Imani Jacqueline Brown is an artist, writer, and architectural researcher raised in New Orleans and based in London. Her work investigates extractivism across histories of settler colonialism, slavery, fossil fuel production, and climate change, using photography and film, archival research, legal theory, oral history, and counter-cartography. She is affiliated with Forensic Architecture, is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, and has taught in architecture contexts including the Royal College of Art. She holds an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths and a BA from Columbia University. Photo credit: Justin Shiels

Pam is the MP for Colchester and former Head of the Sociology Department and Graduate Dean at the University of Essex. Prior to becoming an MP, she was elected to Colchester City Council in 2021 and served as Cabinet Member and Portfolio Holder for Heritage & Culture. She has presented two BBC television series on labour history, one on servants and another on shopgirls.

Abi Daré is a Nigerian-born novelist based in Essex. Her debut, The Girl with the Louding Voice, was a New York Times and international bestseller and has been translated widely. In 2025, Daré won the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize for And So I Roar, a novel linking climate impacts with gender and social justice in rural Nigeria. She holds degrees in law, international project management, and creative writing. In 2023 she founded the Louding Voice Foundation to support scholarships and empowerment programmes for women and girls in underserved Nigerian communities.

Judith has been integrally involved in the UK’s best known and most acclaimed cohousing project, Bridport Cohousing, for 13 years, through its development phase and, for the past three years, as a resident. Her professional background is in community and social work, psychotherapy, training, and teaching. Since retiring from paid work, she has devoted more time to her family, pottery, staying physically active, and continuing her commitment to cohousing.

Owen Jarvis is CEO of the UK Cohousing Network. He has led social sector organisations for over twenty years, with experience in community-led housing, including co-operatives and ecovillages. He is a Clore Social Leadership Fellow and a Winston Churchill Fellow, and has researched how housing and community organisations can scale innovation through collaboration.

Anna Jones is a journalist, producer, and broadcaster specialising in agriculture, land use, environment, and the urban–rural divide. A farmer’s daughter, she spent many years covering rural affairs for the BBC, including work connected to Countryfile and Radio 4 farming and environment programming. She has also written for The Guardian and other national publications. Her first book, Divide (2022), was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing.

Heath Lowndes is the co-founder and Managing Director of Gallery Climate Coalition (“GCC”), an international charity supporting environmental sustainability in the visual arts sector. Raised in North London, he studied Fine Art in Brighton and spent a decade working in London artist studios and galleries before launching GCC in 2020. His work focuses on developing practical tools and shared standards to reduce the environmental impact of exhibitions, collections, and art logistics.

Ben MacKinnon is the founder of London’s E5 Bakehouse and a regenerative farmer at Fellows Farm in Suffolk. His work connects farming, milling, fermentation, and baking, with a particular focus on heritage and ancient grains. Through both projects, he explores how grain systems affect flavour, nutrition, biodiversity, and food resilience, and advocates for regional grain economies and short supply chains.

Harriet Rix is a writer and researcher focused on trees, landscape history, and environmental change. She studied biochemistry at Oxford and later completed an MPhil at Cambridge in the history and philosophy of science. She has worked internationally, including in Turkey and Iraq, before moving into environmental research and policy in the UK tree sector. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, London Review of Books, and TLS. Her first book, The Genius of Trees, was named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Country Life, New Yorker and Critic.

In 2016, Sekules set up Groundwork Gallery in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, the UK’s first and only commercial art gallery exclusively dedicated to environmental art. To accompany Groundwork’s environmentally themed exhibitions, Veronica convenes expert symposiums to educate audiences about the issues raised by the artworks. Before Groundwork, she was the Head of Education and Research and Deputy Director of the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia. She has worked in education and heritage and consulted on many national and international projects besides being a published author in art history, cookery and education.

Anne Thorne is an architect and co-leader of the Cannock Mill Cohousing project in Colchester, where she also lives. She was the architect for the scheme, which combines the retrofit of historic mill buildings with new housing designed to Passivhaus standards. Cannock Mill Cohousing has won the 2024 Healthy City Design Award (Healthy Homes and Neighbourhoods) and the 2023 Passive House Award. Thorne’s career has focused on community-led design, low-energy housing, and inclusive decision-making, particularly for women, children, and people with disabilities. Her work emphasises energy efficiency, healthy materials, and long-term affordability in everyday living. 

Dominic Watters is a UK-based food poverty campaigner and speaker whose work draws directly on his lived experience of food insecurity while raising his daughter on a council estate in Canterbury. He founded Food is Care CIC, advocating greater awareness of food poverty and the difference between food insecurity and food poverty. Watters has appeared on national media and given evidence to the House of Lords Food & Drink Select Committee. He also authored Social Distance in Social Work: COVID Capsule One, which collates frontline social work perspectives from the pandemic. 

Lindsay Wright is a cook, miller, teacher, and baker rooted in a long family heritage of bakers and accomplished cooks. She is co-owner of Silva Kitchen and Bakery, based at Wakelyns Agroforestry in Suffolk, where a wood-fired oven sits at the heart of her practice. Working with UK-grown and milled grains - including genetically diverse YQ grain developed at Wakelyns - she champions locality, nutrition, and short, sustainable food chains.