Shirin Naveed is a multi-disciplinary artist, spatial designer, DJ and creative producer.

Shirin’s interests lie in the intersections of architecture, public art, community engagement, migration, and sound. She seeks to explore the intricate relationships between communities and their environments, and how spaces shape identities. Through diverse mediums from craft and carpentry to photography, sound or 3D design she endeavours to explore these connections, employing methodologies like co-design, workshop facilitation, oral histories, and research to delve deeper into this complex interplay.

Shirin has worked across the arts and built environment industries with roles at DSDHA, Beyond the Box, The Line Art Walk, IKON Gallery alongside freelancing across the creative industries and is a DJ and member of DAYTIMERS and Mehfil Arts. Shirin was a recipient of artist funding via UCL Trellis, and is an alumni of NotASchool, Theatrum Mundi’s PolyVocal Cities, Soho House Creative Mentor Network and is currently studying a Masters in Architecture at the RCA. Her most recent work was in co-designing the first dedicated South Asian space at Glastonbury – ARRIVALS.

Shirin Naveed

Chris Laing is an Architectural Designer, Activist, and Consultant, and the founder of Signstrokes and Deaf Architecture Front. He is keen to facilitate engagement between the Deaf community and the spatial and architecture practice industry, hoping to see greater opportunities for the field of architecture to benefit from Deaf peoples’ perspective in the near future. 


Chris joined Haworth Tompkins in 2017 and became a Part 2 Architectural Assistant. He studied Architecture at Kingston University and Interior Architecture and Design at UCA. He completed his MA at the Royal College of Art for his Part 2, where he was nominated for the Spatial Justice Award for his Thesis Project in 2021. His research interests include DeafSpace and how to build bridges between Deafness and Architecture.

Chris Laing

Nabiha is an Architectural/Urban Designer whose research explores alternatives to development schemes in ethnic enclaves in London, putting participation and community led planning methods at the forefront of these counter proposals. 

Through her graduate thesis, Reclaiming Banglatown, she establishes a strong focus on neglected communities in the planning process of Tower Hamlets, focusing on a community of women in Brick Lane, exploring how spaces can be sensitively designed for comfortable and functional use, with a strong focus on widening access to workspaces for women, as well as addressing the urgent need for family friendly social housing delivery in Tower Hamlets. Through this she developed a community-led counter proposal to the Woodseer Street Brick Lane shopping mall, together with these women, consisting of a dedicated small business centre with accessibility to women, onsite childcare, community and workshop spaces, a museum space, green spaces and a guide on how to create adequate and family friendly social housing as a retrofit of the existing Truman Brewery buildings.

She continues to explore community led planning and participatory design methods as an Urban Designer at ZCD Architects, a studio with a research driven approach to design with a strong focus on community engagement. Nabiha’s independent practise also includes filmmaking, fabrication and curation, alongside her architectural practice. 


Nabiha Qadir

Holly Rollins Is a London native architectural designer of Caribbean and African American heritage. With a diverse background In Interior Architecture, furniture and artefact design. Her practice seeks to utilise furniture and objects as an artistic medium and response to in-depth research. Rollins navigates the intersections of emotions, nostalgia, shared cultural experiences from her eclectic ancestry, the human psyche and senses, bringing these elements to life through her distinctive approach to furniture, spaces and objects.

Upon completing her master’s in Furniture and Product Design at Kingston School of Art, Rollins earned recognition on both national and international scales through her design practice, Rolstudio. Notably, The Prada Group acknowledged Rollins' work during her studies, selecting her as one of six young UK designers for "Shaping a Creative Future," a conference held in collaboration with Yale School of Management and Politecnico di Milano at The Fondazione Prada. She later unveiled her debut furniture piece through Herman Miller in 2021.

Beyond crafting unique pieces, she remains dedicated to orchestrating experiences that unite and educate the Design community. Collaborating with entities such as The Design Museum and fashion houses such as Prada and Axel Arigato, Rollins actively contributes to bridging the gap between Interior Architectural and Fashion worlds. Her impact extend beyond design, creating a narrative that resonates with the essence of artistic expression and connectivity within the industry.

Holly Rollins

Lucille is a Part 1 Architect and architectural educator. She is a keen illustrator, painter and maker encouraging a multidisciplinary approach to architectural design and the built environment. Working across architectural practices, design studios and special educational needs education, Lucille looks to challenge the role of the architect.

Her work looks to promote the design of joyful and equitable spaces where underrepresented people and those outside of the industry can meaningfully influence the design of their city.

Lucille Merisio

Rim Kalsoum is an Architectural Designer and Educator based in London. She is a member of Palestine Regeneration team and Architects for Gaza Education Cluster. She is an activist who has been using the skills she has picked up over the years as tools in pushing for positive change whether it is in the field of architecture or beyond. Rim is also passionate about the traditional craftsmanship of the Levant region in particular mosaic and woodwork in Syria and is currently exploring ways in which she can help contribute to its practice.

Rim Kalsoum

Karen Jelenje is a creative practitioner dedicated to community development and social impact. She founded Activate The City to inspire young people to use their creativity for good and to enhance their employability skills whilst making a meaningful contribution to their local communities. Alongside this, she is developing her own visual arts practice Jelenje Studio by exploring African artisanal traditions, participatory art and communal forms of gathering found across the continent.

Karen Jelenje

By day, Nabil Al-Kinani is a built-environment professional with a keen interest in urbanism, placemaking, sustainable development and place vision.

By night, he is a writer and cultural producer that uses creative practice to deliver change-making projects that draw focus on the relationship between spaces and stories. Other strands of his work includes the exploration of spatial politics, identity, culture and migration

Nabil Al-Kinani

Shukri Sultan is a lecturer, writer and researcher based in London. She is a co-founder of the architecture criticism collective Afterparti. She is interested in archives, dissemination, zines, and spatial justice. 

Her research focuses on the spaces appropriated or enforced on Muslim minorities in cities worldwide. At the core of this research is an examination of the relationship between the body, prayer, and space, as well as the related questions of citizenship and participation

Shukri Sultan

Betty Owoo is a Croydon-based spatial designer and writer interested in the potential of public service, policy and culture to shape urban environments for the better. She is currently a Senior Design Officer at the Greater London Authority's Design Unit, working to promote quality and inclusion in the built environment through policy and development management. She is also a founding member of PATCH, a multidisciplinary group that uses writing as a springboard to create spatial interventions and design ephemeral events. She previously worked as an architectural designer at Be First London, where she facilitated the development of responsive urban and architectural visions and strategies to deliver social housing across a range of sites in Barking & Dagenham, and is a former co-chair of the Architecture Foundation Young Trustees.

Trained in architecture, she is energised by urban landscapes, and curious about the intersection between architecture and ecology in the city. Her practice centres around championing underrepresented groups in the public realm. She has written for Dezeen, the Architectural Review, the Architects Journal, Design Council, and Urban Design Group Journal. She was named as a Rising Star by the RIBA Journal in 2022 and currently sits on New London Architecture's NextGen panel.

Betty Owoo

Dis is a disability-led research collective which advocates for the value of disabled and crip experience within space and culture, working against the increasing isolation and atomisation of disabled and crip people in art and architecture. 

Dis was founded by architectural researcher Jordan Whitewood-Neal & artist and writer James Zatka-Haas. Dis have led a variety of workshops, public programme events, research projects and have taught a Design Think Tank at the London School of Architecture for the last 2 years.

Dis is currently working on various projects and pieces of writing which address crip time, crip histories, deinstitutionalized pedagogy, and the spatial condition of the night.

Dis Collective

Tomi Balogun is an architecture student whose journey has been deeply influenced by a connection to the ways people live and how those experiences shape design. Through collaborations with diverse organizations, Tomi has cultivated a genuine curiosity for the stories that materials tell, with a special focus on repurposing them to create designs that are both sustainable and expressive. Tomi is especially passionate about blending cultural elements into their work, with a particular interest in exploring the rich heritage of the Black diaspora and how it can inspire thoughtful, impactful design.

Driven by a commitment to community-based design, Tomi views every project as an opportunity to address real needs and solve individual problems. Winning the People's Pavilion architecture competition by Beyond the Box has further fueled Tomi's dedication to merging cultural insights with innovative, environmentally conscious practices to create spaces that resonate with both history and the present.

Tomi Balogun

Xcessive Aesthetics is an all-female interdisciplinary design collective exploring data and alternate realities through spatial installations. XA was founded in 2019 with the idea of combining spatial design and digital tools in unconventional ways, on the one hand to explore the hidden biases behind emerging technologies, and on the other to create accessible and playful public installations that spark digital and physical interactions.

Xcessive Aesthetics has exhibited installations in major cultural institutions such as the Wellcome Collection (2024) and Victoria and Albert Museum (2022) in London and the Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires (2022), has participated in design festivals such as Transmediale (2023), London Design Festival (2022) and Buenos Aires Architecture Biennial (2022) and has been featured in publications such as Arch+, The Architects’ Journal and Terraforma Journal. Members from the collective currently lead a Bachelors design studio at Design Academy Eindhoven titled Studio Digital Native. XA was founded by six members based in London and internationally.

 Xcessive Aesthetics

Nasra Abdullahi is a spatial practitioner, researcher, writer and editor based in London. 

Seeking a multiplicity in spatial practice, she is interested in what modern architectural technology can look like when innovated and reappropriated through and in relation with various knowledge systems. Her work is centred around exploring the possibilities of using analytical tools from black, diasporic and indigenous African traditions to inform us about design and technological practice. Most recently Nasra has been involved in exhibition research and the facilitation of projects supporting young people interested in architectural curatorial practice.

Nasra Abdullahi

Sarah is spatial practitioner, facilitator, writer and researcher. Deeply rooted in her lived experiences, Sarah works in the intersections of policy, governance, and the everyday of black, brown and diasporic communities in London. Through methodologies of storytelling, sound, ethnography, curation and participatory engagement her practices seek to amplify and include voices who are often muted from dialogues of their borough and city.

Sarah Osei

Lucia’s practise as a Set Designer and Art Director, seamlessly integrates spatial design elements, to create immersive environments that enhance storytelling and captivate audiences through world-building. Her expertise is the cornerstone of her practice, in Film & TV as well as installations and gallery exhibitions, with a background that contributes to BAFTA-nominated productions and working with institutions such as the Saatchi Gallery and Somerset House. 

Beyond her role in design, Lucia is Creative Director for Junto Arts, a youth and POC-led curation and production company that champions grassroots initiatives and seeks to widen access for creative practitioners from low socio-economic backgrounds in the music and visual arts industries. Her curatorial lens, combined with a deep appreciation for authenticity and culture, allows her to craft exhibitions, installations, and community centred workshops that aim to combine educational and artistic practises to leave a lasting impact.

Lucia Barsegian

Born in Jordan and raised in the United Arab Emirates, Zain Al-Sharaf Wahbeh is a London-based Palestinian researcher and Part II Architectural designer at WilkinsonEyre. She obtained her qualifications in Architecture from the University of Edinburgh in 2019 and the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 2022.

As a Part II Architecture student at RCA, Zain Al-Sharaf has actively confronted the dissolution of the Palestinian vernacular under the Zionist occupation, through multidisciplinary archival practices. To problematise the extinction of Jaffa’s Arab urbanity, she conducts speculative reconstructions of its urban-communal-memories using digital modelling and rendering software. Her forensic and journalistic endeavours have since been invested in promoting social justice, biopolitical inclusivity, and cultural restoration.