseller, In Your Defence: Stories of Life and Law, and found herself unexpectedly moving to Suffolk. When she and her husband took on the running of his family’s farm, Sarah joined a world which was both familiar and also changed from the one she remembered. Her new book – Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution – is a deeply personal account of this journey woven around the stories of farmers Sarah met who taught her not just about farming’s past and future but also about life and how to live it, and why farming is critical to all of us, even if we never step foot in a field.

Jonathan Ainscough is an actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, director, writer, musical director and arranger. Alongside his work as an improviser with Showstopper! and Austentatious, he has worked for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Leeds Playhouse, as well as the award-winning charity Streetwise Opera, leading music and drama workshops with people experiencing homelessness. Twitter: @JAinscough85.

Jonathan Ainscough, Susan Harrison and Chris Ash will be improvising a mini musical, exploring whichever themes rise to the surface during the festival. Using your suggestions they will conjure up a slice of spontaneous entertainment to delight and inspire. They will also be offering an improv workshop exploring the power of co creation and trusting your instincts, and a choral workshop where participants can learn to sing together in harmony.

Susan Harrison is a member of Showstopper! She has also improvised with Mischief Movie Night, Austentatious, and her own company These Folk. She teaches improvisation for Hoopla & The Bridge and is passionate about creating a playful and supportive environment. As an actress she’s worked with numerous companies including CBBC, the National Theatre and Radio 4. Website: susanharrisoncharacters.com

Jonathan Ainscough, Susan Harrison and Chris Ash will be improvising a mini musical, exploring whichever themes rise to the surface during the festival. Using your suggestions they will conjure up a slice of spontaneous entertainment to delight and inspire. They will also be offering an improv workshop exploring the power of co creation and trusting your instincts, and a choral workshop where participants can learn to sing together in harmony.

Chris is a composer, workshop leader, musical director, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist. A founding member of Showstopper! and An Improbable Musical, he is sometimes found teaching Musical Theatre Writing at Goldsmiths or Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, or coaching Musical Theatre Improvisation at the Royal Academy of Music. As a composer, Chris created “Wasted” with Carl Miller; a “Live Rockumentary” about the Brontë siblings. Collaborating with digital media company Megaverse, Chris has created music & sound for Virtual Reality, and smartphone gameplay.

Chris has led creative workshops for International School students around the world, including on the “Unseen Stories” of asylum-seekers in Hong Kong, and on “Bayanihan” in Manila (ISTA). He has been a guest musical director for many of the London 50-hour Improvathons, and at festivals in Oslo, Rome, Edmonton, Hamburg, Canmore, Copenhagen, Birmingham, and beyond.

Jonathan Ainscough, Susan Harrison and Chris Ash will be improvising a mini musical, exploring whichever themes rise to the surface during the festival. Using your suggestions they will conjure up a slice of spontaneous entertainment to delight and inspire. They will also be offering an improv workshop exploring the power of co creation and trusting your instincts, and a choral workshop where participants can learn to sing together in harmony.

Pippa Evans is an award winning improviser, musical performer and author of Improv Your Life: An Improviser’s Guide To Embracing Whatever Life Throws At You. In 2013 she and Sanderson Jones started Sunday Assembly, the church for people who don’t believe in God which became a global phenomenon. Though no longer involved in the Sunday Assembly project, Pippa finds herself drawn to the Venn Diagram of secular spirituality, improvisation and inner work. How can we be fully ourselves in relation to others? Can we do serious work without taking ourselves too seriously?

Pippa often collaborates with Perspectiva, finding ways for people to explore Souls, Systems and Society experientially, rather than through text and speech.
She lives in Edinburgh with her husband Calum and their cat, Lady Buttons. www.pippaevans.com

Dr Tom Chatfield (@TomChatfield) is a British author and tech philosopher. He’s interested in improving our experiences and understanding of technology. His most recent book is How to Think (SAGE Publishing, 2021). Tom’s non-fiction books exploring digital culture, including How To Thrive in the Digital Age (Pan Macmillan) and Live This Book! (Penguin), have appeared in over thirty languages. His bestselling critical thinking textbooks and online courses, developed in partnership with SAGE Publishing, are used in schools and universities across the world. Tom’s debut novel, This is Gomorrah (Hodder), was published in July 2019. Topics he’s written about recently include the ethics of AI, what it means to think well, technology in deep time and the philosophy of fake news.