Find out about our guest speakers here.
Panel 1: Anti-racism and Austerity
Twimukye Macline Mushaka
Twimukye has been working with the Poverty Alliance since 2008. Her main role is working with grassroots community based organisations and people with direct experience of poverty in getting their voices heard in policy and decision making structures at national and local levels. She co-ordinates the work of Community Activists Advisory Group (CAAG) ensuring participation of people with lived experience at different levels of Poverty Alliance’s work. Twimukye also works alongside other team members in delivering Poverty Awareness Training including direct engagement with frontline professionals on issues poverty and social exclusion.
Previously, Twimukye worked as Executive Director of the National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU) in the late 1990s and as an independent advisor on disability and development issues in Eastern and Southern African regions until 2000. Twimukye has extensive experience of strategic direction and decision making with a range of third sector organisations in Scotland including being on the Board of the Scottish Refugee Council, One Parent Families, Bridging the Gap, Information and Learning for All Project (ILFA) in the last few years. Twimukye is currently a member of the Board of Deaf Blind Scotland. She was appointed to the Independent Living Fund for Scotland Board in 2016 for two years.
Twimukye has spoken on a range of topics on poverty, disability, refugees and migrants as well as gender related issues both at national and international levels.
Email Twimukye: twimukye.mushaka@povertyalliance.org
Raman Mundair
Raman Mundair is an Indian born, Queer, British Asian intersectional feminist and activist based in Shetland and Glasgow. She is the award winning author of Lovers, Liars, Conjurers and Thieves, A Choreographer’s Cartography, The Algebra of Freedom (a play) and is the editor of Incoming: Some Shetland Voices. She is a member of and works with Ubuntu – a Glasgow based collective working with and for undocumented women in the immigration system.As an activist she has worked on a grass roots level against anti racism, anti fascism, state violence, No Borders, and against gender based, domestic and sexual violence.
Her work is socially and politically observant, bold, mischievous, cutting edge and potent with poetic imagery and integrity. Her writing plays with the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class and challenges notions of British and colonial histories and identities. Raman’s work focuses on the experiences, knowledges and life-worlds of people of colour and reframes their experience from a fresh, new perspective. She has published poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction and has performed and exhibited her artwork around the world from Aberdeen to Zimbabwe.
She is the founder of the online Facebook space: EKTA – Intersectional Dialogue for Women. She regards herself as a writer who writes, makes art, film and installation.
For more information on her work visit:
www.shetlandamenity.org/the-artist // www.facebook.com/ramanmundair
@MundairRaman
Selected sound installation, audio versions of work and articles can be found here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-724492265
https://ubuntuwomensshelterglasgow.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/ubuntu-with-raman-mundair-let-me-hold-you-2019/
https://www.shetlandamenity.org/the-incoming-project
https://www.conter.co.uk/blog/2018/4/12/thoughts-on-race-afua-hirschs-brit-ish
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/01/05/your-land-is-my-land-perspectives-from-an-immigrant/
Briana Pegado
Briana Pegado is the Executive Director of Creative Edinburgh, an organisation that supports the creative community through events, advocacy, and career support. She is the Founder of the Edinburgh Student Arts Festival (ESAF), an award-winning enterprise that provided a platform for emerging artists in Scotland facing barriers to the arts and creative industries. She is also a cofounder of Povo, a process-led consultancy and collective that engages people with the creative process through research and experimentation.
In 2010 she helped set up the University of Edinburgh’s first ever Black History Month and in 2014 was elected Edinburgh University Student Association’s first ever Black woman president in the union’s 130 year history. In 2015 she was named one of Scotland’s Top 10 Social Innovators and ESAF went on to win the Inspiring Youth Enterprise Award from Social Enterprise Scotland in 2016. In 2017, she was named one of Scotland’s 30 Under 30 Inspiring Women. Her work is grounded in social justice and intersectionality with a focus on how sustainable development principles can help us redesign our society to be more equitable.
She is the Vice Chair of YWCA Scotland – the Young Women’s Movement, a member of the University of Edinburgh General Council Business Committee – the alumni body design to hold the University to account, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She has worked for Voluntary Arts Scotland, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Scottish Drama Training Network and Custom Lane – Scotland’s Centre for Design and Making on projects that help these organisations better support young people and people of colour facing barriers to the arts and creative industries.
Panel 2: Prison and Detention Abolition
Nat Raha of Bent Bars
The Bent Bars Project is a letter-writing project for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, gender-variant, intersex, and queer prisoners in Britain. The project was founded in 2009, responding to a clear need to develop stronger connections and build solidarity between LGBTQ communities inside and outside prison walls.
Nat Raha is a poet, musician and trans / queer activist, living in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is the author of three collections of poetry: of sirens, body & faultlines (Boiler House Press, 2018), countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013), and Octet (Veer Books, 2010). Her work has been translated into French, German, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish. Nat completed her PhD on queer Marxism and contemporary poetry at the University of Sussex, as is a postdoctoral researcher on the ‘Cruising the 70s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures’ project at the Edinburgh College of Art. Nat is co-editor of Radical Transfeminism zine.
Kelsey
Kelsey is a prison abolitionist organiser and freelance facilitator based in London. As part of Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE), a network of grassroots groups fighting prison expansion in England, Wales and Scotland, Kelsey has been travelling the UK and abroad delivering workshops and trainings to build collective power in resisting and dismantling the prison industrial complex.
A Representative of Sisters Uncut
Sisters Uncut is a feminist direct action group fighting in solidarity with survivors of domestic, sexual and state violence, and organising under the principles of prison abolition and transformative justice.
‘VISIBLE’ Film Screening and Panel 3
Campbell X
Campbell X is a writer/director who directed the award-winning queer urban romantic comedy feature film STUD LIFE. Campbell directed and produced the short film DES!RE, the documentary VISIBLE which headlined the Scottish Queer Film Festival in December 2018. Campbell directed the award-winning LGBTQ webseries DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS and is one of the directors of the transgender webseries Spectrum London.
In 2015 Campbell was voted as in the top 50 LGBTIQ people in the UK by the Independent on Sunday Pink List.
In 2013 Campbell was selected to be on the jury for Short films for Outfest LGBT film Festival in Los Angeles, the jury for Lili Award in MIX Copenhagen in 2015, the IRIS Prize, and Doc N Roll Festival and in 2018 in the Short Film Festival. Campbell is developing their second feature film Low Rider, produced by Stella Nwimo and co-written by Guy Bolton.
Campbell is the Co-creator with Kayza Rose of Duckie Family, a QTIPOC intergenerational event including films, performances and clubbing.
Campbell is also the Co-founder with Neelu Bhuman of Wahala Film Fund https://www.wahalafilmfund.com a completion fund for short films by and about QTIPOC people
@CampbellX
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is an artist, arts educator, curator and DJ based in Edinburgh/Glasgow. Her practice is research based and deals with the topics of post-colonialism and the processes of decolonisation through the mediums of poetry, digital art and performance. Natasha is interested in knowledge as a curatorial process that can be challenged via art and anti-colonial methods, as well as how the structures of arts institutions perpetuate white supremacy.
Natasha’s curatorial practice also prioritises the presence of People of Colour within these spaces through challenging these structures and by creating opportunities for PoC – evidenced in her contribution to the Invisible Spaces exhibition that took place at Summerhall in 2018.
She is a Project Co-ordinator for the collective UncoverED which is based at The University of Edinburgh – a project researching into the global and imperial history of the UoE, as well as a curator for Africa in Motion Film Festival 2019. Natasha also works at The Fruitmarket Gallery in multiple capacities.
Resisting whiteness 2019 