Creative Climate Accelerator 2024 Participants Announced

The cultural sector is a hub for powerful creative thinkers and innovators who work with their communities to make change happen. As part of Arts Council England’s Environmental Programme, Julie’s Bicycle are running Creative Climate Accelerator (CCA).

CCA is a 6 part training programme for participants nominated by a supporting NPO or IPSO to raise ambition for a creative climate project. It will equip them with the skills and understanding to translate knowledge into action, and to act as agents of change in the sector.

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We are pleased to announce the following participants in this programme:

Alys Pearce with London Arts and Health
Alys has arranged events, written and performed shows, engaged in protests  and practised behaviour change to lessen her impact  on the Earth’s resources. She has created her own independent theatre company – Action Movement Peace (AMP) and is studying for an MA in Applied Theatre to further sustainability and ethical practice.

Emma Ford with Barnsley Libraries
Emma is NPO Libraries Engagement Officer at Barnsley Libraries. She is a  Green Libraries Champion, and is interested in the intersection between cultures/language and environment and how this impacts positive climate action.

Russ Tunney with The Pound Arts Trust Ltd
Russ is the Director/CEO of Pound Arts and prior to this post has worked as a theatre director and playwright for over 25 years. He is published by Nick Hern Books. He is also a voluntary organiser of TEDx Salisbury and TEDxCorsham.

Hannah Gaunt with Engage
Hannah is Engage’s Creative Producer, leading a UK wide programme supporting the visual arts engagement and participation workforce. Prior to joining Engage she worked in learning and engagement roles at MK Gallery, Grundy Art Gallery, Z-arts, RIBA, and The Turnpike. She is currently the freelance Network Coordinator for Greater Manchester Arts.

Olivia Simpson with Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust
Olivia is the Museums Partnership Officer at Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust. CHDT is the lead partner of the Kent and Medway Museum Partnership NPO. She supports activity delivery and budget oversight within the consortium. Since starting at the Trust, she has been engaged with community outreach programmes in the Medway area which aims to reach new audiences and engage them with cultural activities that may not have been accessible previously.

Ciaran Austin with Bristol Beacon
Ciaran works in the marketing & comms team at Bristol Beacon (BB), the city’s largest music venue and charity. He is fortunate to be able to draw upon both his love of music to create memorable live events for audiences and his commitment to climate action in the context of the venue’s net zero by 2030 ambition.

Sophie Heathscott with Crafts Council
Sophie currently works as the Membership Manager for the Crafts Council (CC). Her background is in design, and she is an avid maker with a passion for sustainable materials. Her  interest in environmental projects led them to found a repair cafe in her local community, a monthly event where neighbours can meet with volunteers to get their belongings fixed. She will also be a founding member of CC’s Environmental Responsibility Committee (ECR), due to launch this year.

Sabrina Candido with Plymouth Culture
Sabrina is an arts and cultural professional with a specialism in project management, working across diverse international projects in Brazil and the UK. Since joining Plymouth Culture in 2020, her focus has been on supporting the growth and sustainability of Plymouth’s arts and culture sector. She’s mostly interested in contributing to projects that promote the exchange of knowledge, and social transformation, and in working towards the construction of a collaborative network of creative professionals.

Henna Asikainen with Great North Museum: Hancock
Henna is a multidisciplinary artist with socially engaged and participatory practice. Her artwork is concerned with human relationships with nature, and its intersections with climate and landscape (in)justice, migration, and notions of belonging. She is interested in what participatory, co-created practice can bring to our understanding of these complex and interrelated issues.

Sajida Ismail with Castlefield Gallery
As an asylum lawyer, Sajida has worked in Manchester with displaced people fleeing war, poverty and discrimination and as a law lecturer, she has taught on social justice. Previously, she worked with the Yorkshire Arts Board as a cultural diversity officer, which informed her interest in art and culture. Currently, she is co-director of Grass Routes Movement, a new CIC, which facilitates ‘movement’ projects with Greater Manchester communities including Women’s Voices, Rainbow Haven, Boaz Trust, and the Platt Hall Social Prescribing Project.

Andrea Ku at the Library NPO (Sefton Libraries and Rule of Three Arts)
Andrea Ku is an artist working in the outdoors to bring people, places & pollinators together to create a better relationship between nature and community. She creates hands-on learning opportunities as resources that embed into individuals’ everyday lives to become more nature-minded. A beekeeper of 14 years, she has enabled hundreds of individuals to experience the wider environment through the eyes of bees (not just honeybees) and what we can learn from them and other local wildlife.

Petra van den Houten with Liverpool Biennial
Over the past 25 years Petra has worked extensively with emerging artists, commercial galleries, not-for-profit art organisations, art collectors, and philanthropists in Europe, USA and the Middle East. Most recently Petra was Head of Major Gifts at the Royal Northern College of Music. She is a Trustee of the Manchester Art Gallery, a former Associate Director of Christie’s and Deputy Director of Sotheby’s and holds an MA in Art History from Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Karis Barlow  with Magpie Dance
Karis joined Magpie Dance as Operations Coordinator in 2023 where she oversees key admin, including class bookings, and liaison with participants & parents. Before that, she was the Assistant Venue Manager at Theatre Royal Stratford East [TRSE]. Karis was co-chair of their Access Committee and part of the Environmental Committee.

Andy Kelly with Shakespeare North Playhouse
Andy is the Visitor Experience Manager at Shakespeare North Playhouse. His deep passion for history aligns with his professional joy in surpassing visitor expectations. She’s taken on the responsibility of integrating sustainability into Shakespeare North’s operations, collaborating across departments to prioritise sustainable practices.

Natasha Anthea Lay with Exeter Phoenix
Natasha is an arts administrator and theatre maker with experience across live performance, video production, and events. She believes arts administration is not just about paperwork, but also about improving the way we work. She is particularly interested in exploring and developing ways of working more sustainably and inclusively in the creative sector. Originally from Aotearoa New Zealand and Indonesia, she now lives and works in Devon.

Lizzie Klotz with Festival of Thrift
Lizzie is a creative producer and dance maker, performer and facilitator, based in the North East. In June 2023, she began a part-time employed role at Festival of Thrift (FoT) as a Creative Projects Producer and is responsible for a new production company The Institute of Thrifty Ideas (ITI), developing new outdoor performances, installations, immersive events, and one-off commissions, as well as working on various climate action projects with young people and communities across the Tees Valley.

Gemma Baal with Exeter Phoenix Ltd
Gemma worked in the arts and sustainability sector at The Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (now closed), as the office manager. Since then she has remained in the arts and charities; working in a theatre, a mental health charity, a photography studio, and now Exeter Phoenix: a multi-arts venue in the centre of Exeter. In 2021 she became the lead of the Green Phoenix Project due to her interest in sustainability.

Bria Cotton with Manchester Museum
Bria is an early career worker based in Manchester. She works as a Programme Assistant and Carbon Literacy Facilitator at Museum Development North West and as a Visitor Team Assistant at the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Justine Anne Page with Maldon & District CVS
Justine works with Maldon & District CVS in a green prescribing role, as well as running forest school sessions for children. Accessing nature and developing an understanding of the world around us has always been at the heart of her sessions. She is an ex primary school teacher, Art was her major subject. 

Laura de Moxom with Jelly
Laura is an artist and cultural manager whose creative practice explores using mixed media and alternative photographic processes. She is interested in reducing the environmental impact of her practice and in how creativity can be used in activism. Laura has more than 10 years experience in delivering multi-artform learning and participatory experiences in the cultural sector and is particularly excited by projects that are co-created with communities.

Lisa Franklin with Talking Birds
Lisa is a queer and neurodivergent artist and producer. Her practice is rooted in play and investigates cross-species collaboration with a focus on fungi and flora and on connecting beings through creativity. Her work invites the audience to reconsider her position within the natural world, as opposed to existing alongside it and considers the ‘more than human’ as collaborator, not resource.

James Gillaspy with Future Yard CIC
James is a Music industry professional with a focus on sustainability, he is Sustainability Lead at Future Yard, where his role includes reaching our target of achieving Carbon Neutral certification by 2025 and significantly reducing scope 3 emissions, particularly around audience travel behaviours.

Natasha Pavey with Theatre Royal Plymouth
Natasha is a theatre maker, creative producer and climate justice activist from the South West. She strives to combine both her climate activism and her love for theatre as a tool for change and to encourage the creative industries to take responsibility for their part to play in the climate emergency. She is currently in post as Artist for Change at the Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Roma Piotrowska with Midlands Arts Centre
Roma is the Curator at Midlands Arts Centre, where they are responsible for shaping an ambitious programme of exhibitions and public events. Before that, she worked as a Curator at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and as a Senior Exhibitions Manager at Ikon Gallery.

Natasha Kathi-Chandra with Tara Theatre
Natasha is the Artistic Director and Joint CEO at Tara Theatre. Natasha’s work is dedicated to developing theatre artists and young people particularly from underrepresented backgrounds and contributing to a more equitable and sustainable arts and culture sector.

Sayak Mukherjee with Arts Depot
Sayak works in dance, theatre, visual arts, and the charity sector. He is a dedicated arts manager and has extensive experience in the management of small and medium sized organisations. 

Aisling Davis with The Whitworth
Aisling is a composer, researcher, and writer from the North of England with over ten years of experience in the arts sector. Her work navigates art-science, ecology, ocean histories, and utilitarian design. As ‘Inland Taipan’ and under the name ‘Thalia Styx’ she has exhibited internationally, published via academic forums, and composed for film.

Sophie Sparham with Writing East Midlands
Sophie is a writer, Programme Manager at Writing East Midlands and co- director of Derby Poetry Festival. They have written commissions for BBC Radio 4, The V&A and The People’s History Museum. They have won the Nature, Environment and Sustainability 2024 short story contest, hosted by Leicester University.

Watch this space to find out more about the projects that the programme produces! 

Arts Council England Environmental Programme