Patty B is a self taught artist, Ugandan by heritage, born and raised in Ethiopia and now based in Sheffield, UK. Moving around a lot throughout her lifetime Patty B has found a sense of home by creating art that explores her roots. With a signature mixed media style she creates images that journey further into the history, the beauty and the power of the Black culture, discovering identities and making sense of her experiences. Since her debut exhibition "Her Story Remained Unfinished" at the Abbeydale Picture House, Sheffield, Patty B has continued to display her artwork in exhibitions around the country, on billboard campaigns and has had a special features in NowThen's Magazine.

Seiko is a Japanese artist who lives and works in Sheffield. Based in her studio at Persistence Works, Yorkshire Artspace, she creates large installations, sculptures, and films often using traditional textile and craft techniques. She also loves working on Public Realm projects that are socially engaged and focus on the hidden stories of local people and their heritage. In her practice, she is interested in how slow and dying craft techniques have a future and keep its cultural value within our ever-changing fast-paced society, and how those old traditional techniques can exist within the contemporary art arena. In recent years, she enjoys collaborating with other professionals such as scientists and sound engineers on challenging projects in new creative directions.

Eelyn Lee is an award winning artist and filmmaker of Hong Kong-English heritage who has shown work at Barbican, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Palais de Tokyo and at international film festivals. Her art practice combines collective research, performance and filmmaking to create frameworks for collaboration. With ‘organising’ a key aspect of her practice, Eelyn has convened a range of community building projects including the Social Art Summit [2018] - an artist-led review of socially engaged arts practice, and the ESEA Artists’ Futures Town Hall [2023] - a place to imagine new landscapes for East and Southeast Asian artists in the UK and beyond. Her ongoing body of work, Performing Identities is a collective reimagining of ESEA identities through the creation of new mythical characters and their cosmologies.

Kedisha Coakley is a London-born, Sheffield-based artist. Her practice spans sculpture, photography, and printmaking, predominantly casting in bronze, through which she interrogates Black histories and experiences. Investigating the overlooked, she remixes aesthetics, techniques, and cultural refences throughout her work. Process, hybridity, and materiality are important strands of her practice. Coakley’s work begins as a personal investigation of self, childhood memories and ritualistic practices in the lives of Black communities, and what they signify universally in the world. Making visible suppressed or express meaning by looking hard at what exists in the world of cultural objects, exploring the unconscious of culture, maintaining the integrity of their origins.

Najma Heybe is a creative artist from Sheffield. Her passion for writing and poetry is driven by a deep desire to express herself and connect with others through her writing.

Jacqui Hilson is a self-taught textile artist and speaker who has developed a machine -based technique using Mola (Reverse Applique). Jacqui's art explores motifs taken from nature that are found in many cultures. Her work draws inspiration from her Nigerian background and her Yorkshire surroundings. A strong interest in colour and the part it plays in evoking and depicting emotions is a large part of her craft, as is the texture and layers of fabric. The technique of Reverse Applique involves taking sharp scissors to to cut through layers of fabric revealing what is underneath. The technique is not dissimilar to the one employed by historians to unearth the stories that have been covered by layers of time.

Ellis Walker is an early career researcher specialising in black British literature. Her main interests centre around black authored speculative fiction, the British publishing industry and the intersections of race and space in black British literature. Her PhD entitled ‘The Reception and Representation of Black British Authors in Contemporary Britain’ from the University of Sheffield was completed in September 2023.

Rosamaria Cisneros is a dancer, choreographer, dance historian, critic, Roma scholar, sociologist, flamenco historian and peace activist who graduated from UW- Madison and went on to complete her MA in Dance History & Criticism from UNM-Albuquerque. Her PhD in Sociology focused on Roma women, intersectionality, dialogic feminism and communicative methodologies. At the moment based in the UK, she is an artist- researcher at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research. She is also an independent artist, dancer, curator and teacher who has organised various festivals and exhibitions. Her dance films have screened in the UK, US, Colombia, Mexico, Greece, Cyprus and Germany and her latest documentary won best of the UK in 2016.

Dal Kular is a Sheffield born and based writer, mentor and facilitator of creative writing, nature-allied and multi-media arts for healing and liberation. Leaving school at 16 years old with 3 O-levels and being told she could never be a writer, Dal returned to the power of words and writing in her late forties, gaining an MSc in Therapeutic Writing. Her debut poetry book (un)interrupted tongues is published by Fly on The Wall Press. Shortlisted for Wasafiri New Writing Prize and Class Action Nature writing prize, she’s been a recipient of an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Grant and has contributed a chapter on nature and healing for the forthcoming anthology ‘Wild Service, to be published by Bloomsbury 2024. She loves making zines, botanical journals and roaming the Peak Ditrict in her tiny campervan.

I am a 22-year-old multi-media artist, fine art student at Liverpool John Moore university and musician of Caribbean / British descent, living in Sheffield. I’m very much influenced by my family, our histories and my location. My interests are animation, film and soundscapes. My last shadow puppet film earned an innovation award from the British Animation Short Film Festival 2023, and currently making a new shadow puppet horror short film “Mortis”.

CJ Simon is a writer and academic whose dynamic work finds a way to balance both the scholastic and poetic. As a playwright, spoken-word artist, essayist, videographer, and podcaster, CJ's work endeavors to use mulidisceplary approaches in creating politically engaging and challenging work. His writing has been performed across the UK from the Southwark Playhouse in London to the Birmingham Hippodrome and beyond, with work currently being developed at Sheffield Theatres' and Theatre Deli. CJ is taking his next steps as a freelance writer and creative with his new theatre company Fire and Folie Theatre pushing to produce research-led and impact-driven art, making this work with Dig Where You Stand well-timed and incredibly exciting.

Asma Kabadeh is a creative producer and programmer with an extensive background in collaborative arts initiatives. Working across arts, community development and research her work is primarily centred on facilitating diverse creative voices in multimedia forms with a strong focus on uncovering untold stories. Asma has produced 10 short films with local filmmakers, screened by Sheffield DocFest Exchange, and Migration Matters festival.

Otis Mensah (recipient of Jerwood Arts Live Work Fund & Arts Council England's Developing your Creative Practice) is a musician and multidisciplinary artist exploring the intersection of poetry and experimental music(s). Taking influence from the rhythmic and expressive freedom of Jazz, Otis’ work uses aesthetic language as an instrument to solo through themes of race, identity, gender and the body. Since being appointed Sheffield’s first Poet Laureate in 2018, Otis has sold-out their debut poetry collection Safe Metamorphosis published with Prototype in 2020, debuted at Glastonbury, & We Out Here Festival, as well as performing with the likes of Moor Mother, Nightmares On Wax, Benjamin Zephaniah and Little Simz.

I am a visual anthropologist/ethnographer who specialises in photography, documentary and poetry. My work concerns a deep exploration of the lived experiences of minoritised and underrepresented groups. As a Black woman, I look to challenge the co-opting of storytelling, to uncover hidden stories, do grassroots work with local communities, decolonise the lens, and in turn contribute to intersectional feminist creative practice.

Désirée Reynolds, (she/her) a South Londoner up North, was brought up in Clapham, London to Jamaican parents and now living in Sheffield. She told her Mum, at about 8 years old, that she was going to write a book and has been writing ever since. She started her writing career as a freelance journalist for the Jamaica Gleaner and the Village Voice. She has gone on to write film scripts, poetry, flash fiction and short stories.