Realisation 2024

Rowan Williams
Keynote Speaker

Rowan Williams was born in Swansea and studied theology in Cambridge and Oxford, doing research on Russian religious thought. He has taught in several universities and has also served as Bishop of Monmouth in Wales (1992-2002) and as Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012).  He now lives in Cardiff and continues to write and speak on a variety of topics.  He is well-known both as a  theologian and as a poet, and has published a number of books on theology, literature and contemporary issues.

Indra Adnan
Speaker

Indra Adnan is Founder and Co-initator of The Alternative UK, a socio-political platform serving systemic transformation. AUK publishes a Daily Alternative news blog, develops cosmolocal agency networks (CANs) and connects planetary regeneration projects. Indra is concurrently a socio-psychotherapist, writer and consultant on soft power. She is also Visiting Director of Poiesis at Perspectiva. Clients have included the Danish and Brazilian governments, World Economic Forum and NATO. Her book The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Age was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2021.

Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Speaker

Dominique is an artist and a dancer. Her research focuses on embodied knowing in ancient Sufi, Daoist and Vedic wisdom traditions. Through an unconventional art practice combining living matter, sound, song, sculptures and drawing, she contemplates notions of time, energy, transformation, and impermanence, both in her body and the materials she works with. Her Art PhD (Goldsmiths University, 2024) entitled Space of the Nameless is presented as a game, involving meditations, koan riddles and dances, for improvising across disciplinary boundaries. In her current work with handcrafted electronics she is creating an ‘instrument as installation’, to hone less visual and more holistically sensuous states of attention. Her monograph, Butoh, as Heard by a Dancer (Routledge, 2024) is an oral account of Butoh’s postwar Japanese origins and legacies, told from a practitioner’s perspective. www.dominiquebb.com   Instagram: @dominique_savitri

Vanessa Brassey
Speaker

Mazviita Chirimuuta
Speaker

Originally trained in neuroscience, Mazviita Chirimuuta is a philosopher at Edinburgh University who writes about the history of ideas behind the mind/brain sciences. Her book on colour vision and perceptual reality, Outside Color, was published by MIT Press in 2015. This was recently followed by a new book, The Brain Abstracted, about the ways that the theories developed in neuroscience are a vast simplification of the underlying complexity of brain, mind and body.

Rowan Cobelli
Speaker

Rowan Cobelli has been a full-time tutor and teacher trainer of Yoga for 24 years. His studies have taken him from the psychological to the spiritual, exploring the art of inner resolution and true rest. He grew up with a Roman Catholic family and schooling, lived for several years at a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation College, then experienced Ashram living whilst studying Yoga & Yogic philosophy.  He is interested in the complexity of human interaction, and subtle and determinant forces that inform behaviour, opinion, choices, and purpose. Rowan became fascinated by the non-dual path of inner communion, silence without effort, and direct recognition of the nature of Being. He is now particularly interested in the fine line between the direct experience of Self recognition, and the study of the very human journey of understanding and psychological integration. These explorations have taken him into the realms of trauma, shadow and repression, spiritual bypassing, and the brilliance and precariousness of the human defence mechanisms, and their roles in a more honest and emotionally developed life.

Bettany Hughes
Speaker

Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. Her books include Venus and Aphrodite (shortlisted for the Runciman Award), theSunday Times bestselling Istanbul (shortlisted for the Runciman Award), The Hemlock Cup (shortlisted for the Writers Guild Award) and Helen of Troy. She has made many documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, the Discovery and History channels. Bettany has been a Professor at the New College of Humanities and Research Fellow at King’s College London. She has been honoured with numerous awards including the Medlicott Medal, Europe’s Cultural Heritage Prize and an OBE for services to history.

Ivo Mensch
Speaker

Ivo  Mensch is developing the Praxis strand of Perspectiva. He designs practices and courses as a means to skilfully navigate larger arcs of cultural transition, shifts in consciousness and whatever the meta-crisis throws at us. He researches and writes on Time (Temporics), the Imagination and Logos as fundamental realms of change. Ivo is an ordained monk in the Zen Buddhist lineage, and practices for over a decade in the wisdom school of the Diamond Approach. Besides working for Perspectiva, Ivo supports individuals in their unfolding and realisation as a coach. He is a published author and has written on the inner, developmental sides of entrepreneurship. He worked over a decade as a journalist, covering tech, law, spirituality and was a communications consultant after an early, winding career in tech, yacht carpentry and greenhouse construction.

Elizabeth Oldfield
Speaker

Elizabeth Oldfield is an experienced leader, speaker, writer and podcast host with a passion for intelligent public engagement on issues of faith, identity, and healing our common life. She appears regularly in the media, including BBC One, Sky News, the World Service, and writing in Prospect Magazine, UnHerd and The Financial Times.

She also hosts The Sacred, a podcast, events and visual content brand which creates space for a wide range of guests to reflect on their deepest values. For ten years she was Director of Theos, the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. She spent the first part of her career working at the BBC in television and radio, contributing to programmes including Beyond Belief and the Moral Maze, as well as Radio 3 and 4 documentaries. She is motivated by the dearth of real wisdom in public life, by a desire to increase empathy across our deep differences and the way spirituality can help individuals and societies flourish. She has a masters in Theology and the Arts and lives in an intentional community in south london.  Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times is now available to preorder. More on her coaching and consultancy practice at elizabetholdfield.com. You can find her regular writing at morefullyalive.substack.com.

Esmé Partridge
Speaker

Esmé Lily Katherine Partridge is a writer who works at the intersection of religion, philosophy and culture. She is currently researching Platonism and philosophies of religious pluralism at the University of Cambridge, and writes for publications including The Critic, First Things, Renovatio (The Journal of Zaytuna College) and UnHerd. She previously worked on interfaith and religious freedom initiatives as a consultant for a number of clients including the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace, the FCDO, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Christianity in the Holy Land. She is also interested in the philosophical and spiritual implications of technology, and regularly writes and speaks on this subject.

Benedict Pollard
Speaker

Paul Powlesland
Speaker

Siva Thambisetty
Speaker

Nat Wei
Speaker

Lord Wei is a social entrepreneur, advisor, author and legislator with an interest in social reform.  His background is in business, investing, technology, and social enterprise, which culminated in policy development and an invitation in 2009 to enter the House of Lords. Lord Wei currently serves as a Conservative Life Peer in the House of Lords. He also advises and is a non-executive director of a number of commercial boards spanning residential and commercial real estate, wealth management, and technology investment. Determined to make an even more significant impact in his community, country, and the rest of the world, Lord Wei continues to be involved in different fields, particularly technology, to be a catalyst of influential positive change.

Jonathan Ainscough
Realisation Player

Jonathan Ainscough is an actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, director, writer, musical director and arranger. Alongside his work has an improviser with Showstopper and Austentatious, he has worked for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Leeds Playhouse, as well as the award-winning charity Streetwise Opera, leading music and drama workshops with people experiencing homelessness. Twitter: @JAinscough85

Chris Ash
Realisation Player

Chris is a composer, workshop leader, musical director, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist. A founding member of Showstopper! and An Improbable Musical, he is sometimes found teaching Musical Theatre Writing at Goldsmiths or Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, or coaching Musical Theatre Improvisation at the Royal Academy of Music. As a composer, Chris created “Wasted” with Carl Miller; a “Live Rockumentary” about the Brontë siblings. Collaborating with digital media company Megaverse, Chris has created music & sound for Virtual Reality, and smartphone gameplay.

Chris has led creative workshops for International School students around the world, including on the “Unseen Stories” of asylum-seekers in Hong Kong, and on “Bayanihan” in Manila (ISTA). He has been a guest musical director for many of the London 50-hour Improvathons, and at festivals in Oslo, Rome, Edmonton, Hamburg, Canmore, Copenhagen, Birmingham, and beyond.

Chris Ash and Susan Harrison will be improvising a mini musical, exploring whichever themes rise to the surface during the festival. Using your suggestions they will conjure up a slice of spontaneous entertainment to delight and inspire.

Susan Harrison
Realisation Player

Susan is a member of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. She has also improvised with Mischief Movie Night, Austentatious and her own company These Folk. She teaches improvisation for Hoopla & The Bridge and is passionate about creating a playful & supportive environment. As an actress she’s worked with numerous companies including; CBBC, The National Theatre & Radio 4.

Susan Harrison and Chris Ash will be improvising a mini musical, exploring whichever themes rise to the surface during the festival. Using your suggestions they will conjure up a slice of spontaneous entertainment to delight and inspire.

Pippa Evans
Realisation Player & Programme Co-ordinator

Pippa Evans is an award winning improviser, musical comedian and author of Improv Your Life: An Improviser’s Guide To Embracing Whatever Life Throws At You. In 2013 she and Sanderson Jones started Sunday Assembly, the church for people who don’t believe in God which became a global phenomenon. Though no longer involved in the Sunday Assembly project, Pippa finds herself drawn to the Venn Diagram of secular spirituality, improvisation and humour. How can we be fully ourselves in relation to others? Can we do serious work without taking ourselves too seriously?

Teaching improvisation has taken Pippa everywhere from Drama Schools to boardrooms, working with everyone from footballers to NHS workers. Pippa has been collaborating with Perspectiva since its early iterations and is excited to return to the Realisation Festival for 2024.

www.pippaevans.com

Nick Ashley-Cooper
Our Host

Nick Shaftesbury graduated from the London Business School with a Masters in Business Administration in 2008. After an early career as a DJ and music promoter in New York City, he returned to the UK in 2005 and has since overseen the restoration of his family home, St Giles House. The project has won several national awards, including the 2015 Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Award for Building Conservation and the Historic England Angel Award, Best Rescue of a Historic Building or Site. The work has been documented in a book entitled, ‘The Rebirth of an English Country House’, which he co-wrote with Tim Knox, the current Director of the Royal Collection. He is the first Shaftesbury for 50 years to live in St Giles House, alongside his wife Dinah and their three children.

Ed Haddon
Festival Coordinator

Ed is a coach who specialises in working with entrepreneurs and those looking for a more autonomous meaningful life. He works with purpose led leaders to develop their own models of success in business and life. He is particularly interested in redirecting focus from shareholders to a broader set of beneficiaries. He uses coaching to generate honest conversations and change, working at the intersection of psychology and business. He is the author of the upcoming book The Modern Maverick, which helps readers unlock their potential for the benefit of all those around them and society as a whole. He holds degrees in Psychology from Oxford University and in Business from Harvard University and a Diploma in Performance Coaching from The Coaching Academy.

Jonathan Rowson
Director of Perspectiva

Jonathan Rowson is a writer, philosopher and chess Grandmaster who was British Chess Champion from 2004-2006. HE holds degrees from Oxford, Bristol, and Harvard universities, was former director of the Social Brain Center at the RSA and an Open Society Fellow. He is co-founder and director of Perspectiva, a research institute that examines the relationship between complex global challenges and the inner lives of human beings. His latest book is The Moves that Matter – A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life.

Lucy Taylor
Small Groups Facilitator

Mark Vernon
Programme Co-ordinator and Facilitator

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

The Ceilidh Tree
Band

The Ceilidh Tree are a friendly and experienced band. Having attending ceilidhs, sessions and folk festivals from a tender age we’re passionate about spreading the joys of folk dance far and wide! Our line up includes fiddle, accordion, guitar and our amazing caller – the undoubted star of the show.

Patrick Frost
Photographer