Previous Festivals

I started storytelling in 1999 in response to sudden, but not total, sight loss. Since then I have become an award-winning storyteller who just happens to be the UK’s only professional blind storyteller. My repertoire includes Iron-Age myth from British and Norse traditions, Greek myths, folk tales from around the world. All can be told in traditional style or with a more modern twist. I also create original and bespoke storytelling from historical sources and for site-specific venues.

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.

Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning and bestselling author, and a psychologist with a background in mythology and folklore. Much of her work is focused on the relevance of myths and fairy tales to the personal, cultural and environmental issues we face today. As well as writing seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted and Hagitude, her writing has appeared in international media outlets and she has featured in programs by the BBC, US public radio and independent filmmakers. Sharon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Member of the UK Association of Jungian Analysts, and has taught and lectured at many academic institutions, retreat centres and cultural festivals around the world. Her publication ‘The Art of Enchantment’ is a Top Ten Literature Substack.

Zoë Blackler is founding director of Kairos, a unique central London events and conversation space focused on radical ideas for social and cultural change in response to the polycrisis. As well as an events venue, Kairos is also a social club, a growing community and the initiator of the Counter Club Network, launching this year. Zoë is a journalist, editor and climate activist. Her journalism has been published by The London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New York Times, among others. She has an MSc in Social Anthropology from University College London.

Becky Burchell is a storyteller, a creative producer, a curator and a convenor, working at the intersection of the arts, environmentalism and community. Becky has a passion for combining different artforms, ideas and people to co-create many extraordinary gatherings and experiences that inspire change. She has created nighttime storytelling pilgrimage Women of the Dark Skies, wild musical co-collaboration Singing with Nightingales, a vision of the future in the play The World We Made, a community winter ritual the Chettle Wassail and multi-arts celebration CHANGE Festival. She lives with her family in a small village in Dorset, where she is convening with the land, the community and the ancestors to lay cultural foundations for the future.

Dr Tom Chatfield is a British author and tech philosopher. He’s interested in improving our experiences and understanding of technology, with a particular focus on critical thinking, AI and ethics.

Tom’s most recent book is Wise Animals, an exploration of the co-evolution of humanity and technology. His ten non-fiction books exploring digital culture, including How To Thrive in the Digital Age and Live This Book!, have appeared in over thirty languages. His bestselling critical thinking textbooks and online courses, developed in partnership with Sage Publishing, are used by companies, institutions and universities across the world.

Tom is an Associate at Perspectiva, creator of the Economist‘s international courses on critical thinking and artifical intelligence, and member of the British Library Advisory Council. In 2025, he co-founded a research consortium developing a Socratic AI tutor designed to teach critical thinking skills. He’s also an award-winning novelist, children’s author and jazz pianist.

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.

Sarah P Corbett is an award-winning activist and author, and is the Founding Director of the global Craftivist Collective. She’s an Ashoka Fellow, an Honorary Fellow at Goldsmiths University of London, a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild, a member of Hard Art Collective and a Service Designer trained at the Royal College of Art. Her unique ‘Gentle Protest’ approach to activism has helped to change hearts, minds, policies and laws around the world and she has worked with organisations including Save the Children, The Climate Coalition, Helsinki Design Week, Tate and V&A, BBC, SkyArts and Secret Cinema amongst others to reach people who are nervous of activism.

Nicola Dunn is an experienced systemic psychotherapist and coach and has worked with clients for over 25 years. She specializes in Constellations Therapy & Coaching working with clients on their personal & business: relationships, health and creativity.  She has a private practice in London and in addition consults, supervises and teaches constellations.

Charles Foster is a writer and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. His books include the New York Times Bestseller, Being a Beast, Being a Human, The Screaming Sky, Cry of the Wild and The Edges of the World, and have won or been short or long-listed for numerous prizes, including the Baillie Gifford Prize, the IgNobel Prize for Biology, the Deux Millions d’Amis Prize, and the Wainwright Prize. His website is www.charlesfoster.co.uk

Benedict Pollard has worked as a tropical conservation botanist at Kew Gardens and authored numerous botanical, entomological and conservation publications. Since 2008, he has worked as a professional landscape gardener. He founded www.mightyfineoaks.com in 2015. He is a Master in the Bwiti-Missoko spiritual tradition of Gabon and a devotee of Himalayan Self-Realised Master, Prof. Dr Svami R.A.G. Purna Maharaj.

Zaneta Sedilekova is a director of sustainability risk consultancy Planet Law Lab. As a qualified lawyer, her work focuses on providing strategic advice on sustainability risks, with specific expertise in climate and nature risks, to corporate boards, NGOs and governments around the world. She also develops tailor-made sustainability workshops and trainings. Zaneta has co-authored several book chapters and reports on the intersection of law with climate change and biodiversity loss, including ‘Corporate governance for nature: Surveying the legal landscape’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Policy and Law; ‘Sustainability: the climate and nature crisis – a leadership role for insurance’ in the Research Handbook on International Insurance Law and Regulation, and ‘Climate Change and Insurance’ in The Global Insurance Market and Change: Emerging Technologies. Examples of her thought leadership in the sustainability space include reports on directors’ duties and nature risk (Biodiversity Risk: Legal Implications for Companies and their Directors for Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative) as well as the role of legal profession in managing peaceful transition (Addressing biodiversity loss – revolution or evolution of English law? and Climate change risk – the future of law as we know it?commissioned by The Law Society of England and Wales). She regularly speaks about sustainability risk at conferences, podcasts and expert panels.

Nikki Trott is the author of Sacred Business (Bloomsbury, 2025), a manifesto for a new era of life-affirming business. As host of the global top 2% Going Conscious podcast, she shares the journeys of visionary entrepreneurs creating prosperity from purpose. Nikki is a regular international speaker, regenerative business strategist and adviser for CEOs and founders, and is redesigning investment for food systems transformation as founding partner of Rooted.

Find out more at nikkitrott.com. Connect on Instagram @nikkitrott and LinkedIn /nikkitrott.

Dr Noah Walker-Crawford is a publicly engaged researcher who studies climate litigation from a socio-legal perspective. Noah holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester. His doctoral research focussed on the moral dynamics of climate change: through an ethnographic study of climate justice claims between impacted communities, courts, and UN Climate Summits, he showed how legal activism reframes climate politics. Beside his academic work, he advises litigants and NGOs on using legal tools to fight for climate justice. He helped initiate Luciano Lliuya v RWE, a groundbreaking lawsuit by a Peruvian farmer against a German energy company over its contribution to climate change impacts in the Andes and has played a key role in developing the evidentiary strategy.

Kim Willis is a strategist and storyteller working where old myth meets new futures. She is the cofounder of the national  ‘Stories Dreams Seeds’ project to co-create a new community-led vision for Britain, and Chief Strategist at Cedar/Omnicom building story systems for change. She has written for The Guardian, worked at the UN, and her first book No Fair Maidens, a wild journey with the lost goddesses of Britain is out now, published by Penguin/Transworld in June 2026.

The Realisation Players consist of Christopher Ash, Justin Brett, Pippa Evans and Susan Harrison, who work together to bring the elements of music, comedy and improvisation and sprinkle them throughout the festival. Having met working on Showstopper The Improvised Musical, this quartet can be found throughout the weekend running workshops in instant collaboration, performing instant musical creations and experimenting with poetry and humour. They are thrilled to be part of The Realisation Festival 2026 and can’t wait to see what will be created.

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.

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 looking forward to the Realisation Festival in 2025.

www.pippaevans.com

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 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.

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.

Olivia Lacey is an experienced event manager and cook with an interest in creating meaningful experiences. For the past five years, she has managed the Realisation Festival, working with St Giles House to oversee logistics, ticketing, cordinating with speakers, and looking after participants. Previously, she worked on classic car rallies around the world, managing complex schedules and bespoke travel experiences. She also cooks for private events and festivals, and co-founded The Feast of Reason, a supper club that brings together food, interesting speakers, and cultural events.