Indy Johar

Indy Johar is co-founder of darkmatterlabs.org focused on the strategic design of new super scale civic assets for transition – specifically at the intersection of financing, contracting and governance for deeply democratic futures. Founding director of open systems lab, seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) and Open Desk (open source furniture company).

Andy Goldring

Chief Executive of the Permaculture Association, member of Leeds Permaculture network and active teacher and designer. Also working in Leeds on the Climate Action Leeds project, developing a city hub - Imagine Leeds - as a climate action hub and space for participatory design.

Sara Arnold

Activist and co-founder of Fashion Act Now, tackling the problem of industrial Fashion, not just in opposition to extractivist, growth-based industrial Fashion but especially for the alternatives to the industry: clothing cultures that nurture people and planet. Defashion, degrowth, decoloniality and promoting a fashion commons.

Tony Cealy

Tony uses participatory democratic processes that are joyful, creative, and accessible to local citizens, advocates, and policymakers in order to co-create policies and practices towards an equitable and just society. He collaborates and partners with artists, charities and community audiences who want to drive social change in how they think about, and experience the world.

Sonia Bussu

Sonia studies and teaches public policy at Birmingham University. Her research interests are participatory governance, democratic innovations, and arts-based methods for public engagement. She led on projects on youth participation to influence mental health policy and services, coproduction of research on health and social care integration, models of local governance, and leadership styles within collaborative governance. 

Adam Greenfield

Adam is the author of Lifehouse:Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire. he recovers lessons from the Black Panther survival programs, the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and the solidarity networks of crisis-era Greece to show how practices of mutual care and local power can help shelter us from a future that often feels like it has no place for us or the values we cherish.

Jess Steele 

Jess is CEO of Hastings Commons.  Since 2014, Hastings Commons have brought over 8,500 square metres of floor space into custodian ownership across a whole cluster of buildings in the centre of Hastings, renovating them to a high quality, offering genuinely affordable rents, and supporting residents and businesses to collaborate and take more control of where they live and work.

Matthew Slater

Matthew Slater develops software for complementary currencies. He co-founded Community Forge for collaborative credit schemes; he co-authored the Money & Society MOOC and co-drafted the Credit Commons white paper, a proposal for a global solidarity economy money system, based on mutual credit principles. ​

Simon Opher

Prior to becoming an MP for Stroud, Simon worked as a full-time GP. He was awarded an MBE in 2016 for introducing and advocating social prescribing (now part of NHS policy nationwide) and was instrumental in the building of the Vale Community Hospital. 

Marcus Saul

Marcus is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security (ISRS) at University College London (UCL) and Managing Partner of Island Power LLP, a smart energy accelerator of “energy islands” through the integration of new legal design, institutions, funding instruments and technology.

Jem Bendell

Jem is an emeritus professor of sustainability leadership with the University of Cumbria. He founded the Deep Adaptation Forum to support peer-to-peer communications in developing positive responses at the individual and community levels to societal disruptions induced by climate change.

Pam Warhurst

Incredible Edible was first established in 2007 in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, in response to increasing global concerns over climate change, food sustainability, and community change. ​  Since its emergence, the idea has spread to hundreds of communities around the world. Today, there are 120 official Incredible Edible groups in the UK and over 700 worldwide.  It currently grows food on 9,763 sqm of land.

Claude Hendrickson​

Claude Hendrickson is a community self-build advocate, commissioned to produce a 10-year strategy for Leeds Council around self-build, custom build and community-led housing, and is a founder member of Community Self Build agency. He serves as equality, diversity and inclusion advisor at Leeds Community Homes and the Confederation of Co-op Housing 

Carne Ross​

Carne is a former British diplomat turned anachist who resigned over Iraq War. He founded the world's first non-profit diplomatic advisory group Independent Diplomat, and have been supporting the struggles for liberation, self-determination and democracy in Myanmar, Western Sahara, Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, Kosovo to name a few.