SOIZIG CAREY, Arts and Cultural Development Officer, Scottish Refugee Council Soizig Carey serves as the Arts and Cultural Development Officer of the Scottish Refugee Council, an independent charity dedicated to providing advice and information to people seeking refugee protection in Scotland. The Scottish Refugee Council has been developing arts and cultural projects with refugee and receiving communities since its inception in 1985. The organization sees the use of arts and culture as a tool to support their work around the integration of refugees and challenging public attitudes. Carey is also a designer, specializing in contemporary handmade jewellery and objects.

FARAH SALEH, Dancer and Choreographer, co-director of A Wee Journey Farah Saleh is a Palestinian dancer and choreographer active in Palestine, Europe and the US. She has studied linguistic and cultural mediation in Italy and in parallel continued her studies in contemporary dance. Since 2010 she took part in local and international projects with Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Company (Palestine), the Royal Flemish Theatre and Les Ballets C de la B (Belgium), Mancopy Dance Company (Denmark/Lebanon), Siljehom/Christophersen (Norway) and Candoco Dance Company (UK). Also since 2010, Saleh has been teaching dance, coordinating and curating artistic projects with the Palestinian Circus School, Sareyyet Ramallah and the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival. In 2016 she co-founded Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Summer School, which runs on a yearly basis. In 2014 she won the third prize of the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA) organized by A.M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine for her installation A Fidayee Son in Moscow and in 2016 she won the dance prize of Palest’In and Out Festival in Paris for the duet La Même. She was an Associate Artist at Dance Base in Edinburgh 2017-2021 and is currently finishing her practice-based PhD at Edinburgh College of Art.

PINAR AKSU, Development Officer, Maryhill Integration Network Pinar Aksu is a Development Officer at Maryhill Integration Network, a charity bringing refugee, migrant and local communities together through art, social and educational groups. Pinar runs Knit for Unity, a knitting group who donate ‘warm things for those who need them’, and Family Nest Group, activities and English conversation practice for resettled Syrians. Pinar’s other jobs are with theatre companies – Active Inquiry in Edinburgh and World Spirit Theatre in Glasgow. The latter produce plays about migration, and have performed all over the UK. In terms of activism, Pinar serves as a member on the management committee of Right to Remain and the UK committee of Stand Up to Racism.

JULIE TRÉBAULT, Director of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), PEN America Julie Trébault is the director of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), a project of PEN America that aims to safeguard the right to artistic freedom by connecting threatened artists to support, building a global network of resources for artists at risk, and forging ties between arts and human rights organizations. She has nearly two decades of experience in international arts programming and network-building, including at the Museum of the City of New York, the Center for Architecture, the National Museum of Ethnology in The Netherlands, and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.