Angelica is a sustainability advocate interested in artisanal crafts, ethical sourcing through grassroots community engagement and circular design. She wakes up every day because of her work with WVN Home Textiles , which has a mission: to sustain traditional handloom weaving in the Philippines.
Adhi Nugraha earned his master’s and PhD in Craft Design from the University of Art and Design (now known as Aalto University) in Helsinki, Finland. Having worked at a design firm in Germany, he returned to Indonesia in 2013 to teach in Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). Nugraha also works independently in his Bandung design studio and workshop. His interests are craft and design, community development, sustainability and the sociocultural aspects in design.
Kamonnart Ongwandee earned her master’s degree in Textiles at the Royal College of Art. She started as a printed textiles designer before expanding to fashion design. She is now involved in the Fashion Revolution movement in Thailand. She is an honouree for the Generation T Asia List 2019, a member of Circular Design Lab Bangkok and Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Circular Economy Pioneers community in South East Asia. She is a visiting lecturer on Creative Textiles at Chulalongkorn University.
Katelijn Verstraete has been the Director of Arts & Creative Industries East Asia, British Council, since October 2012. She set up BizArt, the first independent art space in Shanghai, in 1999. She works on developing multi-stakeholder platforms between Asia and Europe in the areas of cultural policy, artistic exchange, training and digital exchange for www.ietm.org , www.asef.org , and www.on-the-move.org . Katelijn is the co-author of the Europe-China Cultural Compass.
Sudebi Thakurata is a narrative designer, creative facilitator, educator, writer and singer. Her work inter-weaves socially, environmentally and culturally relevant issues with design thinking, imagination, systems thinking, pedagogy, visual and performing arts, oral history, crafts, ethnography, research and design. She is a facilitator at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology and a Creative Facilitator at SEAΔ. She co-founded the transdisciplinary design collective Depicentre.
After co-founding and running a branding and content creation studio for several years, Yegwa Ukpo co-founded Stranger, a concept store, café and maker library in 2013. Yegwa Ukpo is now the founder of Newtype , a maintenance practice focused on wisdom ecologies of food, shelter, clothing and being. He is interested in the intersection between indigenous practice, planet-centric approaches to design and alternative forms of culture production.