Our Collaborators
We are passionate about partnering with courageous and heartful collaborators who want to lean into life and gently prompt people to fully explore and inhabit all the complexity and wonder of Being Human. By sharing important stories and sparking meaningful conversations we want to celebrate the essence of aliveness and better understand our shared human experience, so that together we might live well.
Meet some of the amazing artists, thinkers, makers, doers and creators we join forces with.
Philip Faigle
5.0 DEMOCRACY SPEAKER
Philip Faigle is a Special Projects Editor at ZEIT ONLINE, Germany’s leading news website. He is the project lead for My Country Talks - the so-called ‘Tinder of politics’ - organising one-on-one conversations between people who disagree to help build empathy and understanding in an increasingly polarised world.
NYX
5.0 DEMOCRACY PERFORMANCE
NYX is a collaborative drone choir creating visceral arrangements and original compositions that explore the entire spectrum of collective voice as an instrument. Their experiential, post-digital performances has been called “a lament for humanism” building from distorted and discordant soundscapes to the rapturous harmony of human voice.
Indra Adnan
5.0 DEMOCRACY SPEAKER
Indra Adnan is Co-initiator of The Alternative UK political platform, which publishes the Daily Alternative, runs community collaboratories and connects people through Citizen Action Networks (CANs) to create change. She is concurrently a journalist (The Guardian, Huffington Post), a psychotherapist, founder of the Soft Power Network, Buddhist, Futurist, School Governor and Mother.
Ben Marks
4.0 CREATIVITY CHEF
Chef Ben Marks has worked in some of the world’s best kitchens including Michelin-starred The Square and the former ‘best restaurant in the world’ Noma. His restaurant Perilla is on the Top 100 National Restaurant Awards, and won him Breakthrough Chef of the Year at the 2017 Food and Travel Awards. He creates food that is heartful, visually stunning and technically precise, providing the perfect vehicle for storytelling and an evocative prompt for conversation.
Hector Plimmer
4.0 CREATIVITY PRODUCER & COMPOSER
Born and raised in South London, Hector Plimmer is a multi-talented experimental producer and composer who was behind the launch of Google's open source AI synthesizer - NSynth Super - which uses machine learning algorithms to turn 16 source instruments recordings into 100,000 never-before-heard sounds. His live performances challenge the role technology can play in human creativity, creating a sonic dialogue that pairs his own beautiful, raw sound with an AI-driven response.
Dan Goods
Dan Goods is an explorer of the unknown. He is passionate about creating moments in people’s lives where they are reminded of the gift and privilege of being alive. He is an artist, enquirer, creative director and the Visual Strategist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He is a co-founder of the Museum of Awe, a place that ignites curiosity and explores what it is to be alive through art, science, theatre, food and experience.
George the Poet
4.0 CREATIVITY POET
George the Poet (George Mpanga) is a London-born spoken word performer of Ugandan heritage. His innovative brand of musical poetry has won him critical acclaim both as a recording artist and a social commentator, mostly recently taking out an unprecedented five gold awards at the 2019 British Podcast Awards.
Giada Ghiringhelli
4.0 CREATIVITY ARTIST
Giada Ghiringhelli is an imaginative and award-winning London-based filmmaker that pushes the traditional boundaries of her craft to create visceral new visual languages. Her experimental and contemplative short film Rhythm of Being – inspired by Henri Bergson’s concept of ‘life force’ – has been won Best Experimental Film at The European Independent Film Festival.
Fiona Kerr
You know that invigorating feeling you get in the midst of a great conversation? The one where your brain feels like it’s charged up and flowing – well it is! Fiona Kerr will tell you how, and also why it feels like you are connecting physically with the people you are talking to – it’s because you are!
Fiona is an Industry Professor in Neural & Systems Complexity and her work explores the art and wonder of our ability to re-shape our own brain and each other’s, and even grow new brain!
Marcus du Sautoy
4.0 CREATIVITY SPEAKER
Marcus du Sautoy is a celebrated Oxford mathematician, author, and populariser of science and mathematics. He writes for The Guardian and Telegraph, presents films for BBC's Horizon and has been named by The Independent as one of the UK's leading scientists. His acclaimed book – The Creativity Code – explores how AI will challenge our preconceptions about human creativity, and in doing so might jolt us into being more imaginative ourselves.
Parker Heyl
4.0 CREATIVITY INSTALLATION ARTIST
Parker Heyl is a London-based installation artist, and a graduate of UCL’s Interactive Architecture Lab. Inspired by ancient weaving - where the layering of thread is like an early form of code - his Analog Future installations combine humble raw materials like plywood and mechanical movement to evoke the tensions between human and machine, and explore how our contemporary focus on digital skills risks the obsolescence of hand skills.
Tanya Latty
If you’ve ever wondered whether ants are intelligent, how they all know where they’re traipsing off to everyday, or where memory might come from, Tanya Latty is your woman. Tanya is an Entomologist and specialist in individual and collaborative intelligence and collective memory.
Tanya’s work has also seen her collaborate with mathematicians, technologists and thinkers to turn her insights into functional uses for our species.
Derek Leddie
Derek Leddie is a Collective Mind Expert. What’s that you say? It sounds almost Orwellian, but Derek uses his powers for good, using practical and elemental techniques to help people explore their mind’s potential and the power of the pause, to move into a more mindful, present and intuitive way of being and moving through life.
Matthew Beard
Matt Beard is a passionate public philosopher, podcaster and Fellow at The Ethics Centre. Matt explores ethics, meaning and purpose in the everyday, bringing deep and gritty human concepts out of dusty leather-bound books and into the public sphere.
Tim Dean
Tim Dean is the resident Philosopher at The School of Life in Sydney as well as science writer and avid explorer of all things ethics and human evolution related. Tim is as engaging as they come, spurring discussions on morality, biology and philosophy with an osmotic energy that will make you want to dive into the books and ideas yourself.
Benjamin Skepper
Benjamin Skepper creates artworks that are new and experimental, challenging our perception and aiming to collapse the borders that divide us. By applying new technologies and scientific innovations in an artistic context, and exploring the human body as a musical instrument, Ben creates sounds and feelings that are ethereal yet simultaneously rooted to the deep drum beats of this earth and our species as part of it.
Lee Serle
2.0 ENLIGHTENMENT PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Lee Serle is an internationally renowned choreographer and performer creating dances on all scales, from grand stages to immersive, intimate and personal, Lee is a master of connection with any audience, regardless of the type, size and place of performance.
Commissioned to create new works for various companies, his work has been showcased to International audiences in USA, France, Lebanon, Colombia and Australia.
Samuel Harnett-Welk
2.0 ENLIGHTENMENT PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Samuel is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary dancers. He began his classical training as a student of Christine Underdown, in Adelaide, South Australia, before leaping into an extensive period of training with the Australian Ballet School and Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Samuel moves in ways that'll make your heart burst open ... he'll astonish you, move you and create forms and feelings you'll won’t forget.
Lily Paskas
2.0 ENLIGHTENMENT PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Lily Paskas has an energy you want to be close to, and moves so beautifully you can feel it radiating from her as she goes. Lily has an extensive history as a courageous performer in Australia, and also as a Yoga teacher. Lily uses her talent to bring about the best in people – to challenge them, excite them and set their imaginations alight – and her energy stays with you after she’s left.
Holly Durant
2.0 ENLIGHTENMENT PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Holly Durant's performances have taken her around the world for good reason. She is the kind of performer who embodies and celebrates all that it means to move and be alive.
She is a core-performer with the company Finucane and Smith, both curating and performing in many productions in Australia and overseas in Korea, Paris, London and beyond.
Raghav Handa
2.0 ENLIGHTENMENT PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Raghav is an exquisite choreographer and performer with training in modern and Indigenous contemporary dance. As a performer, Raghav has collaborated and toured with many of Australia’s leading Indigenous and non-indigenous choreographers. Raghav’s unique cross-cultural approach has been recognised by SBS and ABC radio, as well as dance critics in The Sydney Morning Herald, Aussie Theatre and Real Time.
Anastasia La Fey
Anastasia La Fey is a highly talented and sought after artist and maker working in the realms of textile artistry, inhabitable sculptures, textile-centric installations and collaborative multi-disciplinary works. With an integral philosophy rooted deep in the practice of true craftsmanship, Anastasia La Fey's explorations of cloth and textile span the realms of both art and design.
O Tama Carey
O Tama Carey is one of Sydney’s most lauded chefs. After spending time in the kitchen at Billy Kwong, O Tama took the helm as Head Chef of Sydney’s Berta and has now opened the Lankan Filling Station. O Tama cooks with heart and story, using food to explore the facets of our unconscious bias, creating provocative (and delicious) eating experiences as prompts for meaningful conversation.
Benjamin Hancock
Benjamin Hancock wills you to question everything you think you know about performance and dance. With experience spanning performative work, choreography and costume design, Ben’s collaborations and awards would take too long to list, but include the likes of filmmaker and artist Sue Healey, MONA’s Dark Mofo, Australian dance company Chunky Move and artist Anthony Breslin.
Wendy Zukerman
Wendy Zukerman is an Australian science journalist and podcaster who brings a decidedly human energy to her practice. It's refreshing, challenging & punchy, but also somehow feels like home. As the host of Science Vs, a program that dissects areas of scientific controversy and public confusion, Wendy not only explores all things scientific through her work, but also looks at concepts of truth and perception, and what the implications are for being human.
John Neil
John Neil is one of those philosophers you want to sit by a campfire and talk with for a week. John leads The Ethics Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership, people and culture programs and product development. John has more than 20 years as a thinker, lecturer and researcher in ethics, leadership, cultural studies, innovation and social entrepreneurship, and aside from his extensive professional career, John is also simply an engaging and thought-provoking human.