Plans For The Future

Kris Nelson became Artistic Director/CEO of LIFT in 2018. He was Festival Director of Dublin Fringe Festival, Ireland’s largest multi-disciplinary arts festival, from 2013-2017, guiding hundreds of artists towards world premieres. He founded the Canadian performing arts touring agency, Antonym. From 2008-2013, Antonym secured tours and co-productions in over 45 cities on 4 continents for artists such as Theatre Replacement, Public Recordings and 2boys.tv. Kris initiated innovative curatorial platforms like PushOFF (Vancouver) and Spark (Montreal) connecting artists to international touring opportunities. Kris was Encounters Curator for Magnetic North Festival and has been a dramaturg for theatres across Canada.

Image credit Tyler Kelly​

Tom is an actor, multi-instrumentalist and composer. He grew up in South London, studied Drama at Exeter University, and trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

From 2017-2019 Tom was an Associate Artist and resident composer at Flute Theatre. Since 2019, he’s been an Associate Artist with Compass Collective and the NYT. He is a collaborator with The PappyShow and Squint, is a frequent guest practitioner at Guildhall, and is an Education Practitioner with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. He is currently a commissioned artist with WAC Arts. 

Tom made his professional stage debut in Trevor Nunn’s King John at the Rose Theatre Kingston. He has since worked with Mischief Theatre, the Barbican, Chichester Festival Theatre, the Orange Tree, The Yard, MIME, the Bridge Theatre, Attic Theatre and English Touring Theatre. He was a part of the Globe’s Touring Ensemble from 2020-21. 

Dr. Njoki Ngumi is an artist, writer and feminist thinker who has held positions in private and public health care sectors in Kenya. As a Nest founding member, she has been co-writer, screenwriter and script supervisor for several of the Nest’s film works, and is currently expanding her filmmaking practice as  co-director of The Feminine and The Foreign. Her keen eyes and ears are a critical component of the  collective’s post-production process, as well as its strategic, resource mobilising and research outputs. In addition, she coordinates the Nest’s external collaborative projects, and serves as programs and strategy lead at sister-company HEVA.

Twitter @njokingumi 
Instagram @njokingumi 

Mariano Pensotti (Buenos Aires – 1973) studied cinema, visual arts and theatre. His performances have been presented in Argentina and in festivals and venues in Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Latvia, Brasil, Canada, Japan, Austria, Spain, Chile, England, Denmark and Switzerland.

For his work he has won the prizes Rozenmacher, Clarin and Premio F; and the scholarships Unesco-Aschberg, Rockefeller Foundation, Fundación Antorchas and Casa de América de Madrid.

He formed the Grupo Marea together with Set Designer Mariana Tirantte, the musician Diego Vainer and the artistic producer Florencia Wasser.

Juliet Knapp is currently co-director of Kyoto Experiment alongside Yoko Kawasaki and Yuya Tsukahara. She graduated from Oxford University with a BA in English Literature and Language and began working in Japan in 2013 on the JET Programme as an English teacher at Elementary and Middle Schools in Shizuoka Prefecture. After interning and volunteering for Kyoto Art Centre and Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre she later became Communications Manager and Project Manager for Music and Performance at Ryoji Ikeda Studio. Following this, from 2017-2019 she was part of the PR team at Kyoto Experiment and assisted the director in the programming of the festival. She also has experience in editing as well as translation and interpretation related to the performing arts. 

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Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin is an artist, independent researcher and queer agitator of Armenian descent.  Their research is built of a collection of pedagogic and performative events that focus on experiencing pleasure as a form of resistance to systemic oppression by relating a queer/transfeminist approach to somatic practices.  Trained in dance, their work exists is the shape of movement, video, text, choreography, sound and gatherings, and deals with narratives of hostility, survival strategies, rest, friction, sensuality, healing.

Giorgia took part in LIFT’s podcast Plans For The Future.

Rose Fenton was co-founder and director of the LIFT Festival with Lucy Neal from 1980-2005. Following LIFT Rose worked internationally as a freelance producer and arts adviser before becoming the Director of Free Word, an international arts organisation exploring the power and politics of words.

Now, alongside being a yoga teacher and reflexologist working in her local community, Rose is active in Culture Declares Emergency (CDE) a growing global movement of people in arts and culture declaring a climate and ecological emergency and who pledge to tell truths, take action and seek justice.

Rose is co- author of The Turning Word, Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre. In 2005 she was awarded an OBE for services to drama.

Lucy Neal was co-founder and director of the LIFT Festival with Rose Fenton from 1980-2005. Since then she has developed a creative practice as an artist and writer. Active in the grass roots Transition Town movement, her handbook Playing for Time – Making Art As If the World Mattered (Bloomsbury 2015) maps collaborative arts practices in response to planetary challenges with 60 artists and community activists. Lucy is currently one of 4 artists working on Walking Forest, a 10 year artwork that culminates in the planting of an intentional woodland in 2028, exploring connections between forest ecology, women and activism. She is a founder ‘declarer’ of Culture Declares, a global movement of artists and cultural organisations declaring a climate and ecological emergency and a director of Forever Fishponds, a campaign to reclaim a Field in Tooting, SW London as a flourishing green space for the local community. She is co-author of The Turning Word, Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre and was awarded an OBE for services to drama in 2005.

With over 25 years’ experience of producing theatre, festivals and activities, Stella has worked for organisations in the UK and beyond including Ovalhouse, where as Executive Producer, she oversaw the organisational and community-led transition as Ovalhouse constructs London’s newest purpose built £15m theatre in Brixton, Soundwave Cumbria where she was CEO, Cardboard Citizens, Harlem Stage, Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Clean Break Theatre, Department of Public Health as well as arts, culture and community directorates at numerous local councils in London and across the UK. Stella has led a number of government-backed cultural investment initiatives including the Aylesbury Estate New Deal for Communities; the creation of a new cultural centre and a £1m programme of arts and training for the 10,000 residents. As a creative writer and performer, Stella created Africa Centre’s first Children’s Literature Festival; A List Performing Arts Festival and Southampton Live Street Arts Festival. Awarded the Cultural Leadership Powerbrokers (CLP) International Leadership Fellowship in 2008, Stella is a leadership mentor on Engage’s Extend Leadership programme and now mentors and coaches emerging, mid-career and established leaders. She has spoken at numerous conferences and symposiums, having most recently featured as part of Shakespeare’s Globe’s Women & Power festival (May 2019).

Kris Nelson became Artistic Director/CEO of LIFT in 2018. He was Festival Director of Dublin Fringe Festival, Ireland’s largest multi-disciplinary arts festival, from 2013-2017, guiding hundreds of artists towards world premieres. He founded the Canadian performing arts touring agency, Antonym. From 2008-2013, Antonym secured tours and co-productions in over 45 cities on 4 continents for artists such as Theatre Replacement, Public Recordings and 2boys.tv. Kris initiated innovative curatorial platforms like PushOFF (Vancouver) and Spark (Montreal) connecting artists to international touring opportunities. Kris was Encounters Curator for Magnetic North Festival and has been a dramaturg for theatres across Canada.

Image credit Tyler Kelly​