In The Future of Photo Festivals, we will explore sustainability, care, exhibition making, climate, consciousness, placemaking, new ways forward, the circular economy and how to be good ancestors in relation to cultural programming in a festival context.
Featuring a range of speakers who have directed, curated and advised major international photography and related media festivals, including Louise Fedotov-Clements (Director, Photoworks), Maria Teresa Salvati (Director, Everything is Connected), Helen Starr (Director, Mechatronic Library), Julia Bunnemann (Curator, Photoworks), Alejandro Acín (Bristol Photo Festival Director) and Christine Eyene (Director/Curator).
Alejandro Acín
Alejandro Acín is a dynamic Creative Director, Designer, and Facilitator based in Bristol (UK). He is renowned for his expertise in archive management, publishing, and curatorial projects collaborating with important photography and film collections like the Historical Photographs of China, the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection, the Bristol Industrial and Maritime Collection, the Martin Parr Foundation or the Nepal Picture Library amongst others.
Julia Bunnemann
Julia Bunnemann is the curator of Photoworks and is responsible for the development and implementation of the curatorial programme, including the Photoworks Festival and curatorial collaborations. She is also a regular juror, portfolio reviewer and speaker at European festivals and has contributed to various publications.
Christine Eyene
Christine Eyene is an art historian, critic, and curator. She is a Lecturer in Contemporary Art at Liverpool John Moores University and Research Curator at Tate Liverpool. Her curatorial practice encompasses contemporary arts with a particular interest in African and Diaspora arts, feminism, photography, and sound art.
Louise Fedotov-Clements
Louise is the current Director of Photoworks. She is also a National Curator of Contemporary Art, Forestry England, where she collaborates on an arts programme of commissions, residencies, and research across 1500 forests. Louise was the Artistic Director of QUAD a centre for contemporary art and film for 20 years, and the Director of FORMAT International Photography Festival for 18 years, which she co-founded in 2004.
Maria Teresa Salvati
Maria Teresa Salvati is the founder and director of Everything is Connected, a trans-disciplinary platform aimed at creating new communication paradigm, translated into ‘artivist’ initiatives and living labs, to raise awareness about the environmental crisis, giving centrality to public spaces, schools, digital channels and codesign processes.
Since 2020, she is co-editor and curator of a talk series on the visualisation of the Climate Crisis in partnership with UAL and VII Insider.
Helen Starr
Helen Starr is a Afro-Carib cultural activist, curator and producer who moved to the UK from Trinidad in the early 90’s. She founded The Mechatronic Library in 2010, to enable artists and museums to create artworks using new media technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) , Game Engines and 3D Printing.
