Breaks & Joins Podcast

Jamaican–Haitian–British artist and curator Paula Ogun Hector founded Tapestry of Black Britons to honour the often-overlooked African Caribbean presence in Britain, from the Roman era to today. The project began with a woven dialogue between a Yoruba creation story and World War II histories, setting the foundation for an evolving, interdisciplinary, touring artwork. Blending research, digital in...

Zak is a community-taught artist whose work draws on Southern textile traditions and repurposed fabrics. He practices an approach to design that is based in narrative and guided by intuition. He is especially drawn to preserving the stories of quilts and explores stories we tell ourselves about the past, present, and future in his work. His work has been featured in on the red carpet of the Met Ga...

Content alert: This podcast includes reference to suicide Abu Ansari is a performer and facilitator working in Chicago and London. He spent 20 years performing on Chicago stages and worked as a performance-based facilitator addressing a variety social issues. He co-founded Mango Riot Theatre in the UK, launching a program that engages youth in colonial history debates. While earning an MA in Appli...

Sofie Layton is an artist, researcher and facilitator who has worked nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Her most recent research practice explores the interface between artist, patient and clinical landscapes. Interweaving lived experience with remediated medical data, she examines how the human story is entangled with the medical. Previous commissions include installations ‘Bedside...

James Holcombe is a filmmaker with decades of experience in photochemical film production. His practice merges a deep engagement with re-discovered historical, material and social processes of photochemical film production through single screen and expanded performance works. He is the owner of erehwon film. erehwon runs workshops and actively curates workshops, performances, screenings, residenci...

Hannah is an experienced cultural practitioner with over 20 years’ experience in the arts, education, public and private sectors. An innovative problem solver and entrepreneurial creative communicator. A strategic leader with a natural gift for working at all levels and across multiple and diverse stakeholders, with a phenomenal track record of working at the intersection of diversity, art and cul...

Chris Hellawell is the Director of the Edinburgh Tool Library Chris has an educational background in environmental science, but began working in the charity sector 20 years ago. In 2014 he found a way to combine his dual passions of environmental and social justice by starting the first tool library in the UK, and since then it has grown to encompass multiple sites across Edinburgh, where carbon h...

Sarah is Founding Director of Craftivist Collective and Gentle Protest. She  is an award-winning activist, author and Ashoka Fellow. Born in Everton, the fourth most deprived ward in the UK. An Activism Manager at Oxfam GB before founding the global Craftivist Collective in 2009. Corbett calls her unique methodology ‘Gentle Protest’ and her work has helped change hearts, minds, policies and laws a...

Morag Anderson’s second chapbook, And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound, won the Aryamati Poetry Pamphlet Prize and was described by TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Joelle Taylor as 'Delicate and furious, a haunting act of worship, of rebellion, and story. She was poet-in-residence for the 2024 Birnam Book Festival and for Dublin’s Creative Brain Week 2024 held at Trinity College. Recent commissio...

Haeweon is a theatremaker, writer, and researcher from Korea, now based in the UK. As a co-artistic director of Blooming Ludus, she has been making diverse community-based theatre projects for climate justice and a sustainable future since 2015. Her current PhD research at the University of Manchester is on nurturing performance practice, “Theatre of Decomposition,” which explores human–fungi rela...

Arti’s inclusive creative practice champions diverse voices, and immersive sensory theatre practice for people living with dementia and learning disabled people. She has a strong commitment to collaborative theatre with values based on fundamental human rights. Arti stepped down as Spare Tyre's Artistic Director/CEO in August 2019 after inspirational and acclaimed leadership for 19 years. 202...

"I volunteer with Cycling Club Hackney (CCH) My, now adult, children grew up riding and racing with the club and I have used a bike for transport all my adult life - and dabbled in a bit of cyclocross veterans racing. My main sport (for 40 years) has been unicycle hockey.  During the week I work as a property management adviser for Quakers in Britain, with a background in building and structu...

Mah is a practising artist, researcher and writer working in the fields of contemporary jewellery, well-making, creative health, creativity and dementia-care, and psychology. Mah's PhD at Birkbeck College is a qualitative psychology study exploring daughters’ lived experiences of dementia caregiving and crafting with mothers. She is a tutor (research) at the Royal College of Art, on the MFA A...

Tobias Tembo is Provincial Youth Development Coordinator for Southern Province, Zambia. He is a visionary leader and co-founder of Barefeet Theatre, a dynamic organization empowering vulnerable youth through the arts. With a career spanning public sector management, civil society, and creative industries, Tobias has driven impactful initiatives in youth development, resource mobilisation, and trad...

Ayesha is a writer, artist and facilitator, and recently judged the Deaf and Disabled Writers Commissions for Spread the Word, alongside Joseph Rizzo Naudi, for the second year running. She was one of the commissioned writers for Nature Calling, a £2m National Landscapes art programme, creating poetry inspired by the Lincolnshire Wolds, whilst facilitating a series of workshops, exploring creative...

Daniel Regan is a visual artist & Creative Health Consultant working across the sector in the UK. For over 20 years his creative works have brokered dialogues around taboo topics such as mental health, grief, self injury, suicide and racism, through the lens of his intersectional identities as a queer and disabled person of Black and white mixed heritage. Daniel works on commissions, produces...

Bridget McKenzie: Researcher, trainer and artist, engaging people with the Earth crisis. Her career includes being Tate’s Education manager and the British Library’s Head of Learning. In 2006 she founded Flow Associates, a research consultancy in cultural learning which has carried out hundreds of evaluative enquiry projects. In 2019, she founded Climate Museum UK, a creative collective helping pe...

London-based artist Celia Pym has been mending clothing and textiles since 2007. Her work has recently been exhibited in Bags, Hweg, Cornwall (2024); Cheongju Craft Biennale, Korea (2023) and ‘Connect. Reveal. Conceal’. Make Hauser & Wirth, London (2023). Pym is an Associate Lecturer in Textiles at the Royal College of Art and published her first book, ‘On Mending: Stories of Damage and Repair...

Tas Emiabata is an actor, musician, facilitator and trainer. As a creative facilitator he works with children, young people and adults to deliver a diverse range of acting and theatre-based workshops, and has worked on the groundbreaking Creative Routes  programme. He has extensive knowledge and experience of verse drama specialising in the work of Shakespeare. He has designed and delivered bespok...

Carolyn Defrin is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and facilitator originally from the US and based in Europe. She is currently a Marie Curie fellow at the University of Graz, developing arts based research about collective creativity in border zones. She holds a PhD in co-creating culture and policy (London South Bank University) and an MA in performance design (Central Saint Martins). Rec...

9ft in Common uncovers the complexities and shares the possibilities of an infrastructure of urban alleyways, Belfast’s wild and liminal spaces. The work, in close partnerships with local communities,  investigates ownership, access, disruption and place. The name 9ft in Common is inspired by a lease first signed in December 1902, confirming a right of way over and along a 9ft passage in Belfast....

A theatre facilitator, Maryam co-creates performances with participants. She works at a range of organisations including Angel Shed, Kiln, Almeida, Bush, Company Three and the The National Theatre. She is an Associate Artist at Coney, focusing on playful activism. As a researcher she has worked on Positively Past Positively Present (PositivelyUK & Central School of Speech & Drama) and The...

ⓜ.ⓤ.ⓓ is a group for Lewisham-borough-based 18-25-year-olds wanting to commune with the natural world. They cultivate an LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent-centred space. Meeting every Wednesday at Sydenham Garden, they share skills, follow tangents, and practice community. A typical session might see them: sowing seed and tending to their crops, naturally dyeing fabrics and sewing, learning to bind book...

Phineas Harper develops sustainable cultural programmes that engage broad audiences with architecture and design. A regular contributor to The Guardian, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth work, journalism and sculpture. They are founder of the Architecture of Repair project. https://phineasharper.com/ https://www.instagram.com/phinharper/ Send us Fan Mail Explore more Breaks...

Ros is Reader in Fine Art, Critical Studies and Programme Director of the MA Art & Ecology. Her research and teaching often involves collaborations with artists, scientists and activists, addressing ecological emergency with an emphasis on climate justice. In her spare time, she likes to mend and grow things. In 2023 she founded the Darn It! darning club at the Telegraph Hill Centre in New Cro...