Rucera Seethal is artistic director of the multi-disciplinary National Arts Festival held annually in Makhanda, South Africa. Since 2021 she is also on the programme team for Theatre Festival Basel 2022.  Prior to this she was programme manager at the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg for six years, responsible for the performing arts portfolio across the Southern African region, and for co-developing and co-adjudicating its Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation regional grant programme. Between 2004 and 2011 she was artistic director and production manager at Chimurenga, the award-winning arts, culture and politics magazine. She currently lives in Johannesburg.

Odil Mukhamedov is the founder and executive producer of the MOC Fest in Tashkent, a free arts festival aimed at popularising the contemporary art of Uzbekistan, with painting, photography, music and short film exhibitions, as well as seminars, workshops and networking for the creative industry. Odil’s vision was to create a participatory community where creatives could interact and contribute to each other's projects.

In 2020, the MOC creative association was founded, a community of creatives in Uzbekistan that includes designers, artists, writers, photographers and videographers. Over the past year, MOC has grown from a grassroots community into a full production centre.

Ahmed El Attar is an Egyptian independent theatre director, playwright, translator and cultural manager. He is the founder of Orient Productions which manages several institutions and projects in Egypt such as Studio Emad Eddin, the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF), the Arab Arts Focus, Rawabet Art Space, and Maktabi – Creative Office Spaces.

His Temple Independent Theatre Company has performed his theatre work in the most prestigious theatres and festivals in over two dozen countries. Additionally, El Attar is the first Arab playwright and director whose work has been commissioned by the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in Sweden since its establishment in 1788.

In 2018, El Attar was presented the title of a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture for his significant contributions to theatre. 

Jesse James is artistic director of Walk&Talk, based in Lisbon and Ponta Delgada, and works as a cultural programmer and independent curator, combining curatorial projects and strategic management of projects, artists and cultural structures. He is co-founder and president of Anda&Fala – Cultural Association, a contemporary and multidisciplinary creative structure in the Azores Islands, and leads the artistic direction of Walk&Talk – Arts Festival. He is co-founder and part of the curatorial team of Fabric Arts Festival in Fall River (Massachusetts, USA). In parallel, over the last years, he has assumed the direction of Production of structures such as Nome Próprio and artists such as Gustavo Ciríaco or Sofia Caetano. 

Rocca Holly-Nambi is the Director of b-side, an international contemporary art festival based on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. Prior to this, Holly-Nambi was the British Council’s Head of Arts East Africa, and subsequently Director of Arts Sub-Saharan Africa. Holly-Nambi co-founded 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust, a centre for contemporary art in Kampala, Uganda; and KLA ART, Kampala’s biennial public art festival. They have delivered artistic and curatorial projects for the Edinburgh International Art Festival, Glasgow International Festival, and the Mela Festival of World Music and Dance. Holly-Nambi received an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Edinburgh College of Art and is completing a practice-based PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, on Queer Abstraction in Kenya and Uganda. Holly-Nambi lives in Weymouth, Dorset.