The Artists and Speakers

Further information on

The Artists and Speakers, El sueño Existe 2022

Acuarela

2-piece group (guitar and voice) performing Nueva Cancion and other classic Latin American songs

Adam Feinstein

Adam Feinstein is an acclaimed British author, poet, translator, Hispanist, journalist, film critic and autism researcher. His biography of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, was first published by Bloomsbury in 2004 and reissued in an updated edition in 2013 (Harold Pinter called it ‘a masterpiece’). Arc published his new book of translations, The Unknown Neruda, in 2019 and another book of translations, this time of the great Nicaraguan poet, Rubén Darío, came out in two separate editions in 2020. Feinstein has given numerous lectures around the world, including Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the United States, Russia, China, India, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. He broadcasts regularly for the BBC and writes for the Guardian, the Observer, the Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement. His own poems and his translations (of Neruda, Federico García Lorca, Mario Benedetti and others) have appeared in many magazines, including Agenda, Acumen, PN Review, Poem and Modern Poetry in Translation.

Ailsa Mair 

Ailsa Mair is a musician & storyteller based in Machynlleth.  She performs solo as The Fairytale Cellist, and has recently been playing with artist Worldwide Welshman, band Lo-fi Jones, and the Mach Dance Band amongst others, alongside her new post as a music teacher for the Ruskin Mill Trust. Ailsa is passionate about liberating voices and loves to improvise music in the landscape.

Alex Etchart

Musician, performer, Co-Director/Co-Producer at Sex Worker’s Opera and Co-Founder at XX – Experimental Experience , a theatre company focused on reconnection/public space reclamation, running transformative courses, events & street actions. arts@alexetchart.com

Andrew Redden

‘Andrew Redden teaches Latin American History at the University of Liverpool. His research interests centre on the social, cultural and oral histories of marginalised (particularly rural) communities in contemporary Latin America. Current projects focus on music as a counterculture to violence in El Salvador, especially among young people (Music for Hope: www.musicforhope.org.uk); and health (kidney disease of non-traditional causes), in rural Mexican communities. Other longer-term (and temporally broader) research interests include the cosmovisions of Latin American peoples and, particularly, their everyday interactions with spiritual entities. Published books include: Diabolism in Colonial Peru (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008); Angels, Demons and the New World, co-ed, Fernando Cervantes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and The Collapse of Time: The Martyrdom of Diego Ortiz [1571] by Antonio de la Calancha [1638] (Warsaw: DeGruyterOpen, 2016). He is currently working on an academic translation and annotated testimony of a teenager who fled El Salvador to the United States.

Arising!

Womens’ Acapella Singing group from the Dyfi Valley.

Bethan Dear

Bethan Dear is a storyteller, performer, clown, director, writer and workshop facilitator. She has worked professionally in the theatre and live arts for the past 13 years. She works with professional artists, community groups, vulnerable adults and children of all ages, across the UK and also internationally. She believes passionately in the power of art, play and creativity, for inspiring and implementing positive change; individually, collectively, socially, policially, locally and globally. She is a play based activist who uses her work and her art to question, challenge, shake up and re-pattern structures of oppression, division and systematic violence. Her work is always focused around connection, play and supporting individual creative expression and joy.

Brittany Oakes

Brittany Oakes learned of La Via Campesina (LVC) and the international movement for food sovereignty while organising for food justice in California’s Central Valley. Since interning with a co-founding LVC member, the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC), in Nicaragua in 2018, she has been involved in international Nicaragua solidarity campaigns, including Friends of the ATC and Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (UK). Brittany worked with NSC for two years and has volunteered and worked with the LVC member Landworkers’ Alliance in the UK. She currently works with the Real Farming Trust, having recently coordinated the global Oxford Real Farming Conference.

Banner Theatre

Banner Theatre have been creating songs of struggle and resistance for nearly 50 years. Dave Rogers and Mike Bethel are the 2022 line-up, bringing songs from the frontlines where workers are fighting for their futures, and also Dave’s responses to his visits to ‘Music for Hope’ in El Salvador and other Latin American hotbeds of revolution!

Los Bullerengueros del Braich Goch

Los Bullerengueros del Braich Goch are a small collective of Latin American people, Colombian and Nicaraguans, who find themselves living in Wales and who love music. We encountered each other being part of the Braich Goch Centre, an initiative run by the Anne Matthews Trust in Mid- Wales (www.theannematthewstrust.org). As musicians in exile we are proud to interpret the music of our ancestors and pay homage to all bullerengueros. Bullerengue predates cumbia, as the concept of cumbia is a modern commercial name and adaptation of bullerengue to the mainstream. Bullerengue is a complex ensemble of drums, voices, call and response and dance. Bullerengue music is the ancestral music of cimarron (marroon) Community in North Colombia. Cimarron people where those who escaped slavery and created the first free African villages in the swamps and forest of the Americas. These areas were difficult to access for the Spanish conquistadors. Bullerengue was and is a music of resistance, its name comes from bulla (noise in spanish), as the conquistadors did not like the sound of the music, and they would say to the enslaved people playing it to “Stop that bulla!”. Our African ancestors make a mockery of the Spanish by calling this music Bullerengue. The bullerengue songs are about everyday life in the countryside and what is important to its inhabitants; beliefs, work, love and mischief. In times of slavery the songs were used to pass on messages of rebellion and subversion in encrypted ways.

Cecilia Gonzalez Cruz

Cecilia Cruz is from Michoacán, a state on the Pacific Ocean to the southwest of Mexico. She works in London as a Stained Glass Artisan. Through her interest in Mesoamerican culture and food she presents Stories of Corn a workshop that invites guests to experience a spiritual and historical journey. Exploring the culture of Maíz with ceremonies, poetry, mythology and Tamales, a dish dating back to around 8000BC.

Claire Bracegirdle

 is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham researching the governance of community-based conservation in Ghana. She also works for Forest Peoples Programme, a human rights organisation working with forest peoples around the world to secure their rights to their lands and livelihoods. She is currently working with indigenous peoples and local communities to ensure that their contributions to biodiversity protection are recognised and supported by the Convention on Biological Diversity’s new Framework.

Cloud Cuckoo

 A dose of latin American-inspired hippie flower-power, from Machynlleth. Founded by Tony Corden of El Sueño Existe fame. Facebook: Cloud Cuckoo.

Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes

El mundo editorial divide, artificialmente, los libros en ficción y no ficción. Pero para mí todos los géneros literarios usan estrategias para expresar verdades y realidades de la naturaleza humana, animal y ambiental. Esa tela de araña que nos hace co-evolucionar mientras leemos y escribimos, me ha envuelto, desde mi niñez, con hilos muy fuertes que han arropado mis viajes. En el 2017 emprendí un nuevo camino empedrado de libros cuando fundé la editorial Victorina Press, que lleva el nombre de mi madre. Este nuevo viaje, como todos los otros que he realizado como profesora, escritora, y editora, está fuertemente enraizado en Pachamama y en Chile, mi matria, allá donde los volcanes lanzan besos ardientes a ríos, montañas, desiertos, mares y bosques.

Soy académica, pero me gusta mucho más el espacio público de la calle, que es donde puedo dar rienda suelta a mi creatividad. He formado parte de varios grupos de escritura creativa porque me gusta leer, escribir y ‘memoriar’ en solidaridad y acompañada, aunque también me doy tiempo para estar a solas conmigo misma. Esto ha resultado en varios libros de poesía y de narrativa. En mis libros de poesía titulados La Liberación de la Eva Desgarrada (1990) y Arena en la Garganta (2010) trato de hacerle frente a esa arenilla que raspa mi garganta y mi voz cuando relato en metáforas lo que pasa por mi cuerpo ahora, durante y después de la tortura a la que fui sometida en Chile en 1983.  

Formo parte del grupo literario Las Juanas —Ex Taller Hispanoamericano de Mujeres de la Memoria— que fundamos con Maria Eugenia Bravo-Calderara. Con ellas hemos re-publicado, con Victorina Press, dos libros en la serie Maravilladoras: Navegantes del Támesis- Poesía y Cuentos, aunque originalmente fueron publicados por Editorial Escaparate en Chile. Mis cuentos, poemas y ensayos, han aparecido en varias antologías y revistas en Chile, Inglaterra, Irlanda, Polonia, Estados Unidos y Australia.

The publishing world, artificially, divides books into fiction and non-fiction. But for me, all literary genres use strategies to express truths and realities of human, animal and environmental nature. The spider’s web which makes us co-evolve as we read and write has, since childhood, wrapped me with strong threads which have dressed my travels. In 2017 I embarked on a new cobbled path of books when I founded the publishing house Victorina Press, which is named after my mother.

This new journey — like all others I have done as a teacher, writer, and editor — is strongly rooted in Pachamama and in Chile, my motherland, where volcanoes throw ardent kisses to rivers, mountains, deserts, seas and forests.

I am an academic, but I like that public space of loitering where I can unleash my creativity. I have been part of several creative writing groups because I like to read, write and ‘to memory’ in solidarity and accompanied, although I also give myself time to be alone with myself. This has resulted in several books of poetry and narrative. In my books of poetry entitled La Liberación de la Eva Desgarrada (1990) and Arena en la Garganta (2010) I try to face that grit that scrapes my throat and my voice when I tell in metaphors what happens through my body now, during and after the torture to which I was subjected in Chile in 1983.  

I am part of the literary group Las Juanas —Hispano-American Women Writers on Memory— which we founded with Maria Eugenia Bravo-Calderara. With them we have re-published, with Victorina Press, two books in the series Maravilladoras: Navegantes del Támesis- Poesía y Cuentos, although they were originally published by Editorial Escaparate in Chile.  My stories, poems and essays have appeared in several anthologies and magazines in Chile, England, Ireland, Poland, the United States and Australia.

Duo Passiflora

Duo Passiflora is a couple of young artists who have been inspired by composers and singers of all the South American continent, trying to give the flavour of this charming flower in their presentations. Paula has dedicated part of her life to Latin American folk dance, developing her professional career at the “Centro de Danza Espiral” which was founded by Joan Jara and Patricio Bunster in Santiago Chile. Sebastián, on the other hand has been dedicated to Latin American music from an early age, he has done a  course  “Jazz and Popular Music Performance” in Santiago Chile. Together, Paula and Sebastián have shared several stages in Chile and other countries of the region . Both folk and popular music groups, tours and performances has been part of their growing experiences in Latin American music and dance.  Now in order to offer their passion for music and dance, which has always been part of their history and personal development, they have formed “Duo Passiflora”.

Eduardo Embry

Eduardo Embry is a Chilean poet. He has published several collections of poetry both in his own country and abroad. A collection of his poetry was published in Casa de Las Américas, Cuba. He has also published in journals in Spain, Chile and the UK, notably London Magazine, Index on Censorship, and the Morning Star, selected by Andy Croft.  Monte Avila, Caracas, has published an important anthology of his poetry,  “Manuscritos que con el agua se borran” (2009), and a selection of his poetry was published (2010) by the Nueva Revista del Pacífico (Universidad de Playa Ancha), directed by Professor Eddie Morales. The “Arte de marear” was published by Ediciones Altazor (2010) in Chile. Eduardo Embry was awarded the Premio de la Crítica, mención Literatura,  granted each year by the Círculo de Críticos de Arte de Valparaíso, Chile. His most recent collection of poetry is “Dead Flies”, published by Smokestack Books.

Elena Holly Klaver

Elena Klaver is a singer-songwriter whose songs reflect her work for peace, justice, and environmental issues.  She plays traditional and singer-songwriter music of the Americas, including Nueva Canción.  Her original music, in English and Spanish, is influenced by topical music as well as the traditional music of the Americas.  Elena’s songs have been recorded by a number of other musicians, and she has been playing solo and with bands for a number of years, although she makes her living as a certified Spanish/English interpreter in many different environments, from international NGOs to government and community organizations.  She has been involved in solidarity work from Indigenous support to labor issues, as well as peace, justice and environmental work, and also produces music and news programming for KGNU community radio.  She has one CD of original music, Promise of Spring, that is available on most of the digital platforms.  

Fabio Fabretz

 International Relations Collective, Brazil Landless Workers Movement (MST), a social movement representing 1.5million workers.

Fermin Pavez

Fermin is a 75-year-old Chilean man. He joined the youth wing of the Chilean Socialist Party as a teenager, was a young trade unionist, took part in the Homeless Committee and was involved in several land occupation actions in Santiago in the 1960s. He  also worked for the government of President Salvador Allende between 1971 and 1973 in the Social Development Council.  He fled Pinochet’s brutal military dictatorship and arrived  in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where, as a result of his escape, he was subjected to systematic police persecution and several unlawful detentions involving physical and mental torture.  He moved to England in 1975 and graduated with a university degree in Economics, after which  he worked mainly in Finance and Accountancy as well as  international solidarity work, involved with several Latin American countries. Since retiring he has written fiction,  composed music, sung  and played guitar and ukulele .

Francisco Dominguez

Dr Francisco Dominguez is a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, where he is head of the Research Group on Latin America. He is a specialist on Latin America’s contemporary political economy. He is National Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Dominguez came to Britain in 1979 as a Chilean political refuge. Ever since he has been active on Latin American issues, about which he has written and published extensively. He is co-author of Right-wing politics in the New Latin America (Zed Books).

Franklin Quezada

Franklin Quezada is a brilliant Salvadoreno musician, ethnomusicologist and composer . Founder of the band Yolocamba, he was also the winner of the National Prize For Culture in El Salvador in 2016. We really hoped that he would be able to come to El Sueno Existe but unfortunately in the end, the logistics became too complicated. We hope very much to arrange for him to come to a future festival.

George Watson 

is a recent graduate of the University of Liverpool. His undergraduate research focused on the power of testimonies from the Guatemalan Civil War, particularly in challenging dominant narratives of the war propagated by Guatemalan and US power structures. Certain key elements of Mayan Cosmovisions can be seen in these testimonies.

Grace Livingston

Grace Livingstone is a journalist and academic, specialising in Latin American affairs.  She is an affiliated lecturer at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. Her books include: America’s Backyard: Latin America and the United States from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Drugs (2009) and Britain and the Dictatorships of Argentina and Chile, 1973-82 (2018).  She has reported for the BBC World Service,  The Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and The Observer.      https://grace-livingstone.com/

Grupo Luma

Grupo Luma presents music from the Americas and is led by Chilean Brothers Francisco & Oscar Carrasco who take you on a journey of the continent’s vibrant and diverse musical heritage. Playing an array of instruments and genres including Cumbia, Chacarera. Joropo, Son, Carnavalito and many more Grupo Luma features original songs as well as songs from some of the legends of Latin American music including: Victor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, Ruben Blades, and Atahualpa Yupanqui. Fracisco & Oscar came to the UK in 1975 as exiles from Chile and their music is a testament to the journey they have travelled since then. Grupo Luma is: Francisco Carrasco, Oscar Carrasco, Erik Bichard, Phil Hargreaves, Max Alder and Jonathan Raisin.

Gustavo y Facundo: Frente Musical de Liberaciòn

Gustavo started playing the quena, the traditional flute of the Andes, when it was considered subversive to play Latin American Indigenous music in El Salvador. Since leaving his home country for the UK many years ago, making music has been a way of staying in touch with his culture and his people, at the same time forging new connections. Facundo is a versatile musician, a multi- instrumentalist, who has played many different music styles in various bands and ensembles. Playing together Gustavo and Facundo are giving their voices and instruments to celebrate the beauty and the passion of Latin American peoples and to tell their stories. Let’s join in music to stand together!

IberoLatinXpression dance group

The Heritage Dance Group, IberoLatinXpression, is a group led by the participants themselves, with members aged 5 years old to 66 years old. Members of the Heritage Dance Group come from El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, England and Wales.   IberoLatinXpression has performed on several occasions, including  an event organised by the African Community Centre in Swansea and also during Refugee Week 2022 at the Volcano Theatre.  Moreover, the Heritage Dance Group has been invited to participate in future Dance Days in Swansea, organised by the Taliesin Theatre. The dances and costumes are mostly made by the dancers and leaders themselves. Cantante y guitarrista  chileno, radicado en Barcelona, España. Intérprete y arreglista de canciones con raíz folklórica latinoamericana. 

Jeremy corbyn

Former leader of the Labour Party (2025 – 2020). Lifelong campaigner for social justice and supporter and champion of  many progressive causes in the UK and abroad, particularly Latin America. 

Jimena Pardo

Jimena Pardo is a second-generation Chilean who arrived in England with her mother Cristina in 1976 at the age of two. Jimena studied a degree in Fine Art Painting and Art for Society at Wolverhampton University, her artwork strongly reflects her family’s experience, including her parent’s imprisonment, and her exiled identity. After completing a PGCE in Art and Design at Middlesex University in 2007 she now works as an Art Teacher in East London.  Since February 2018 has been facilitating workshops for the project ‘Bordando por la Memoria’ – Embroidering Memory. A collaborative textile art project with the Chilean exiled community. Remembering events from the dictatorship and creating a physical archive of memory. During the quarantine, she was also a lead facilitator in the project Stitch for Change with artist Janey Moffatt and Rossana Leal from the Refugee Buddy Project in Hastings. Where four ‘Pandemic’ quilts were made and exhibited at The De La Warr in 2021. Her current art practices include making banners, arpilleras, embroideries, working with recycled materials, using stitching, painting, screen printing, lino printing, and weaving to explore themes of self, memory, community, loss, and human connections. 

John McEvoy

Biography: John McEvoy is an investigative journalist and historian of British foreign policy in Latin America. He has written about recent British intervention in Chile, Brazil, and Colombia in the International History Review and the Contemporary British History Journal. He is a regular contributor to Declassified UK, has written for Tribune, Jacobin, Brasil Wire, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and reported from Venezuela, Colombia, and France. His research has been translated into numerous languages, reported on across the mainstream media, and presented as evidence in UK Parliament and the United Nations. His PhD research project is about British foreign policy in Colombia, from the Cold War to the Drug War.

Juan Carlos Arenas

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Juan Carlos Arenas is a guitarist, composer and educator. His musical career started with ‘Rock en Español’ and ‘Nueva Canción/Nueva Trova’ bands in Colombia. He studied music at Universidad Pedagógica and Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. Before moving to the UK in 1995, Juan Carlos worked as an orchestrator for Film and TV composers in Colombia. In the UK, he achieved a Masters in Composing for Film and TV (Kingston University). Currently, Juan Carlos splits his time teaching guitar and ukulele in schools in Bristol and Somerset, and playing with a few Latin bands. His main musical project, the Tropical Music Trio “Los Musicos” (www.musicos.co.uk). Juan Carlos will be leading a workshop on the Colombian rhythm of Cumbia.

Las Juanas

The Hispano-American Women Writers on Memory Group, better known as Las Juanas, started a writing workshop in 2010. They are a group of six women: Marijo Alba-Sanchez, María Eugenia Bravo-Calderara, Mabel Encinas-Sanchez, Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes, Isabel Ros-López, and Denisse Vargas-Bolaños. Through the continuity of their work and their artistic performances, they have managed to obtain a legitimate space in the literary world of the United Kingdom. Their literary work germinates from their personal experiences of exile and migration. This is why they focus on creating inclusion and social justice using their art. They develop their own creative process, in addition to establishing ties with other related communities. They facilitate writing workshops with different themes and activities in Spanish and English.

Katherine Rogers

Katherine is Director and Co-Founder of Music for Hope. She has a background in music, intercultural arts and community engagement. International solidarity and political culture were a big part of her upbringing and continue to inform her cultural work. She currently lives in Manchester with her daughter Rosa, and works as a Creative Producer for Community Arts North West working with artists and communities in exile from all over the world. Katherine and Tony will talk about Music for Hope’s cultural work with young people from the Bajo Lempa in El Salvador, using music as a tool to speak out, and promote a culture of peace and cooperation.

The Latin American Community Choir

 is a community project based in London, created to share and enjoy singing through the diverse repertoire of our continent. We sing to life to love and hope. It was created in 2010 and existed briefly, but despite having stopped for a couple of years, we resumed it in 2014 and have maintained it ever since, albeit with a lot of effort, until now. It is as much  a solidarity project as it is therapeutic, since we almost always start with a meditation, where we meet to accompany each other, to share our joys and our sorrows, but fundamentally to rejoice and celebrate our  lives through music and singing. We have members from Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina and Spain, which makes us true representatives of our Latin American culture!

Laura Alvarez

Laura Alvarez is a Trustee of Justice Mexico Now, a Mexican lawyer and a human rights activist. She last visited Mexico in June 2022 to attend the Ceremony of the Commission for Access to the Truth, Historical Clarification and Promotion of Justice for the events that occurred between 1965 and 1990 with the Secretary of National Defense. She will talk about human rights violations in Mexico, the migration and the Commission for Access to the Truth.

Laura Morales

Laura Morales is originally from Mexico City but she has been living in the UK since 2004. She is an immigration lawyer working mainly with the Latin-American community in the UK. She is a co-founder and trustee of Justice Mexico Now –JMN–.JMN is a charitable organisation that aims to raise awareness about the human rights crisis unfolding in Mexico and the lack of accountability of the Mexican authorities. Ever since the creation of JMN, Laura Morales and all the other members have been travelling the UK talking about Mexico. Laura has also advocated in the past for Mexican children, animal welfare, veganism and climate change.

Love Latin Dance 

All welcome at this fun and lively dance workshop where you’ll  have fun and learn some latin dances including  bossa nova, merengue  and square tango. You can choose whether to lead or follow. Wear comfortable shoes to help you spin!. The workshop is led by Jane Hoy and Fran Jackson who have been dancing around together for many years. Jane Hoy runs a micro theatre company, Queer Tales From Wales, featuring stories about queer people in Welsh history. She is also a co-organiser of Aberration. www.aberration.org.uk. Fran Jackson loves encouraging others to get up, have a go and sees dancing as a fun social shared experience. 

Malcolm Boorer

Malcolm’s career was in local government housing, followed by consultancy work, including assignments with the UN, He now enjoys travelling and making documentary films, much of it in or about Latin America. He has visited El Salvador 3 times, and was an Election Observer in 2009. Among many films, he has documented the El Sueño Existe festivals since 2007, and with his Brazilian partner Marisa he produced Nikkei, about Japanese migration to Brazil. Malcom helped to organise last year’s El Sueño zoom event about Victor Jara’s Población album, and he is a member of the Ibero Latin American Asociation of Wales and a correspondent with LAB. 

María Bravo-Calderara

Maria  is a poet and writer, former political prisoner of the Chilean dictatorship. She has lived in UK since 1975. Her  writings about Human Rights have been published in English and in all major European languages. She has two published books of poetry: Prayer in the National Stadium and Poems from Exile.  She is a member of Las Juanas, a Hispano-American women writers collective (also performing at ESE this year).

Martin Mowforth

For over three decades Martin has served as a development worker on a range of projects within Central America, spending extended periods in the region. He has published several books on tourism and on issues of environment and development in Central America. He is editor of the thrice yearly newsletter of the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA) and with Doug Specht he runs theviolenceofdevelopment.com website. On a part-time basis, he has worked as a lecturer at Plymouth University for thirty years.

Mogs Russell

Mogs has been part of the festival organising committee since 2013. She has a 30 year history of solidarity with Latin America, with especially close links to El Salvador. She works with asylum seekers and homeless families in the West Midlands.

Los Músicos

Los Musicos play a diversity of styles from Latinamerica: Cuban Son, Colombian Cumbia, Cha-cha-cha, Chicha, Merengue, Bachata, Salsa, Son, Rumba, Bolero. The warmth of the nylon strung guitar, the bite of the electric guitar together with authentic Latin Percussion and traditional singing. That is the sound and vibe you get with Los Musicos. Los Musicos have performed at some of the most exclusive venues in the UK and with years of experience performing to all kinds of audiences and events around the UK and Europe. They regularly play at The Oxo Tower and The National Theatre (in London’s South Bank) and have featured on BBC1 during the London Olympic games 2012, Channel 5 ‘The Gadget Show’, BBC2 The Apprentice. Also on BBC Radio2 Jeremy Vine’s show.

Myra Barraza

For the last 30 years Myra Barraza has been making important contributions to Central American artistic discourse, investigating issues of contemporary life through her artwork. In 2016 she was Guest Visitor of the Federal Republic of Germany to Berlin Art Week, and recipient of a Travel Grant in 2015 by the Patricia Phelps Cisneros Foundation to attend the CIRMA Forum in Tokyo. In Spain, she was selected for the XXXI Pontevedra Biennial: “Utropicos” curated by Santiago Olmo in 2010, and for “Meso-America: Oscillations and Artifices” at the Atlantic Center for Modern Art in Las Palmas Gran Canarias in 2002.  Between 2006 and 2010, in San Salvador, she developed a body of work under the title “Republic of Death”, that was later exhibited at the Spanish Cultural Centres of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Barraza has actively created and engaged with community projects such as the art and literature E-Magazine El ojo de Adrián, which has recently been added to the US Library of Congress Handbook of Latin American Studies.  Myra Barraza currently lives and paints in London.

Nacho Flores

Ignacio (Nacho) Flores is a Chilean singer and guitarist, based in Barcelona, Spain. Interpreter and arranger of songs with Latin American folkloric roots.

Nelly Araujo

Nelly is from El Salvador, Central America.  Her professional background is in public health and sociology. She came to the UK in 2006 and since then she has been working in public health training and education for national organisation Royal Society for Public Health. Nelly is also an active member of the Salvadorian community in the UK as trustee for the Anglo-Central Americal Society ACAS from 2017 to 2018, as founder member of ASUK in 2019 and founder member and current Chair of Amistad para Refugiados de El Salvador (ARES. ) 

Nick Jeffrey

singer of songs for freedom, peace, justice, socialism , with joy! From Oklahoma, of the Jolly Jammers at the Jolly Farmer in Lewisham , London

 Nick MacWilliam

Nick  is a British filmmaker and journalist. He has written extensively on Latin American politics and culture for various media, including Jacobin, Tribune, New Internationalist, In These Times, Counterpunch, NACLA, Red Pepper and more. He is co-editor of Alborada, an independent media platform focused on Latin America. He currently works at the TUC campaign organisation Justice for Colombia.

Pablo Navarrete

Pablo Navarrete is a journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on Latin America. He is the founder of Alborada, an independent voice on Latin American politics, media and culture, and Alborada Films, an independent production company producing and distributing social issue documentaries.

Pam Williams

Pam is a retired organic farmer and has been involved in Extinction Rebellion since the day of Declaration, Oct 31 st 2018. She has taken on an “actions” role and she says that, being retired, she is in an ideal position to be arrested. She is a member of XR Cymru’s political engagement working group, which meets Senedd members to press for urgent action on climate. However, it wasn’t until she and her husband were at COP26, that she was moved to tears hearing young people from the global south expressing very powerfully how their communities are being affected by the climate emergency. While politicians from their countries were inside at the event, they were outside, unheard by politicians from the rich countries, who had promised financial help! She is appalled by the continuing colonisation of the global south, as we in the UK exploit the minerals, products and labour of Latin America, which suffers impacts to which they have barely contributed.

Paul Allen

Paul has lived with and worked with renewable energy technologies for over 30 years. His background and training is as an electrical and electronic engineer. Paul joined the Centre for Alternative Technology in 1988, helping develop a wide range of renewable energy systems including solar medical systems for use overseas. Paul has led the ground-breaking Zero Carbon Britain research for over 15 years; liaising directly with Government, business, public sector and the arts. Paul has many years of experience presenting Zero Carbon Britain findings to a diverse range of clients; in person, via regular live on-line sessions and by developing bespoke training such as the British Retail Consortium, Church of England, Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations, National Theatre, North West Regional Energy Hub and Oxford ECI. Paul also regularly presents up-dates on this work at official UNFCCC side-events at COP summits, most recently COP26 in Glasgow.

Peter Stevenson

Peter is a storyteller, illustrator, writer, artist, folklorist, film-maker, crankie- maker, lecturer on the art of visual storytelling, organiser of Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, Stories@Medina, and Y Mabinogi Project. He has illustrated many children’s books for Labybird and other publishers, and written and illustrated several collections of Welsh Folk Tales, and in 2021, ‘Boggarts Trolls & Tylwyth Teg, Folk Tales of Hidden People and Lost Lands. He tours storytelling shows such as ‘The lost fairytales of west Wales’, ‘The Crow and the Canary’ based on the fairytale life of Dylan Thomas, ‘The Frolic’ the life of Welsh Romany storyteller and harper John Roberts, and many more. He frequently wanders around Appalachia and Aotearoa telling tales, and in 2019 organised an exhibition and festival of Welsh Appalachian Folk Art and Storytelling at the Monongahela Arts Center in Morgantown WV, to coincide with the publication of the Moon-eyed People, Folk Tales from Welsh America. He has performed at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village, the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central Park, in a Māori marae in New Zealand, and often at Beyond the Border, Wales’ International Storytelling Festival. He continues to wander the old Welsh tramping roads with a pack on his back, sketchbook in pocket, head in the clouds and feet in the mud.

Phaxsi Coca

Phaxsi Coca is Jeanette Rojas’ stage name. She is a well-known Bolivian musician. She has started her musical steps since she was teenager in the 1989’s also travelled a lot to different countries in South  and Central America, Cuba, Europe and Japan. Now based in London since 2008. Phaxsi and Coca are two very important female elements of the Andean Cosmovision: Phaxsi in the Aymara language means ‘Mother Moon’, and Coca is the sacred coca leaf, a traditional holy symbol of the integration of nature and people in the South-American  Andes area since many millennia. She plays the traditional wind instruments from the Andes region,such as a family of Sikus (similar to panpipes, made from bamboo), Q’enas (made from bamboo, wood, bonds) and the charango.

Rod Lawson

Rod Lawson has taught salsa dancing for many years. During his 9 trips to Cuba he has become particularly enthused by Rueda de Casino, named after the casinos of Havana. This involves dancing not as one couple but as groups of couples with partner changes; think Latin ceilidh! The twist is that it is all improvised, rather than a set sequence, with participation and enjoyment are very much at its heart. Lessons will be open to all levels of experience and none.  As well as teaching in the UK, Rod has taught in Sweden, Ecuador, Shanghai and New York.

Roger Redding

Roger Redding MBE is a retired Chaplin to Gypsies and Travellers. He has studied liberation theology and will be conducting the Liberation Theology mass.

Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia is a trio specialising in Andean music which consists of family members Kanti Quena (Carlos Saldana) and Phaxsi Coca (Jeanette Rojas), and their 12-year-old son Raymi Willka. Phaxsi, from Bolivia, and Kanti, who is from Peru, are both well-known Andean musicians based in London, and are members of the ground-breaking fusion band Lokandes. Raymi, who was born in London, has been brought up steeped in his Andean heritage, and is already showing some of the virtuoso musicianship of his parents. ‘Sagrada Familia’ transmits a message of harmony and strong emotion to the listener inspired by family unity and musical understanding.

Samba Dyfi

 Samba Dyfi are newly established and are a “rhythms of Resistance” band based in mid-Wales.

Sarah Shenker

Sarah Shenker is a Research and Advocacy Officer at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. Sarah coordinates Survival’s Uncontacted Tribes campaign, fighting for the protection of uncontacted tribes’ lands so they can survive and live as they choose. She also works on Survival’s #StopBrazilsGenocide and Decolonize Conservation campaigns. Sarah has spent time with dozens of indigenous communities across Brazil, and in Venezuela, Paraguay, Mexico and India.

Seb Muñoz

Sebastian Muñoz is Senior Programmes Officer at War on Want, the radical anti-poverty and social justice organisation. He works closely with grassroots and frontline social movements, developing justice-oriented approaches to tackle the social and ecological crises. Sebastian helps to coordinate the Global Green New Deal Project and the Post-Extractive Futures Network.

Sonia Silva

 Nueva Esperanza, thirty years of Solidarity (with Tony Lunar and Tim and Mogs Hollins), and Celebrating Two Extraordinary Communities Created by Land Seizures (with Tony Lunar, Malcolm and Fermin) Sonia Silva was born in Managua in 1986. Her mother’s family flew to Nicaragua as refugees in 1981, during the civil war in El Salvador.  When she was 5 years old, her family returned to El Salvador with other families, where they established the community of Nueva Esperanza in the rural area of El Bajo Lempa. Since she was a child, Sonia participated in the community as part of different artistic groups such as the Folkloric dance group, music group, and the Community ‘Junta Directiva‘ (elected council). In 2018, she came to England with her son to join her partner. Now, she is living in Liverpool and studying English as a second language.

Sophie Muir

Sophie teaches meditation and leads retreats at Maenllwyd, Wales. She trained in the Tibetan and Chinese ( Chan ) traditions and offers classes in Chi Kung and mindfulness at home in Cornwall and online. She is very happy to be invited to share practice at ESE!

Susan Buckingham

Susan Buckingham has worked with the Peace and Justice Project since it was formed. She is a socialist and feminist, researching, writing and teaching on the relationships between gender and environment (latest book – Gender and Environment). She has worked in universities, with international organisations, womens and environmental campaigning organisations. Susan is a founder member of Friends of the Cam which challenges the speculative growth which is destroying rivers and their environments, without benefit to local communities.

Susy Escalante

Susy is a family law attorney, with postgraduate studies in family law and adoption, she is a housewife, Adriana’s mother, a self-taught Chef, a friend and she loves to talk. She likes to see the positive side of life. Resilience is her greatest quality. She always tries to help the people around her and tries to honor her parents with the values they taught her.  She wants to continue learning more about the world around her. She is a proud Salvadoran.

Tim Hollins

Tim has been part of the festival organising committee since 2013. He has a 30 year history of solidarity with Latin America, and is currently the coordinator of the El Salvador Solidarity Network. Hesings, writes songs and plays the accordion, and is secretary of West Midlands Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Tito Vega

Tito Vega was born in Chile. He established a workshop in Santiago where he produced metalwork for interior decoration of homes and shops, as well as handicrafts and ornaments. He left Chile because of the violent coup d’etat. In the United Kingdom he studied Gem Cutting and Jewellery Making. He set up a workshop in Hatton Gardens, London, where he was awarded a prize for his artwork by the Clerkenwell Association for Craftspeople. Since then he has been facilitating Arts and Crafts workshops, and has been involved in television and theatre as an actor, writer and stage designer. Currently working as a director and artist for Gozart. http://www.gozart.com specialising in giant puppetry, masks, and street art to create highly participatory, issue-oriented, outdoor theatre that is accessible to all. 

Tony Luna

Tony Luna is from the community Nueva Esperanza El Bajo Lempa El Salvador. When he was 15, he became involved in community organizations and was the leader of a community youth group, which he represented in different events in and out of the country. After that, he joined the local community council (Junta Directiva). In 2013, Tony and other artists of El Bajo Lempa founded ASDACJI (Asociacion para el Desarrollo de las Artes y la Cultura en Jiquilisco). He also became the local coordinator of the project Music for Hope. In 2016, Tony had to leave his community and come to England. In 2018, his family joined him. He is the coordinator of the Music for Hope charity in the UK, and at the same time works with SOLA ARTS, a charity based in Liverpool that supports refugees, asylum seekers and people with mental health difficulties through the arts.

Trio Sureño

Play classic tunes from the Latinamerican songbook, including songs from Chile and Argentina in the southern cone to Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia further north, to the Caribbean rhythms and sounds of Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba. This London-based outfit performs at restaurants, festivals and private events, and their set list typically includes folk tunes, songs of protest and popular dance numbers covering various Latin rhythms too, including bolero, guajira, sanjanito, guarania, zamba, vals and cumbia, just to name a few.

the Twmpath collective

eganviv@gmail.com

Wanda Koseda

Classical pianist Wanda Koseda is based in South Wales. She teaches, composes, plays for a community choir and gives recitals. She’ll end her recital with variations she’s written on El Salvador’s proud folk song ‘El Carbonero.’

Yali Banton-Heath

Campaigns communications co-ordinator, Landworkers Alliance, UK