Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025:
SURVIVORHOOD
24-27 April
Creative explorations of what it means to survive trauma
Through exhibition, film screenings, dance performances, talks, and workshops, the Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025 brings together work created by artists and researchers from the Traumascapes survivor community and opens a space to challenge the status quo and foster collective healing.
The festival includes projects created with and supported by The Lancet Psychiatry, King’s College London, and the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health.
When
24 - 27 April 2025
11am - 6pm
Where
The Art Pavilion
Clinton Rd
London E3 4QY
Who
Open to all and free to access (donations welcome)
PROGRAMME
Friday 25 April
DAY
1
2
DAY
Saturday 26 April
3
DAY
Sunday 27 April
Exhibition open daily from 11am to 6pm
09.45 - 11.00
Embodying Earth: meditation and intuitive movement
Join Ying for a morning exploration of meditation and intuitive movement taking place in and/or alongside the nature available to us at The Art Pavilion and its lake and gardens.
with Ying Li [See bio]
12.00 - 13.00
The legacy of LAST: Arts-based understandings of trauma in mental health
An evolving repository of creative articulations of survivorhood, published as the 2024 covers of The Lancet Psychiatry journal, the Living Archive of Survivorhood of Trauma (LAST) acts as a gateway for mental health researchers and practitioners to understand the lived experience of trauma. How might these and other arts-based expressions change how we conceptualise and respond to trauma? Join us for a panel discussion to explore this question.
with Joan Marsh, Kam Bhui, Andrea Danese, Isaac Ouro-Gnao, Gavin Edmonds, chaired by Laura E. Fischer
[See bios]
14.00 - 15.00
Creative methods for
reflective practice
This workshop will introduce a range of accessible creative methods that can be used to support reflexivity. For researchers, artists, and other practitioners interested in initiating or developing their reflective practice through arts-based approaches.
with Laura E. Fischer [See bio]
15.30 - 16.30
Language as entrapment or liberation: Findings from the SEMANTIC study and collage-making workshop
Exploring the connection between the language we use to describe ourselves as people who have experienced trauma and our identities, relationships, and healing processes, the session will include a short presentation of findings from the SEMANTIC study followed by a collage-making workshop on identity and the powers and constrictions of language.
with Síofra Peeren [See bio]
11.00 - 12.00
Taking space: Queer
embodiment practice
Join Dylan to explore queer embodiment in an LGBTQ+ only space, using improvisation, movement, and art-making to (re)discover body boundaries and make imprints in the space around us. No previous dance or movement experience is necessary.
with Dylan Reddish [See bio]
12.30 - 13.30
Developing a creative practice: open art-making space
A space to make art and explore creative practices in a trauma-sensitive environment.
with Gavin Edmonds [See bio]
14.00 - 15.00
Dance performance:
enfant de la pluie
enfant de la pluie is a durational dance performance that explores the artist’s childhood connection to rain. Navigating the impact of CSA through photography, movement, and voice, the work imagines the birth of a new rain deity to comfort and protect the inner child.
with Isaac Ouro-Gnao [See bio]
No booking necessary.
15.30 - 16.30
Artist talks: Traumascapes Arts Collective present the exhibition
Join CAT (Traumascapes Arts Collective) for a guided talkthrough of the exhibition, with insights on the works, reflections on the living archive, and links to The Lancet Psychiatry 2024 covers.
with Isaac Ouro-Gnao, Gavin Edmonds, Julie-Yara Atz, Julian Triandafyllou, Sullivan Holderbach, Laura E. Fischer [See bios]
11.00 - 12.00
Movement workshop
Join Isaac for a movement workshop unlocking and connecting the body-mind-spirit. Expect a gentle approach that grows into playful, rhythmic, and collective improvisation open to new and experienced practitioners alike.
with Isaac Ouro-Gnao [See bio]
12.30 - 14.00
Countering erasure and re-archiving survivorhood: Film screening and panel discussion
By utilising creative practice, can we reclaim lost narratives and recentre survivor experience? These artists both used film archives to do just that in ways that are both personal and timely: Wilma explores the re-sounding and re-visioning of trauma in the Scottish Gypsy Traveller archive and Theo explores the colonial film gaze and Palestinian counter narratives. This film screening and Q&A considers erasure, agency, resurfacing, and upending power structures.
with Wilma Stone and Theo Panagopoulos, chaired by Julian Triandafyllou [See bios]
14.30 - 16.00
Socially-engaged art as resistance to social trauma
Is it possible to still hope for social change when the cycles of violence feel so familiar? Through film, sound, visual art, and discussion, this session explores how social trauma can be hard to see or even name, reflects on the recent history of Syria and the wider Arab region, and settles on art as a means of resistance.
with Julie-Yara Atz, Alaa Shasheet, Leila Sibai, chaired by Andrea Luka Zimmerman
[See bios]
18.00 - 20.40
The Survivor Lens: Reframing trauma through filmmaking
Genesis Cinema
London, E1 4UJ
This Survivor Lens programme explores a perspective of 'return' – what it means to safely bring traumatic histories to the present through archive, performance, and observation. Andrea utilise their personal and public archive to explore the details missed – the person(s) left behind – and bring them into the safety of the present. Julie-Yara returns to Homs in Syria to witness how the landscape has shifted in the years since its traumatic envelopment searching for the joy amidst the rubble. Julian uses performance to revive a long-lost friend, central to their experience of abuse, and depicts a process of healing. Join the filmmakers for the first screenings of these works, followed by a panel discussion chaired by Laura E. Fischer.
with Julian Triandafyllou, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Julie-Yara Atz, chaired by Laura E. Fischer [See bios]
Artist/Speaker Bios
Alaa Shasheet (he/him)
Shasheet is a painter and printmaker based in London, UK. He studied Fine Arts in his hometown at Damascus University. Shasheet left Syria in 2011 to pursue an MA in International Contemporary Art in Malaysia. He explored Asian art and culture in Kuala Lumpur and Penang while working in design, fine art and art education until his move to London. Shasheet’s diverse body of artwork has a strong visual vocabulary that includes painting, printmaking, and mixed media. He has won critical acclaim for his ability to portray feelings and emotions with the use of solid graphical abstract compositions and lines on the canvas.
Andrea Danese (he/him)
Andrea is a clinical scientist interested in childhood trauma and trauma-related psychopathology across the life-course. He is Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at King’s College London and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at the National and Specialist CAMHS Trauma, Anxiety, and Depression Clinic at the Maudsley Hospital (UK).
Andrea Luka Zimmerman (they/them)
Andrea is a Jarman Award winning filmmaker, cultural activist and artist whose engaged practice calls for a profound re-imagining of the relationship between people, place and ecology. Focusing on marginalised individuals, communities and experience, the practice employs imaginative hybridity and narrative re-framing, alongside reverie and a creative waywardness. Informed by suppressed histories, and alert to sources of radical hope, the work prioritises an enduring and equitable co-existence. Andrea grew up on a large council estate and left school at 16. Andrea is Professor of Possible film at Central Saint Martins.
Angela Sweeney (she/her)
Angie is a trauma survivor, survivor researcher, Senior Lecturer in User-Led Research and Director of the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE), King’s College London. Angie has particular interests in gender-based violence, trauma and parenting, and trauma-informed approaches. Although a health services researcher, she originally studied social sciences, and sociological approaches continue to inform her work.
Dylan Reddish (they/them)
Dylan is a queer movement artist and registered dance movement psychotherapist. While dance is their primary modality, Dylan prefers to work on projects that are interdisciplinary. They love and respect creativity as a healing modality. Through their work, Dylan aims to cultivate an anti-oppressive practice that supports abolition of the police industrial complex by centering their work around the lived experiences of people.
Gavin Edmonds (all pronouns)
Dr Gavin Edmonds is an artist / artist-researcher whose work looks at how and why artists identify with other artists / artwork, and what processes are at work when this occurs. This developed from his own experience with an artwork, that lead to the subsequent recognition of PTSD, dating back to childhood. His work employs/builds upon the Freudian concept of (afterwardsness), which describes how an experience that is either incomprehensible or traumatic, is retained unconsciously then revivified at a later time in a different context.
Isaac Ouro-Gnao (he/they)
Isaac Ouro-Gnao is a Togolese-British multidisciplinary artist and freelance journalist. He graduated from Canterbury Christ Church University with a Multimedia Journalism BA in 2015, and from Queen Mary University of London in Creative Arts and Mental Health MSc in 2022. His work is rooted in magical realism and Africanfuturism with a focus on themes of childhood, trauma, memory, and mental health across the forms of dance, theatre, film, essays, and poetry.
Joan Marsh (she/her)
Joan Marsh is the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Psychiatry. She joined the Lancet group in November 2013 as Deputy Editor and helped to launch, then develop, the journal, being promoted to Editor-in-Chief in November 2021. Joan read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, then completed a PhD in molecular biology. She worked as an editor with The Ciba/Novartis Foundation in London, editing and organizing their prestigious symposium series. Joan then spent several years in South-East Asia, returning to the UK in September 1999 and becoming an editor with John Wiley & Sons, commissioning books in the life sciences and medicine. Joan was on the Council of the European Association of Science Editors for 12 years, including six as President. She is now Chair of its Gender Policy Committee, with a particular interest in improving diversity in peer review. Joan is also an Associate Editor of European Science Editing.
Julian Triandafyllou (he/they)
Julian trained within the arts, doing his BA at Central Saint Martins, London and his MA at the Edinburgh College of Art working under Emma Davie. His work - mainly moving image, but more recently involving text- has inexplicably explored the nature and experience of living with trauma, but themes also revolve more generally around time, memory, place and language. He has been working as an artist with Traumascapes since 2022 and is delighted to use his experience in facilitating arts and hospitality events as Operations Manager. He is also currently training to become an integrative counsellor with ELOP.
Julie-Yara Atz (she/they)
Julie-Yara is a Syrian-Swiss cultural anomaly, whose work is as explorative as their identity. They recently completed an MA in Cultural Studies, with a focus on subversive storytelling in Syrian diasporic cinema. A practitioner at heart – filmmaker, writer and actor – they are just as comfortable in drama as they are in comedy and are especially interested in the weird, experimental forms in-between. Julie-Yara has acted in “Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia” as well as “Shetland 6”, and her films “What If We Were Happy?” and “Amoureuses Folles du Reflet dans le Miroir” are just starting their festival runs! Keep an eye out.
Kam Bhui (he/him)
Kam is Professor of Psychiatry & Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the University of Oxford. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Psychiatry and the Director of the World Psychiatric Association Collaborating Centre, among other roles. He is Principal Investigator of the ATTUNE Project, a multi-site study that explores young people’s experiences and understandings of mental health and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) using varied arts-based methods.
Laura E. Fischer (she/they)
Laura E. Fischer is the Founder & CEO of Traumascapes. Laura’s award-winning art practice focuses on the reclaiming and rewriting of the sociocultural narrative of trauma on survivors’ own terms and her research explores the embodied experience of trauma and creative body-based approaches to healing. Laura is also Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King’s College London, Visiting Lecturer on the MASc Creative Health at UCL, Visiting Lecturer on the MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health at Queen Mary University of London, Visiting Lecturer on the MA Performance: Screen at Central Saint Martins, and she serves on the Data Monitoring and Ethics Committee for ATTUNE at the University of Oxford and the Editorial Advisory Board of The Lancet Psychiatry. Laura has published, presented, and exhibited internationally since 2005, and her artwork is held in the Central Saint Martins Museum Collection.
Leila Sibai (she/they)
Leila is a legal researcher currently working as an independent legal investigator in collaboration with the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), with whom she supports the development of case-files pertaining to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria. Leila has an MA in International Law and an MA in Research Architecture and is currently developing her own research practice. Leila is also a board member of Huquqyat.
Ngozi Oparah (she/her)
Dr. Ngozi “N/A” Oparah is a writer, researcher, and artist. Ngozi holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Philosophy from Duke University. Ngozi completed her PhD at Loughborough University where she investigated the roles of phenomenological, multidisciplinary narratives in addressing mental health literacy. Ngozi served as the Director of Community Programs at StoryCenter, a digital storytelling non-profit, where she instructed in digital and visual storytelling, autofiction, poetry, podcasting, and memoir writing. Ngozi currently serves as a lecturer on the MASc in Creative Health Degree at UCL and facilitates storytelling and writing workshops worldwide. Her research focuses on storytelling (writing, film) and creative methodologies as tools for research, engagement, wellbeing, and community development.
Síofra Peeren (she/her)
Síofra is a trauma survivor and researcher. Her work focuses on amplifying the voices of survivors to transform health and social care; a mission that is shaped by both her lived experience. She has expertise in trauma-informed approaches and gender-based violence, and in using trauma-informed, creative and novel methods to engage with expertise held by survivors. She is also passionate about embedding trauma-informed principles in the evidence that shapes practice and policy decisions and thus founded the Kindness in Research Conference - a conference about trauma-informed research.
Sullivan Holderbach (he/they)
Sullivan is a trauma survivor, artist, and researcher focused on the development and facilitation of survivor-led, arts-facilitated, healing practices. His research aims to utilize creative practices as means to encourage and sustain health by renegotiating personal relationships and understandings of trauma. He completed his BA degree in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham and his MASc degree in Creative Health at University College London. His practice is informed by his multi-nationality as well as his experiences working as a stagehand, performer, costume/set designer and stage manager in both the Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Theo Panagopoulos (he/him)
Theo Panagopoulos is a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker and researcher based in Scotland. His work explores themes of collective memory, displacement, fragmented identities and archives. He has directed multiple short films that screened in reputable festivals and his most recent film called The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing has won the best short film award at IDFA 2024, Best Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2025 and was nominated for a BAFTA. He is currently completing his PhD research on colonial film archives connected to 1930s Palestine.
Wilma Stone (she/her)
Wilma Stone is a trans-disciplinary artist who has produced diverse artworks ranging from ceramic sculptures to performance works, to artist films. She was awarded a master’s degree in Sculpture from The Royal College of Art (2018), was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2020), and is now completing a AHRC Techne-funded practice-led PhD at London College of Communication’s Screen School (UAL). During her doctoral studies, Stone has made an award-winning short film The Force (2024) and the experimental artist film Grey Milk & Lost Kin (2025) which uncover a hidden history of forced assimilation and cultural dispossession of Scotland’s Gypsy Traveller people. Her films interweave found footage, archival sound fragments, personal narratives, and poetics, with field recordings and footage shot at her ancestral campgrounds. Navigating family secrecy, memory and personal traumas, Stone’s films reflect on British colonial histories and disavowed cultural, class and racial identities, to find kinship with wider transnational resistance and liberation struggles.
Ying Li (she/her)
Ying is committed to a radical re-imagining of who we are and how we relate to each other and the more-than-human worlds, both visible and invisible. Ying is the founder of Embodying Earth. She is a meditation guide, geomancer, dance alchemy facilitator, bodyworker and healer with two decades of experience. She is a trauma-sensitive practitioner collaborating with Traumascapes and a member of the organisation team of LifeNet, the international network for life, geomancy and transformation.
Accessibility
The venue is fully wheelchair accessible with step-free access throughout. An exhibition information pack is available with visual and conceptual descriptions of each artwork. A large-print pack is also available. All films screened as part of the festival include closed captions. Peer support workers and a quiet space with noise cancelling headphones and fidget toys are available on site (see the 'Caring for yourself and others' section below).
If you have any other access needs, please contact Julian and we will do our best to accommodate: julian@traumascapes.org.
Caring for yourself and others
What to expect from the festival
The Traumascapes Arts Festival explores what it means to survive trauma, both individually and collectively. It includes the torment, the joy, and the messiness in between - all from the perspective of artists and researchers with lived experience of trauma. There are mentions/themes of colonialism, systemic violence, childhood and adulthood abuse (sexual, physical, emotional) and neglect, but there are no direct visual depictions of violence or abuse.
Self and mutual care
It is important to hold space to explore trauma in order to raise awareness and to come together as a community to challenge the status quo and support collective healing. To create change, we must confront the reality of trauma - and this reality is a painful one.
But, as we do so, we must also counteract the normalisation of violence by fostering safety and protecting our wellbeing. As you explore the festival, we invite you to look after yourself and one another. Choose whether and when to engage, how much, and with whom. Step out when you need to and take care of yourself however feels right. Check-in with your peers too.
Support
-
Peer support workers will be on site throughout the festival and you can chat to them any time. You can recognise them from their frog badges.
-
A quiet space is located on the far end of the venue, on the right, where you can stay as long as you like, whenever you like.
-
You can find noise-cancelling headphones, fidget toys, and art materials in the quiet space, which you can use at any time.
-
Creative meditation and embodiment workshops are scheduled as part of the festival.
-
An audio guide with grounding invitations is available for anyone to use as a way to explore the exhibition accompanied by some gentle grounding practices.
-
For additional sources of support, you can visit the Self-Care Space
We may not be able to avoid all hurt and harm, but we can nurture safety and negotiate trauma with openness, mutual care, empathy, and grace. Thank you for being part of this.
Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025:
SURVIVORHOOD
24-27 April
