Mentors

Stella Sideli is an independent curator, writer, researcher, and creative coach active in the UK, Europe and the Mediterranean. She is concerned with the intersection of institutional programmes and feminisms, the ethics of curating, the relationship between curator and artist, emerging technologies, capitalism and the aesthetics of digital culture, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary practices. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Liverpool University, on the theme of site-specificity as a response to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in curatorial practices, while serving as the research curator at FACT Liverpool until 2025. She has curated public and artist development programmes at Tenderpixel Gallery, Somerset House and SPACE in London, Nuova Orfeo in Italy, among others.

Samuel Huber is a Swiss entrepreneur and researcher dedicated to introducing planetary perspectives to organisations. As founder and board member of For Planet Strategy Lab, an innovative organisation that collaborates with companies to prototype strategies, he pioneers new ways of creating regenerative value. This engaged research is driven by his Ph.D. from the University of St. Gallen on “Strategizing as Prototyping”, which was awarded the Dr. Peter Wehrhahn Prize for its outstanding academic contribution. Samuel is also a research fellow at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), where he leverages his extensive experience and network from his work in the startup ecosystems of Berlin, Tokyo, and Zurich. In his previous role as Strategy Director of the leading Japanese design firm Goodpatch, he introduced research, strategy and venture practices, closely accompanied the IPO-process and developed the planet-centric design approach. He was also a founding member of UBS Y, the future think tank of the world’s largest wealth manager, worked long nights for ARTonAIR, a New York art gallery and radio station, and focused on driving development economics with Biovision. His academic journey spans sociology, economics, management, and design, taking him to the Universities of Zurich, St. Gallen, Stanford, and Keio in Tokyo.

Naja Kikelj is a psychologist, researcher, and participation consultant specializing in urban planning based in Ljubljana. She completed her master’s degree in Psychology at The Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, focusing on the psychology of economic behaviour and decision making. She started working as a Cultural and Creative Economies (CCE) researcher and workshop facilitator in the creative center Poligon, and continued her career as a UX researcher and design sprint facilitator in the award-winning design studio Ljudje. In recent years, she has been active in the field of urban design as a project manager at Prostorož, where she also serves as a researcher and participation consultant, focusing on transferring the citizens’ wants into urban design briefs. Her publications are focused on research in the CCE, as well as user experience.

Danica Sretenović engages with critical spatial practice and feral curatorial politics to support localized utopias: places, concepts, and practices that present transformative capacity within the world as it is. Through interdisciplinary curriculums, artistic initiatives, planning strategies, exhibition and publication experiments she reveals previously unseen contexts of research. Together with Gaja Mežnarić Osole and other colleagues, she leads the Krater collective, which consists of designers, architects, ecologists, photographers, artist, biologist, landscape architects and lawyers and works in an overgrown construction pit in Ljubljana. To address planetary urgencies they took the courage to reinvent their professions, studios and working conditions to produce vocabulary, feral cultures, urgent pedagogies, sensitive city planning, forbidden vernaculars, community economies, eco-social agriculture and participatory public space. Her mentorship includes work at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, co-initiating the School of Feral Grounds for European cultural organizations, being guest lecturer at L’Internationale School of Common knowledge, Our Many Easts, Master of Architecture, Uni Luxemburg, among others. Her work has been published or cited in magazines like Koozarch, Voices by Museum Staatlich Dresden, Frieze, E-flux and Environment and planning E: Nature and Space.