Vivienne Chow is an award-winning journalist, writer and a content strategist whose work examines art, cultural ecosystems and identity at the nexus of East and West. Through her reporting and analysis, she aims to break down cultural barriers, uncover untold stories, and foster dialogue among art-world players from diverse backgrounds. She is a Salzburg Global Fellow and an IJP Premium Fellow, and is Writer-in-Residence at esea contemporary from August to November 2026.

Over more than two decades, she has built an internationally recognised career spanning Asia and Europe, served as Senior Reporter at the South China Morning Post, and London Correspondent at Artnet News, where she co-founded The Asia Pivot newsletter. Her byline has appeared in BBC Culture, Variety, The Art Newspaper, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, among others.

Beyond journalism, she founded the non-profit Cultural Journalism Campus and has taught arts writing and reporting at universities. She was the editor of A New Reality, the monograph of Hong Kong artist Stephen Wong Chun Hei. She also advises cultural organisations on strategy and research, and is a regular speaker and moderator at international art and cultural forums.

Freo Majer is the Artistic Director of Forecast, an international facilitating program dedicated to mentoring and promoting audacious minds and their creative practices. Since 2015, Forecast has conducted one-on-one mentorships and workshop series and initiated research programs that bring together art and science institutions. The various strands of development and production each lead to what Forecast calls prototypes, which are showcased at transdisciplinary festivals. Majer looks back at a career as an opera director and producer in European theaters and festivals. Recognizing a gap in the support available to cultural workers, he founded Forecast in 2015. He initiated the international research programs Housing the Human (2017–2019), Driving the Human (2020–2023), and the ongoing Shifting the Human (2024–). Freo Majer serves on various boards and juries, including the Cultural Forum of Social Democracy, and the jury of the KAIROS Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation.

Luka Yuanyuan Yang (b. 1989, Beijing) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in London and Beijing, working across documentary film, video, photography, installation and performance. Weaving documentary and archival materials, her practice explores identity, migration and memory, often challenging conventional historical narratives and bringing overlooked voices to the foreground.

She has held solo exhibitions at High Line Art, New York (2025), Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong (2024), ARTiX3, Tokyo (2023) and OCAT Shanghai (2020), with her work also presented at institutions including Rockbund Art Museum, Power Station of Art, New Taipei City Art Museum, Centre for Heritage Arts & Textile, Times Art Center Berlin and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre.

Her debut feature documentary Chinatown Cha-Cha premiered at Pingyao International Film Festival and Hawaii International Film Festival, receiving the New Filmmaker Award at the 14th China Documentary Academy Awards (2024), as well as Best Feature and Audience Choice Award at MINT Chinese Film Festival (2025). The film was released theatrically across China in 2024 and subsequently toured internationally in Europe and the United States. Her short films have also been featured in The New Yorker.

Yang is a recipient of the BAZAAR Art Awards – Cross-Cultural Creator of the Year (2024), the BVLGARI Avrora Award (2023) and the ART POWER 100 Award (2019). Her work is held in the collections of Power Station of Art, Kadist Art Foundation and FENIX Museum of Migration.

Ekene Akalawu is based at the BBC’s MediaCity home in Salford, where she is a producer on Front Row, BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts magazine programme, and The Verb, Radio 4’s poetry performance and discussion programme.

She has made many special editions of Front Row, including Making Culture At Home, which looked at how arts organisations root themselves in their local communities; A First and A Final, which followed an RSC production of Cymbeline; The Blue Edition, an exploration of the colour blue; and a bank holiday edition dedicated to Scarborough.

This year, she has produced a special edition of The Verb at the Hay Festival, The Love Verb marking Valentine’s Day, and a Verb edition recorded around a flotilla of handmade boats.

For over two decades, she has produced a wide variety of programmes for Radio 4, Radio 3, Radio 1 and the World Service, including Speaking in the Streets, a Radio 4 documentary about Motown’s spoken-word label, Black Forum. The Guardian devoted a radio review column to the programme, describing it as “inspirational” and “Storytelling at its most powerful”. She would like to think those descriptions apply to many of the programmes she’s made.

Xiaowen Zhu (b. Shanghai) is a Manchester- and Berlin-based institutional leader, curator, artist, and author. Named by Apollo magazine as one of its 40 Under 40 Asia Pacific Thinkers, she is recognised for her contributions to contemporary art and cultural exchange. Since taking the helm of esea contemporary in 2022, Zhu has led a significant period of institutional transformation, reimagining the organisation as a platform for artistic experimentation, critical inquiry and new forms of cultural knowledge, while expanding its international reach and extending its presence in the international contemporary art landscape. She is a member of the British Council’s Arts and Creative Economy Advisory Group.

Zhu has worked internationally in Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Berlin as a director, author, and lecturer. She previously served as Assistant Director at Times Art Center Berlin, the first overseas parallel institution established by the Guangdong Times Museum. Her curatorial practice is informed by an understanding of art as a form of knowledge production, attending to how artistic practices challenge inherited narratives, complicate cultural categories and articulate alternative ways of understanding the contemporary world. Her work also explores how art engages with place, history and cultural exchange, opening up new perspectives on the relationships between local contexts and global imaginaries.

Zhu is the author of the artist book Oriental Silk (Hatje Cantz, 2020) and the short story collection Encounters (Shanghai Educational Publishing House, 2022). Her writing, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Art Review, e-flux, Kaleidoscope, Asian Review of Books, Crown Magazine, Arts of the Working Class, It’s Nice That, and elsewhere. She has delivered lectures and talks at institutions including the London School of Economics and Political Science, Goldsmiths, University of London, Heidelberg University, Lund University, University of Westminster, Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, Syracuse University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Kyoto City University of the Arts, and Kyushu University.