Abbas Zahedi (b. 1984, London, UK) is an artist with a background in medicine from University College London and an MA in Contemporary Photography and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins. His practice engages with systems of care, thresholds of experience, and the creation of communal spaces for dialogue. Zahedi’s work often weaves together personal narratives and broader collective concerns, using sound and materiality as conduits for reflection and connection. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Stanley Picker Fellowship (2024); Artangel: Making Time (2023); Frieze Artist Award (2022); Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2021); Serpentine Galleries’ Support Structures for Support Structures (2021); Artangel: Thinking Time (2020); Jerwood Arts Bursary (2019); Aziz Foundation Scholarship (2018); and the Khadijah Saye Memorial Scholarship (2017). Zahedi is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and has taught at universities across the UK and internationally.
Youngwilders is a youth-led non-profit focused on (1) accelerating the nature recovery of the UK and (2) involving young people in the process and the movement. They do this through a variety of ecological restoration projects, primarily in SE England but soon to be nationwide, all linked by being designed, implemented and maintained by local young people.
Jack Durant is a Co-Founder and Co-Director at Youngwilders. Having briefly worked in chemical pollution research, he has since spent the majority of his 20s working on the Youngwilders project.
Dee Sharma is an amateur ecologist and a writer interested in analysis of bioacoustics and sound led ecological epistemologies. Their work with bioacoustics aims to study social behaviours across taxa. At Youngwilders, their Artist in Residence work focuses on recording the landscape at Maple Farm to create an immersive soundscape to encourage further youth engagement in ecology.
Professor Eenasul Fateh has accumulated bodies of work across fugitive culture, community development, trauma-informed processes, strategy consultancy and academia since 1980. His practice resides in his humanistic instinct for dismantling boundaries between disciplines and arenas and in his lived resistance to power-based categorisation. In 2025: Terra Foundation for American Art/KADIST/Giverny Residency ‘Museum as Hospital? A Diagnostic’ with Prem Krishnamurthy/Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey; ‘DROP IN’ with Ed Cross Fine Art, Abbas Zahedi, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, COHORT2.ORG. Selected projects: Jerwood Art Space, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA, V&A, Photographers Gallery, Chisenhale Dance Space, South London Gallery, London Design Festival, South Bank Centre, MARKK Museum Hamburg, Manifesta 8 Murcia + Cartagena, London 2012 Festival/Cultural Olympiad, ARTos Foundation Nicosia, Wilkinson Gallery/Cullinan Richards, FABRIK Hamburg, Wiener Tanz und Kunstbewegung. Collaborators: Cardboard Citizens, Florence Peake, Barbara Steveni, Bernardine Evaristo/Denise Wong, Rebecca Swift/Ambient Jam, George Amponsah, Gavin Turk, Charles Hayward, Tassos Stevens, Maral Pourkazemi, Mark Setteducati, THECOWGIRLS.CO, Sofiia Vinnichenko. In the collections of: Channel 4, BBC, Photographers Gallery, Design Council, City Hall London, Academy of Fine Arts Kolkata, Wiener Tanz und Kunstbewegung, MARKK, FABRIK. Ex-Chair Black Mime Theatre Company, Entelechy Arts, Cultural Strategy Group for London. Ex-LSE research fellow global economy/strategic studies; strategy, innovation and trauma-informed design/management professor at various universities + extensive consultancy; also trained in psychological/psychotherapeutic studies. Community development, youth and trauma practitioner: with street gangs, in prisons and supporting people with complex trauma as staff member of Trauma Unit at Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust - establishing its radical, acclaimed ‘Drop-In’ support group.
Sally Davies (UK) trained as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and worked for 20 years in the NHS, leaving in 2017 to pursue her interest in clowning and poetry. Sally is interested in the therapeutic potential of play and created Queer Family Cabaret, a workshop for families to play together using costume and clown. She has also curated workshops exploring surrealism and clown as a means to connect more deeply with nature. Sally currently uses clown and tarot to create connection and community, devising tarot decks which use the historical characters and psycho-geography of London to celebrate diverse groups. These decks, written as poems, become psycho-magic art-brut objects, created in community, as well as immersive embodied tarot performances (devised with the ecological clown collective Divine Ridiculous). Sally’s most recent deck, The London Clown Tarot was made for The London Clown Festival and used a cast of 22 contemporary London Clowns. She is currently working on her fifth deck within this series for and is returning to train as a psychotherapist using Breathwork.
