Jo Leahy is a founder and lead strategic player in the development of SVA’s artistic and educational programme. SVA, founded in 1996, transformed empty spaces in a struggling market town into a thriving arts hub. Starting with no connections or funding, SVA built a network of artists who became community change-makers. Between 2004-2014, Jo led SVA’s £2.1 million capital project, creating permanent studios, gallery, bar, café and event spaces which now serves 300+ artists and 30,000 annual visitors. Despite post-pandemic challenges and the cost of living crisis, SVA remains committed to its core mission: empowering artists and harnessing imagination to create meaningful change.

Jo was a founder steering group member and mentor for ALIAS, Turning Point South West, Visual Arts South West and Create Gloucestershire (2000- 2016); a selected participant of Culture Reset (July 2020), Clore Leadership training (Oct 2018) and is a qualified Coach Coach and Mentor for artists, artists groups and organisations.

Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. Charles helps cities identify and make the most of their potential by triggering their inventiveness and thinking and by opening up new conversations about their future. His aim is to help cities become more resilient, self-sustaining and to punch above their weight.

https://charleslandry.com/

Alicia is the Chief Executive of Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking in Gloucestershire, UK.  She has led the transformational change of Hawkwood, creating a distinct and contemporary education and cultural programme which showcases leading speakers in the areas of future thinking, sustainability, systems change, ethical business, arts, and well- being. Her prior senior management roles with the Dartington Hall Trust in Devon and a successful career in the creative industries have given her a wealth of knowledge and adaptability. Alicia is a member of the Stroud District Council’s 2030 net zero community engagement board and was a former Director of Create Gloucestershire and a Trustee of Curriculum for Life.  She is a passionate, values led individual who cares deeply about enabling people to make a considered difference to society and protecting our planet for generations to come.

Helen Marriage has spent a lifetime in the arts. Previously the Director of the Salisbury Festival, she created the first Arts & Events programme for Olympia & York, the developers of Canary Wharf in London, and was an Associate Director of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). In 2006, she set up Artichoke with Nicky Webb to produce The Sultan’s Elephant, a spectacular largescale work by Royale de Luxe that drew an audience of over a million over four days in London that permanently re-shaped the world of outdoor arts in the UK. Since then, she has continued to drive through Artichoke’s mission to invade and transform the public realm with work that stays in the collective memory for ever.

https://www.artichoke.uk.com/team/

Rachel Gnagniko is a founder of Amiokaa Associates, an anti-oppression consultancy agency specialising in a range of services that champion shared well-being and social justice.

Rachel passionately champions collaboration, embracing the transformative potential of partnerships and idea exchange. Drawing from her unique perspective as a French-Togolese citizen, she enhances the experiences of minoritised groups in various sectors.

Adhering to her mantra, "Structure is Freedom," she leverages the strength of clear, meaningful processes to cultivate exceptional experiences within diverse and creative teams.

Her approach centres on analysing processes, planning and supporting their implementation, and devising strategies for continuous improvement. This comprehensive methodology ensures sustainable success and growth for organisations and their leaders.

She is an accomplished management consultant member of the Institute of Consulting, the Consultant for Good Network, and The Institute of Equality and Diversity Practitioners.

Culture Shock and Black Wisdom: What Grows After a Storm

Rachel Gnagniko will be in conversation with Derrick Mclean and Ronnie McGrath, Black Ark Media.

In this conversation, Rachel Gnagniko joins Ronnie McGrath and Derrick McClean to explore how culture shock – both personal and collective – can become a site of growth. Drawing on their lived experiences and deep community work, they reflect on the inherited wisdom, emotional resilience, and creative strategies held within Black communities. Together, they ask what it takes to sustain connection and belonging in times of disruption – and how community-led work can be supported to share that wisdom more widely.

https://www.consultantsforgood.org.uk/consultant/rachel-gnagniko/

Ben Walters (aka Dr Duckie) runs Badge Cafe, a project that helps people relax, create and connect by making badges out of old books and magazines. It’s inspired by his academic research on/with queer performance collective Duckie and their community-facing participatory creative projects - or “homemade mutant hope machines”, as Ben calls them. These “hope machines” support individuals and groups in imagining how better worlds might look, feel and work, and beginning to bring them into existence, one small step at a time.

The Posh Club is a glamorous performance and social club for older people held regularly in five locations across London and the South East. It is a glamorous weekly event held in the heart of the community in elegantly transformed church halls and other grass roots spaces and emphasises dressing up, regular access to live performance, social connectivity and intergenerational volunteering.

Find out more at duckie.co.uk/drduckie and badgecafe.com. 

H Plewis is the founder and artistic director of PC*DC (Posh Club Dance Club), the unruly older adult dance company based in Hackney, East London. PC*DC grew out of H’s tenure as the inaugural Landlady of The Posh Club, Hackney and her long association with the performance collective Duckie. For many years, as a solo practitioner working at the interstices of cabaret, live art and dance she explored extremes of contemporary British feminine identity, make up and emotion, using her own body as a battlefield of sexual and cultural politics. She now brings all that wild provocation to bear at PC*DC. Together with the company members she has forged a new path in the third age dance sector with a collective practice rooted in dance forms of the African Diaspora, contemporary improvisation and multilevel models of participation.

Posh Club Dance Club (P.C * D.C) is a participatory dance project based in Hackney for folks aged 60+

A notary since 2000, Andrea Bartoli is a consultant in strategic planning and management for public and private cultural organizations. In June 2010, with his life partner Florinda, he co-founded Farm Cultural Park, a cultural center that has won numerous awards, including the Curry Stone Design Prize. Farm has been featured in prestigious media such as The Guardian and Vogue and has participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale. He has been a guest of the US State Department, the European Commission, UNESCO, and the UN. He is also a promoter, curator, and speaker at major international cultural events.

Farm Cultural Park is one of the most influential independent cultural centers in the contemporary cultural scene and one of the most dynamic projects focused on the rethinking and revival of dying cities. It has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Curry Stone Design Prize from the American Foundation, recognizing it as one of the 100 international experiences that have had the greatest social impact in the world over the last ten years, and the Human Design City Award from the City of Seoul. It has been invited to the Venice Architecture Biennale and featured in major national and international media outlets such as The Guardian, Vogue, and Domus. Farm Cultural Park has been presented in Washington, Pittsburgh, and Detroit as a guest of the U.S. State Department, at the Dublin Global Platform as a guest of the European Union, in Meishan, China as a guest of UNESCO, and in Abu Dhabi during the World Urban Forum 10 as a guest of the United Nations.

https://www.farmculturalpark.com/who-we-are

Catherine has represented the Wotton-under-Edge Ward at Stroud District Council for the Green Party since May 2016, and was elected as Council Leader in July 2022. She studied at Sussex and Strasbourg and has worked in government relations, communications and emergency planning. Catherine’s lived in Gloucestershire for many years and loves the area for its great sense of community and vibrant voluntary sector. She supports local arts, community and environment groups, and enjoys live music events. She’s keen to see the Cultural Strategy address the needs of our communities and place and strengthen existing connections with valued arts organisations.

I started out my working life 50 years ago as a hospice nurse, then became a speech and language therapist, a researcher in cognitive neuropsychology, and then an academic, then co-founded a national charity developing peer-support networks for people with acquired communication disabilities.

For the last 16 years I have led Barnwood Trust, a 200-year-old place-based charitable foundation in Gloucestershire, acting as an agent of social change.  The Trust uses its resources to fund and influence change related to disability and mental health, based on listening and learning, trying and testing ideas for making change in collaboration with others.

After many years travelling the world, Derrick settled in Stroud and has been making things happen in the community for last 5 years with his Jamaican Inn food and sharing his love of Jazz on Deepbed Radio as the High Priest DJ.

Black Ark Media aims to shed critical light on what it means to be Black and British in a time of perpetual change. We create events that bring communities together to share socially conscious art, literature, and films that allow people to have meaningful conversations about race, culture, and identity. Among other things, we take our inspiration from the activism of musicians such as the great Sun Ra, Lee Scratch Perry, and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Further inspiration comes from writers such as James Baldwin, Cornel West, Bell Hooks, Claudia Jones, and Stuart Hall, to mention but a few.

https://blackarkmedia.org

I am an artist, writer and poet, whose interest lies in the surreal, avant-garde, and the absurd. I have taught writing in a variety of traditional and non-traditional spaces, with all ages, reacquainting both the seasoned and the unseasoned writer with the power of their imagination. Put simply, I educate the imagination through a play with words and thus free the mind from the tyranny of convention.

Among many other things, my creative practice is informed by an exploration of the changing nature of Blackness in our postmodern times. I am open to facilitating writing workshops, collaborations, exhibitions and commissions. I believe strongly in the power of the arts to unite diverse communities and forge healthy relationships.

Find some of my work on my YouTube channel.

Black Ark Media aims to shed critical light on what it means to be Black and British in a time of perpetual change. We create events that bring communities together to share socially conscious art, literature, and films that allow people to have meaningful conversations about race, culture, and identity. Among other things, we take our inspiration from the activism of musicians such as the great Sun Ra, Lee Scratch Perry, and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Further inspiration comes from writers such as James Baldwin, Cornel West, Bell Hooks, Claudia Jones, and Stuart Hall, to mention but a few.

https://blackarkmedia.org/

Fraser Dahdouh is a District Councillor focussing on the meeting points between cultural policy, planning and place-making. He runs Seasoning, a Stroud-based organisation that delivers mixed-media events centred on rave culture, with a focus on community building. 

His talk is titled ‘The Future in The Night’, focussing on the economic, spatial and artistic contribution night time economy makes to towns - and the importance of this ecosystem to local and national culture.
https://stroud.moderngov.co.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=2248
https://www.instagram.com/seas0ning_

Tom Berry
Sounds records owner, Chair of Stroud Chamber of Trade 

Tom Berry is the owner of Sound Records, an award-winning shop and record label based here in Stroud. He is a DJ for Noods Radio in Bristol and runs a successful club night called Loose Joints as well as being a music writer for Good On Paper. Tom has also recently become the Chair of the Stroud Chamber of Commerce and Trade who represent the business community here in the district. Prior to running Sound Records Tom ran a number of Strategic Communications teams in the public and voluntary sectors working for the Department for Work and Pensions, the Disability Rights Commission, the NSPCC and others. He has three children and a grandchild and is a keen runner.

Chris Uttley is the climate and sustainability manager at Stroud District Council. He has a background in nature, particularly freshwater and wetland, and specifically working with land owners and local communities on adaptation and flood risk. In a previous role he worked with local artist Joe Magee and Stroud poet, Adam Horovitz to tell the story of how nature can reduce flooding.

I have grown up on a small Stroud valley farm, with our farm management focusing on working with nature to creating species rich grasslands, woodlands and water bodies.   We have a small herd of rare breed cattle, producing high quality beef for local customers.  I have worked in Nature Conservation for over 30yrs, with the majority of this time with National Trust as a Farm and Wildlife Advisor.  Now working for SDC developing nature recovery projects across the district with schools, parish councils and other local groups, aiming to broaden the awareness and understanding of the need to have nature around us and to share the joy of nature.  

What would our communities be like if art and culture were centre stage?   This is the question we are on a mission to understand at Create Gloucestershire - having lived  in Gloucestershire for over 20 years this is as much personal as it is professional.  I run PIP Creatives, a consultancy which specialises in innovation and particularly the collaborative partnerships vital to sustain meaningful change.  This brings together skills and networks from a range of previous jobs in housing, regeneration and education.  My focus on the arts and culture emerged during my time as CEO of the Creative Youth Network in Bristol. I am on the Board of the Arts Council SW region which provides a useful overview of the sector and ongoing reminder of the daily challenges of making creative work - collaboration is the only way forward. 

https://www.creategloucestershire.co.uk/pippajones

“I fundamentally believe in the power of youth to transform the world. In the power we have to pull our communities into the future and right now we have a fucking challenge on our hands - and so the RYSE is needed because we have huge learning to do, together, in community, in resistance, for life. Education is about becoming and so lets have at it.”

A favourite quote? 

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it”

- Frantz Fanon  

https://www.theryse.org/about

https://www.instagram.com/mutiny_stroud/

At Creative Sustainability our mission is to create inclusive, resilient communities that can support mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing for everyone. We facilitate safe, supportive environments where people develop confidence and independence. Our programmes include: 3rd Space - a vibrant Youth Hub. Access Bike - a community bike workshop. Camps and Residentials. Gloucestershire Youth Climate Group. Community Networks. 10 John St - town centre shopfront & meeting space. Stroud Library of Things (SLOTH). Digital Inclusion - accessing technology through community. Helen manages the Digital Inclusion programme and volunteers as a co-ordinator at Stroud Imagines.

Future Ideas- Creative Sustainability CIC and Stand + Stare

Creative Sustainability CIC and the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol have been working together for several months with two communities in Stroud Town to consider their ideas and feelings about connection, technologies and preferable futures. This involves contemplating how technologies might impact on connection, social and digital lives.

Stand + Stare is an interactive design studio, based at SVA, Stroud. Led by brother and sister, Barney Heywood and Lucy Telling, they blend digital and physical experiences to tell stories that connect people.

Creative Sustainability CIC and the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol have been working together for several months with two communities in Stroud Town to consider their ideas and feelings about connection, technologies and preferable futures. This involves contemplating how technologies might impact on connection, social and digital lives.

Stand + Stare joined the Future Ideas project in January and have been working with the groups at Top of Town Community Hub and Uplands Independent Living to develop and visualise their ideas through hands-on crafting with recycled materials, AI image generation and Augmented Reality.

https://www.standandstare.com/

Stand + Stare is an interactive design studio, based at SVA, Stroud. Led by brother and sister, Barney Heywood and Lucy Telling, they blend digital and physical experiences to tell stories that connect people.

Creative Sustainability CIC and the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol have been working together for several months with two communities in Stroud Town to consider their ideas and feelings about connection, technologies and preferable futures. This involves contemplating how technologies might impact on connection, social and digital lives.

Stand + Stare joined the Future Ideas project in January and have been working with the groups at Top of Town Community Hub and Uplands Independent Living to develop and visualise their ideas through hands-on crafting with recycled materials, AI image generation and Augmented Reality.

https://www.standandstare.com/

I was a lawyer for 35 years , setting up the first cooperative women’s legal practice in Bristol and then working in Cardiff during a period of major regeneration. After retirement I refound some of my creativity and was accepted on the Fine Art degree course in Cheltenham and went on to gain an MA. I was a trustee of Strike a Light ( a community arts organisation in Gloucester) for 8 years . I campaigned to keep the Stroud Subscription Rooms in public ownership and was on their Board of Trustees for 5 years .I have lived in my village for over 40 years and believe strongly in the importance of culture in building community and enhancing life.

Abi is a Fine Art Photographer and Printmaker, having had the privilege of teaching young people within Higher and Further education arts programmes for over 25 years. Five years ago, she stepped away from Bristol School of Art, where she was Head of Department to work within her local community.

She set up and runs creative and wellbeing courses at The Quarry Chapel, Cam for adults, families and young people. The Chapel listens, working hard to support children and teens who are struggling, whether with poor mental health, anxiety, neurodiversity, struggling to join ‘a group’, or are unable to access mainstream education. They see how the arts improve health and wellbeing.

Abi is the co-founder of Creative Community with Deb Brooks working on larger projects such as The National Gallery Art Road Trip, Skate4Josh and currently GL11s Oral History Project. Creative Community believes that everyone should have access to quality activities, that develop skills, increases confidence and a sense of value that brings energy to the wider community.

https://www.quarrychapel.org.uk/

Ian worked for 40 years as an industrial psychologist.  This involved working all over the world with a wide variety of industries.  Throughout his work the themes of people, safety, sustainability and communities were dominant.  On retiring Ian began to work as a volunteer.  Most recently at the GL11 Community Hub.  Through this he became involved with efforts to improve opportunity and amenity locally and was persuaded by Simon Opher MP to stand for local government.  Ian is now one of the Councillors for Cam East sitting on Stroud District Council.  

I’m a baker, food equality champion, and co-founder of community restaurant The Long Table CIC.

My wife Anna and I opened Hobbs House Bakery in Nailsworth, which is also where we live with our four children. I loved being one half of the fabulous baker brothers that ran on C4 and globally on Discovery for 3 seasons.
- My most recent book is called Do Wild Baking.
- I'm an Honorary Fellow at University of Gloucestershire
- And an Ambassador for Tearfund International

Owen McNeir is a strategic and operational leader with over 25 years’ experience in the arts and cultural sector, spanning fundraising, brand development and audience engagement. As a consultant and mentor, he has worked with a wide range of organisations - from independent theatre companies to national heritage bodies - supporting them with business planning, income generation, marketing, and communications. He works with clients across the UK, and locally with Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking where he leads on marketing, communications and sales strategy.  

Owen’s career includes senior roles at Bath Festivals and Cheltenham Festivals, where he led on fundraising, marketing, and membership, securing major grants, sponsorships, and high-value patronage. 

With a background in drama, and a strong commitment to community engagement, Owen brings a creative and strategic perspective to his work. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of both the Chartered Institute of Fundraising and the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Martin has lived in Bisley since 2016 and was elected to SDC in 2021, where he is now Chair of the Community Services and Licensing Committee.  Before coming to the Stroud district, he lived in New York for 25 years, earning a PhD in philosophy and teaching a wide range of subjects from English for immigrants to chess in primary schools.  Several extended stays in Asia included six months working with Afghan refugees in Pakistan and a year in Cambodia, where he and his wife led  a theatre project for polio and landmine survivors, culminating in a production of Oliver Twist in a Buddhist temple in Phnom Penh. Returning to live in England, he worked with the learning disabled for two years, and served as a parish councillor before joining the District Council.

Simon was a GP for nearly 30 years in Dursley, Gloucestershire. Since July 2024 he has been the Labour MP for Stroud, while continuing to practise as a working GP when time allows.

Simon grew up in Oxfordshire and studied medicine at St Mary's in London. He was awarded an MBE in 2016 for his work on social prescribing (now part of NHS policy nationwide), was instrumental in the building of Dursley’s Community Hospital and headed the local Covid-19 vaccination program.

He is chair of the charity that runs Prema Arts Centre, President of Uley Cricket Club, and a very proud husband, father and grandfather.