During their participation, they not only acted as lecturers but also as true mentors as they engaged in in-depth discussions with the participants. They were present for multiple days, some for the whole period of the training. They allowed participants an honest and open insight into their careers, including both success stories and failures.

The mentors and speakers present in the days of the Online Training - Festivals and the Mitigation of Climate Change were:

Facilitator:

• Mike Van Graan - Playwright, Project Manager Sustaining Theatre and Dance (STAND) Festival - South Africa

Mentors:

• Brett Pyper - Associate Professor and Head of the Wits School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, former CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (Absa KKNK) – South Africa
• Robyn Archer - Singer, writer, artistic director and public advocate for the arts, former Artistic Director of the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals - Australia

Speakers: 

• Andy Fryers – Sustainability Director of Hay Festival - United Kingdom/South America
• Angharad Wynn Jones – Head of Creative Engagement at Arts Centre Melbourne – Australia
  
• Benn Wiebe – Executive Producer of HF Productions, Climate Reality Leader, Board Advisor of SIE Society, Advisory Committee member of Center for the Digital Future on the expansion & implementation of GDKP, governance team member of UN Environment's Playing for the Planet Alliance  – North America, Australia, South-eastern Asia, EU
  
• Prof. Brian Walker - CSIRO Honorary Fellow, Australian National University Visiting Professor, Fellow in the International Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics Sweden - Australia
• Chiara Badiali – Knowledge and Sector Intelligence Lead for Julie’s Bicycle – A non-profit organization that supports the creative community to act on climate change and the environment – United Kingdom
• Dora Palma – Sustainability Manager at Rock in Rio – Portugal/Brazil
  
• Dorottya Bauer – Virens Events (Sziget Festival) - Germany
• Lavinia Iovino – Spokesperson for MockCOP 26 – A group of young people dedicated to creating a set of climate targets ahead of COP26 – Global
• Tamar Brüggemann – Managing Director WoNDeRFeel - Netherlands

Working Group leaders:

• Lily Hughes - Programme Manager for the Edinburgh International Culture Summit - United Kingdom
• Samantha Nampuntha - Event producer, PR and Communications Expert - Malawi
  
• Tamar Brüggeman – Managing Director WoNDeRFeel - Netherlands
• Tom Creed - Theatre and opera director, festival director and independent producer - Ireland

You can find their biographies below.

Playwright, Project Manager Sustaining Theatre and Dance (STAND) Festival - South Africa

Mike van Graan, founder of the African Cultural Policy Network, has served in leadership positions in a variety of anti-apartheid cultural organizations such as the Congress of South African Writers and the National Arts Coalition of South Africa. He is also an award-winning playwright, who has written thirty plays to this date. He was appointed as Artscape’s Associate Playwright from 2011-2014 and is considered as one of South Africa’s leading contemporary playwrights.

He is the 2018 recipient of the Sweden-based Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award in recognition of his contribution to the fight against apartheid, to building a post-apartheid society and to the interface of peace and culture both in South Africa and across the African continent.

You can read his full bio here.

Associate Professor and Head of the Wits School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, former CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (Absa KKNK) – South Africa

Brett Pyper is Associate Professor and Head of School at University of the Witwatersrand School of the Arts, a cultural practitioner, arts administrator, festival director, music researcher and academic. He began his career as an arts administrator and facilitator of developmental music projects during the transition from apartheid before taking up a Fulbright scholarship to study in the US, where he was based for six years (1998 – 2004). He holds Master’s degrees from Emory University (in Public Culture) and New York University (in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies), and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on contemporary jazz culture in South Africa.

Between 2005 and 2007, he headed the Division of Heritage Studies and Cultural Management in the University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts in Johannesburg, incorporating the Centre for Cultural Policy and Management. In August 2007, he was appointed CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (Absa KKNK), which takes place annually at Easter time in the town of Oudtshoorn in the rural Western Cape and is currently expanding its organisational mandate as the non-profit company Kuns Onbeperk (Arts Unlimited). He held this post till the end of September, 2013.

Brett was founding Chair of the South African Society for Research in Music, which was formed out of the merger of the former Southern African Musicological Society and the Ethnomusicology Symposium associated with the International Library of African Music. He also serves on the steering committee of the Arterial Network, South Africa.

Singer, writer, artistic director and public advocate for the arts, former Artistic Director of the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals - Australia

Robyn Archer AO FAHA is a singer, writer, artistic director and public advocate for the arts. She currently tours highly acclaimed recitals of French, German and American song, and is preparing two new programs for 2021. During COVID-19 she has recorded online performances for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, written for the Australian Book Review and Griffith Review and is preparing an arts and cultural strategy for a new capital city  precinct. Winner of the Helpmann Award for Best Cabaret Performer 2013, and named Cabaret Icon at the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Robyn is recognised internationally for her expertise in the repertoire of the Weimar Republic (20s and 30s Germany), and for many other stage successes as well as her eleven albums, most notably Robyn Archer Sings Brecht (recorded at Abbey Road with The London Sinfonietta). Her back catalogue will be released digitally at the end of 2020.

She is equally known worldwide for her wider contributions to the arts. She was formerly Artistic Director of the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals, creator of Ten Days on the Island for Tasmania, and The Light in Winter  for Melbourne, and creative director of The Centenary of Canberra 2013. Former Deputy Chair of The Australia Council, Robyn was cultural advisor to arts and culture on the Gold Coast for three years and recently chaired the Board of HOTA: Home of the Arts for a further two years. She also chaired the inaugural Master of Fine Arts in Cultural Leadership at NIDA.

Sustainability Director of Hay Festival - United Kingdom/South America

Graduated in 1992 with an Honours Degree in Environmental Science, Andy Fryers joined the Forestry Commission in 1993 as a Ranger in East Anglia and spent three years in the Forest of Dean as Chief Ranger from 1999 before moving to Wales in 2003 as Recreation and Interpretation Advisor for Wales.

Going part-time with the Forestry Commission in 2007, he joined Hay Festival as Sustainability Director, having worked in a voluntary capacity for the Festival since 1995. Within the Festival, his main responsibility is for the Hay on Earth programme, which focuses on three key areas:

1. Improving the Festival’s direct impacts through changing management practices.
2. Providing options and incentives for visitors to reduce their own impacts.
3. Influencing and informing the sustainability agenda by hosting leading authors, politicians, business leaders and commentators in discussions, debates, events and seminars.

 He also provides advice and support about sustainable management to colleagues who work on Hay Festival’s numerous foreign projects.

Since 2008 he has run a consultancy business, EqualState, which undertakes sustainability related projects both in the UK and abroad. He took redundancy from Natural Resources Wales (formerly Forestry Commission), in 2016, and sits on the board of Brecon Beacons Tourism, an organisation that provides marketing and business support to its members. Andy has been a Parish Councillor for 10 years in the Herefordshire parish of Cusop.

Andy lives just outside Hay-on-Wye on a small-holding with his wife and young son where he grows vegetables for the slugs and chickens for the foxes.

 Head of Creative Engagement Arts Centre Melbourne - Australia

Angharad Wynne-Jones (she/her) is Cymry (Welsh) Australian and lives on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nations in Narrm (Melbourne). Angharad was born on the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations (Chicago). She is currently Head of Creative Engagement at Arts Centre Melbourne, leading a team of creative producers in innovative participative arts programs of access and inclusion, young people, public realm and creative learning that engage with many thousands of Victorians annually. From 2011-2017 she was Artistic Director at Arts House, City of Melbourne, initiating projects responding to the climate emergency, including Refuge, which investigates the role of cultural institutions in climate change disasters.  In 2007 she founded TippingPoint Australia, a voluntary network of artists and scientists responding to the climate emergency.

Executive Producer of HF Productions, Climate Reality Leader, Board Advisor of SIE Society, Advisory Committee member of Center for the Digital Future on the expansion & implementation of GDKP, governance team member of UN Environment's Playing for the Planet Alliance  – North America, Australia, South-eastern Asia, European Union

Benn Wiebe is the Executive Producer of HF Productions which runs a series of film festivals across 16 countries and champions social impact narratives. Benn is also a Climate Reality Leader, a Board Advisor of SIE Society, Advisory Committee member of Center for the Digital Future on the expansion & implementation of GDKP, and a governance team member of UN Environment's Playing for the Planet Alliance.

His current feature film "Beautiful Something Left Behind" on children's bereavement and mental health won this year's Best Documentary Award at SXSW and is being distributed by MTV Documentary Films. His personal portfolio that includes climate action reports and further information on initiatives can be found here.

CSIRO Honorary Fellow, Australian National University Visiting Professor, Fellow in the International Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics Sweden - Australia

Brian Walker was born in Zimbabwe, obtained his Ph.D. in Canada, was a Charles Bullard Fellow at Harvard, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and Professor of Ecology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.  He moved to Australia in 1985 as Chief of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology. He is now a Research Fellow in the CSIRO, Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and a Visiting Scientist in the Stockholm Resilience Centre.  He is a Fellow and past Chair of The Resilience Alliance and also of The Beijer International Institute for Ecological Economics in the Swedish Academy of Science.  His interest is in the dynamics and resilience of social-ecological systems.

Knowledge and Sector Intelligence Lead for Julie’s Bicycle – A non-profit organization that supports the creative community to act on climate change and the environment – United Kingdom

Founded in 2007 from within the UK music industry to respond to the climate crisis, Julie’s Bicycle is an internationally recognised charity working to catalyse and support climate and environmental action in the creative community. We help those who share our vision to take bold and practical action grounded in science, while empowering the creative community to speak up and out about the climate crisis.

Chiara Badiali joined JB in 2012 and since then has contributed to publications like the ‘The Show Must Go On’ report on UK music festival environmental impacts, worked on projects including the Europe-wide 'EE MUSIC: energy efficiency in live music' and Arts Council England environmental support programmes, and helped design the international Julie's Bicycle Creative Climate Leadership professional development programme. She is part of the Music Declares Emergency working group, supporting the campaign with environmental expertise and advice. 

Sustainability Manager at Rock in Rio – Portugal/Brazil

Sustainability manager at Rock in Rio (Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro), Dora Palma studied Environmental Engineering and has a post-graduation in Corporate Governance. She works in sustainability for the last 15 years. Before she incorporated the Rock in Rio team in 2009, Dora worked in international research projects, having developed tools to implement sustainability at Municipalities, Events and Companies in general. At Rock in Rio, she has coordinated the implementation of the sustainable event management system and ISO 20121 – Sustainable Events certification, in 2014.

Dora coordinates and develops the mobility, accessibility, solid waste and carbon footprint projects. She develops and coordinates sustainable development awareness campaigns, such as the Amazonia Live project, that already guarantee 73 million trees in reforestation and restauration projects. Dora participated on the EEMusic project, an EU project that aimed to promote energy efficiency at music festivals. She is also a member of the Amazon Alliance, an organization that aims to restore the Amazon forest.

 Virens Events (Sziget Festival) - Germany

Dorka Bauer has been working with the largest European festival hosted in the heart of Budapest - Sziget since 2018. Over the past few years she has been working on campaigns and policies with the Sziget team to bring the climate crisis in the forefront of the festival’s Love Revolution campaign. Currently she is working on a small consultancy project-Virens- that aims to implement sustainability policies for small and medium sized events and festivals.

A group of young people dedicated to creating a set of climate targets ahead of COP26, represented by Lavinia Iovino - Global

When leaders and politicians pretend to be blind in front of a crisis, it is people's duty to do whatever they can to make their eyes wide open. That's what Lavinia firmly believes in and it is the reason why she has been actively demanding for climate justice for the past 2 years.

After being a delegate at the United Nations during the CWMUN2019, where she has been awarded with the "best delegate award", Lavinia Iovino has taken part in the Fridays For Future movement and has been calling citizens and political leaders for action ever since. Speaking face to face to politicians, as she attended meetings and spoke directly to the Italian Prime Minister, the Italian President of the Chamber of Deputies and many others, she is and has been bringing forth the need for a binding plan to reach 0 emissions in 2030, the urgency to tackle this issue, the need to realise that the climate crisis is happening right now, that it is our fault and we are not allowed to delay climate action anymore.

Now it is the time to act, and that's why Lavinia has decided to take part to the Mock Cop26 initiative, an event that will take place online and involve people from all around the world, which aim is to show world leaders what cop would actually look like if it was ran by young people, as well as connecting youth from every part of the globe while giving them the opportunity to share ideas, thoughts and perspectives about the climate crisis.

‘Wonderfeel is a fairy tale’ and ‘Wonderfeel is unique in the world’ are but two of the descriptions by Dutch newspapers of this outdoor festival for classical music, located in the woods near Amsterdam. Wonderfeel is co-founded and directed by Tamar Brüggemann, who started her career at the Utrecht Early Music Festival (2001-2013) and subsequently managed the baroque orchestra Holland Baroque for several years. In December 2019, the first edition of What About Now took place, a long night that focusses on social sustainability by celebrating the here and now. 

Besides developing her own festival concepts and projects, Tamar also fulfils a number of additional functions, including advising the Performing Arts Fund NL  and the Municipality of Rotterdam and Amersfoort. She is also a board member of the Rosa Ensemble and Ensemble Stargaze.

Tamar holds a Master's degree in Language and Culture Studies from Utrecht University and has studied Musicology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. From 2016-2018 she was a fellow of the International Society for the Performing Arts in New York. Since 2017 Tamar is part of EFFE’s International Jury, which awards the biennial EFFE Awards to the most remarkable festivals in Europe. To breath in some air outside the cultural bubble, Tamar started playing football since four years. Her goal is – Corona Volente – to score at least once this season.

Programme Manager for the Edinburgh International Culture Summit - United Kingdom

Lily Hughes is a freelance cultural strategist, programmer and producer with a focus on festivals and international relations. She has held positions with the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and the British Film Institute. Her career is focused on the intersection of arts and culture with civic life and the positive role artists can play in societies across the globe. Her background is in film festivals and she has worked at London Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Africa in Motion and Double Exposure Film Festival. She is an active member of the Festival Academy’s alumni community.

Event producer, PR and Communications Expert

 Samantha Nampuntha is an Event Producer who has worked on festivals such as the Lake of Stars and Cape Maclear Triathlon. She also has worked with several organisations such UNICEF, Girl Effect and Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, using arts and culture to promote social behaviour change. She has spearheaded advocacy campaigns, managed entire departments at festivals, and actively engaged with partners and sponsors at events and during projects. 

Most of her work is centered around the fight for human rights, especially gender equality, she is also a promoter of more environmentally friendly living. She believes that arts and culture will bring the development that the word needs.

Working with teams of exceptional professionals she has helped to develop two TEDxLilongwe events, the first Vagina Monologues performance in Malawi (and many others to follow afterwards), and the youth band ‘Zathu’ that was developed to remove negative norms between boys and girls in Malawi.

Theatre and opera director, festival director and independent producer - Ireland

Tom Creed is a theatre and opera director, festival director and independent producer based in Dublin. His productions have been seen all over Ireland and at prestigious theatres, opera houses and festivals on three continents. He has previously been Festival Director of Cork Midsummer Festival and Theatre and Dance Curator of Kilkenny Arts Festival. 

He is a member of the steering committee of Ireland's National Campaign for the Arts and the board of GAZE Film Festival and Theatre Forum (Ireland). He has participated as a speaker and moderator in three editions of Festival Readings for the Festival Academy and was on the inaugural EFFE jury in 2015.