Core team
Minou Tsambika Polleros
Minou is art.earth’s Assistant Director. As dance practitioner, choreographer and Social Sculpture practitioner, Minou has been researching the capacity of visceral empathy and a more embodied cognition as essential antidote to an increasing collective disembodiment and separation from what deep ecologists call an ecological self. In the context of living in an age where climate change is becoming a physical matter, she is developing different practices for inner and outer homemaking, finding processes that cultivate more literacy in being viscerally empathetic with what is alive in and around the human experience. Minou is interested on a more expanded perspective of the dance practitioner, one who is actively cultivating connective capacities and choreographic forms, essential in the endeavour to create a more embodied system change in both environmental and social arenas. Born in Austria, Minou is currently a RANE research associate. She holds a BA (Hons) degree in Choreography, Dance and Visual Art Practice from Dartington College of Arts and an MA in Social Sculpture from Oxford Brookes University. Minou is inspired in Phd research, through which she is intending to develop a teaching practice for dance education, one that is looking at the relational field of dance, choreography and a more eco-social practice. She regards her works as creative platforms that bring social, environmental and artistic practices in dialogue. To read more about her work go to: www.minoutsambika.com
Richard Povall
art.earth’s Founding Director is Richard Povall, a sound artist, digital systems designer, consultant and educator and is the Programme Leader for Arts & Ecology at Schumacher College. Recent work includes …and so the search begins, a commission from the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, and Teatime(link is external) an installation for National Trust. Recent publications include a chapter in We Assert! the manifesto of CIWEM’s Arts and Environment Network, and he guest edited a special arts and ecology edition of Digital Creativity(link is external) (Routledge). Previously he co-directed dance-theatre company half/angel(link is external) and was a founding Director of Aune Head Arts; he has taught in a variety of Universities and Conservatories in the UK and US and was formerly Director of Contemporary Music at Oberlin Conservatory in the UK and held Senior Research Fellowships at Middlesex University and Dartington College of Arts. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2010, and has sat on numerous boards, including Dance in Devon (Chair) and Future’s Venture Foundation (Vice-Chair). Read Richard’s CV.
Cat Radford
Cat has worked with art.earth on most of our main events and is a key member of the core team.Cat graduated with an MA in Devised Theatre from Dartington College of Arts in 2000. As a founder member of Blind Ditch she has worked as a devisor, performer, workshop leader, producer and project manager on a multitude of cross disciplinary adventures. As a lead facilitator on VANLAND she has made over 20 digital shorts with young people across the South West of England. Cat was a Business Fellow in Theatre at Dartington College of Arts, and currently works as a producer, project manager and researcher for creative projects across the South West. You may have also seen her appearing in films by Clive Austin and performances of the traditional English dance troupe, Morris Offspring.
Board of Directors
Julia Bond
Originally I trained in Arts in Education at Dartington, followed by a B.A(Bristol)in the 70’s and a decade later a B.Phil (Exeter)in Psychology and Counselling.
I’ve had a varied career teaching in diverse settings in education and the health sector. Both passionate about the Arts in it’s own right, and as a medium of communication able to bring together both mainstream and marginalised groups in innovative and creative ways, and acting as a conduit for social cohesion and societal change.
Supported by the Arts Council I enabled a number of inclusive multi school/college events bringing Artists into the school setting and subsequently became a founder trustee of Devon Artists in Schools initiative.D.A.I.S.I.
Currently I’m a trustee of Creation Myth Puppet Company.
My love of travel,to challenge my cultural beliefs and assumptions, and learn, led me to work with S.C.F. in Ladakh and N.G.O’s in Indonesia, advising on using the arts, in a culturally sensitive way, to convey vital health care information to indigenous communities. Environmental and ecological issues threatened both communities and the profound impact of climate change was obvious.
I now Chair an active group protecting Biodiversity in my local area, the South Hams.
Now having time to focus on my own art in recent years I am working towards a Sustainable Studio, prioritising eco and natural materials in my work in textiles, printmaking and mixed media, and developing new processes, some digital.
Current work centres around decay and possibilities for regeneration.I also collaborate with other Artists and Poets and make one off Artists books to commission.I am a member of Devon Artists Network.
Jane Hodgson
Jane Hodgson is an artist, (primarily a painter), a mentor to artists, and a personal coach. She began her creative career as a graphic designer, but after nearly 25 years she began her true creative journey – her personal art. She completed a BA (Hons) Fine Art, 2005 at University of Hertfordshire then an MA (Arts and Ecology), 2008 at Dartington, Devon. She is an academician with the South West Academy.
Lucy Kerr
I use Illusion as a portal, both the process of making and the outcome are a means of transportation to lost memories, hidden places and other worlds.
For me producing illusions from household objects and foraged ephemera is a ritual, a prayer or a spell. My work is about exploration of the internal and external, I seek a feeling or a memory that is often just beyond my reach.
Emma Yorke
Information to follow
Mat Osmond
Mat is a writer and visual artist with an interest in the arts’ role in helping us to understand and confront the dominant culture’s radical unsustainability. His recent work includes an ongoing series of illustrated poetry chapbooks, Strandline Books (which won the British Museum’s 2015 Michael Marks Prize for poetry illustration), as well as image-word collaborations with the poet Em Strang (Stone, 2016) and the painter Kate Walters (The Black Madonna’s Song, 2020).
Mat regularly publishes essays that speak to entanglements of art, ecology and spirit within arts practice, including The Schoolgirl & The Drunkard, on storytelling and runaway climate change, An Underswell of Divination, on the illustrational collaborations between Ted Hughes and Leonard Baskin, and Black Light, on mass-extinction, regenerative culture and the rewilding of prayer. As part of Falmouth University’s Dark Economies research group, in 2019 Mat curated Negotiating the Surrender, a regional series of talks and workshops with Dark Mountain co-founder Dougald Hine, in support of the regenerative work of the Extinction Rebellion movement.
In 2017 Mat led a residential Art.Earth Short Course with the poet Alyson Hallett, Intimate Ecologies, which experimented with writing, drawing and improvised ritual as a means to enter into a reciprocal conversation with place. Mat’s a director of the graphic literature publisher Atlantic Press and of the Art.Earth research collective based at Dartington, where he’s currently leading a year-long series of events on the theme of Death, Dying & Change. Having regularly published his own illustration, poetry and essays with the Dark Mountain Project since its inception, in 2017 Mat acted as art editor for Issue 11 of their Dark Mountain Journal and as guest editor for In Other Tongues: a series of essays flowing out of the Art.Earth summit of the same name. Mat was also the co-convenor and lead for Borrowed Time.
Mary Waltham
Mary Waltham was born and educated in England, graduating with honours in Biology from Queen Mary College. Her previous career was in international scientific and medical publishing. She was President and Publisher of Nature and the Nature family of international journals, and before that was Managing Director and Publisher of The Lancet. She has now returned to an early passion for art, recently completing a BA in Fine Art, graduating with first class honours. Mary’s work reflects a powerful interest in expressing the fragility of our environment as seen through the eyes of both scientist and artist. When working on a particular environmental theme, Mary is in contact with relevant professional scientists. This interdisciplinary approach provides an essential factual basis while connecting the work to current scientific understanding. She works in a variety of 2D and 3D media, and a range of art disciplines including drawing, painting, video and installation works. The work often incorporates natural materials collected locally such as mud, bark, moss, and wood. Her intention is to bring the landscape to life in merging it with environmental issues to spark new conversations. Mary Waltham’s work is exhibited in public and private collections in the USA and Europe.
Website: www.MaryWaltham.com
E-mail: Mary@marywaltham.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/marywaltham
Blog: https://marywalthamdotcom.wordpress.com/