Mina Jack (neutral or masc pronouns) is a trans and non-binary activist, politician, consultant, thinker, and artist from the Mediterranean.
They’ve been working on developing campaigns, raising awareness, and doing communications on LGBTQI rights, green politics, electoral campaigns, and roller derby for just over a decade.
Want to have a chat about media ethics with regards to LGBTQI representation, and non-binary, fluid and liminal framing in communications? Just get in touch, MJ loves distractions.
Sho Walker-Konno
Sho is a freelance communications coach for activists. He has advised groups from anti-corporate farmer collectives in the Philippines, to abortion rights campaigners in Mexico, to trans groups in Eastern Europe – with everything from messaging to media relations.
Originally from London, based in Amsterdam, his side-projects focus on demystifying comms: like a “Bluffer’s Guide to Framing” and a YouTube channel about communications for activists.
Faith
I’m one of the newer PIRC team members and I am a Community lead at PIRC. My work centres around the upcoming Narrative Leadership Programme PIRC is developing and I will be supporting participants on this programme, with their wellbeing and learning. I have an academic background in international politics and racialisation.
Previously my work has focused on anti-racism, inclusion, climate justice and leveraging diaspora knowledge within global solidarity. Through all my work I try to weave in my knowledge of interconnected struggles for liberation. Care, rest and imagination are my north star in working towards a more just, equitable and caring society.
Outside of work, I love eating ethnic food (iykyk), cooking for my loved ones, watching depressing shows, video essays and going to concerts!
#blackjoy #qtibpoc #timhortons #mywife #enjoyment #ilovemusic #iwillnotstandforrenassainceslander #imjustlivinglifelikeababygal
Shan Stephens
I’m PIRC’s new Community Lead. I support our Narrative Leadership Programme, as well as coordinating our network of associates, collaborators, and trainers.
I’m passionate about developing effective and caring ways of working in flat-structured organisations. I bring that interest to PIRC’s Programming group, where I focus on our capacity and work planning systems, supporting healthy accountability in alignment with our values.
I’ve been facilitating, training, and organising in all corners of Scotland and Europe for nearly two decades. I’m a long-time climate justice organiser, builder of autonomous community spaces, feeder of the masses, and supporter of my local tenants’ union. I’m a Board member at Tripod Training and I was a founding member of The Class Work Project.
In my spare time you’ll find me reading, travelling by train, cooking for pals, supporting independent art and music, lifting heavy things, organising extravagant parties, and cycling. I dream of one day starting a community housing project.
#beyondthebinary #squatday #queereverything #directactiongetsthegoods #where’stheparty? #communityorganising #healthyboundaries #veganjunkfood #fromallytoaccomplice #saunatime
Sara Cowan
Fundraising Lead & Resources Group
I am the Fundraising Lead for PIRC. I grew up in Ecuador to an Ecuadorian mother and Scottish father (I am bilingual, fluent in Spanish and English). I grew up around charity work: (women’s prison support work, food kitchen, children living on the street). I am very passionate about impactful work and activism! When I was a student I started a community fridge project to reduce food waste on campus and I also started a campaign to divest from fossil fuels!
I have a First-Class Honours Business degree in Management Science and Economics at the University of Strathclyde. I have been working in funding, assessment and resource mobilization since 2018. I am also very interested in evaluation processes, outcomes, indicators and impact tracking.
Although I work with spreadsheets all day, all my friends will tell you that I am very arty! You will find me painting abstract art by day and dancing to electronic music by night. Dubstep anyone?
Skills & interests
Elena Blackmore
Elena is a facilitator, writer, researcher, community activist, and leader of organisational development. For over a decade she’s been creating spaces for groups to explore and develop narrative; designing and leading framing projects; shaping organisational strategy and creating new organisational infrastructure. She recently joined KIN as a co-director, seeking to create spaces for liberation, healing and joy for black activism. She’s also an aspiring artist, tarot dabbler, Octavia Butler fan and parent of a toddler who likes cats more than people. Originally from East London, raised in Manchester, now fully rooted in the rolling green of mid-Wales: her ideal landscape for radical imagining.
James Robertson
James is a freelance trainer, facilitator and strategist with over twenty years of experience working with environmental and social justice organisations. He’s an associate at PIRC and NEON where he helped develop and train on the Movement Builders programme. James has always had a passion for music and produces in the soul duo Equals and for the alt RnB group GRAMN.
Ralph Underhill
I worked with the lovely people at PIRC for over 3 years. Facilitating and creating toolkits was my main area of work (and still is, but I am now Framing Matters)!
I am really keen on putting framing into practice. The theory is fascinating but can sometimes be disconnected from our everyday work. Making framing something everyone can do, no matter what their role or sector, is really exciting to me. (I probably need to get out more!)
I also think that training should be fun and memorable, but that makes me sound a bit more enthusiastic than I am in real life.
While at PIRC, I wrote the Framing Nature Toolkit and co-wrote Common Cause for Nature.
Kaan
Workshops Lead & People Group
I’m the workshop lead at PIRC, and a geek for learning that centres participants—their experiences, knowledge, skills and creativity. I’m really excited about leading on designing and delivering our workshops with this at the forefront, and doing my own learning along the way. I’m also part of our people group—looking after staff wellbeing, care and workplace culture. Some things I’m particularly interested in are reframing trans liberation and how we talk about borders.
I have a background in grassroots campaigning, youth peer support, journalism and domestic and sexual abuse support work. I’ve designed and delivered workshops to adults and young people on a range of topics, from self care to drag king workshops. Outside of PIRC, I help run a queer poetry night, like to bake all sorts of vegan cakes and will occasionally make an appearance as my drag king alter-ego, Turkish popstar Tarkan. I’m also a muppa to three cats, who like to join our zoom meetings.
Skills & interests
Becky Luff
Becky works in Production Accounts in Film and TV and has previously worked at political publishers Lawrence & Wishart and as a freelance events producer for organisations including the TUC and the Amiel & Melburn Trust.
Becky brings to the PIRC board financial and budgeting understanding, as well as a decade of experience working and volunteering across the not-for-profit sector. Becky has an MA in International Studies from SOAS and is an active member of the Scottish Green Party.
Elly Baker
Elly is a Londonwide Assembly Member for the Labour party and spokesperson on transport in London. Prior to becoming a politician Elly was a trade union organiser for over 20 years and has organised workers within industries as diverse as transport, education, social care and the arts.
She brings substantial experience of management, human resource policies and practice and wider organisational issues—both large scale and individual—and is passionate about ensuring that organisations support and engage their workers.
Joe Beswick
Joe is a Project Manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s London Office, working on economic justice. Previously he was Head of Housing and Land at the New Economics Foundation, worked at Asylum Aid, a legal and support organisation for refugees and asylum seekers, and at Brent Community Law Centre, a grassroots human rights NGO. Alongside his work at NEF, Joe recently completed a PhD looking at the privatisation of social housing in London.
Outside of work he is an activist with the London Renters Union, helping their work to build the collective power of renters.
Emmanuelle Andrews
Emmanuelle (she/her) is a Policy and Campaigns Manager at human rights organisation Liberty where she works across policing, protest, surveillance and technology. She has appeared across tv and radio discussing racial justice and non-policing solutions to social issues, and has written for Red Pepper, Gal-dem, and Huck magazine amongst others.
Prior to joining Liberty, Emmanuelle worked in research and policy at Kaleidoscope Trust, advocating for the rights of communities across the globe persecuted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity due to legacies of colonialism. Emmanuelle was a founding member of the Free Black University and a researcher-in-residence at the South London Gallery where she worked with young people on responding to a colonial anthropological archive. She is also a reframing consultant for Runnymede Trust’s racial justice project.
Emmanuelle holds a BA in Anthropology and Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an MA in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice from the University of British Columbia (on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people).
Hannah Smith
Curriculum Lead
I joined the PIRC team in 2018 as a group facilitator, trainer and participatory organiser, with a background in community theatre. I now support the development of our narrative-change curriculum and learning resources.
I’m passionate about developing creative, care-centred, and engaging tools and approaches to help strengthen and nurture us in our work for social change.
I’m also super into our flat structure, and all the experimentation and learning that we’ve done to evolve this since 2015. I have coordinated our People, Programming and Direction work at different points since joining the team.
Previously, I’ve worked on climate justice, human rights and community organising locally, nationally and internationally, and I’ve developed training, group-working support and political education resources for a variety of different groups working on social, environmental and economic justice.
Outside PIRC, you’ll find me organising drag cabarets, swimming in rivers, reading on the sofa, hosting friends & community gatherings, playing boardgames and supporting local protests and picket lines.
Skills & interests:
Hele Oakley
Mentor
My interest has always been in a combination of somatic, process- and person-centred approaches to relationship and connection. In more recent years, I’ve developed facilitation of groups and one-to-one mentoring that opens space for the emergent elements that sometimes get missed in solutions-first responses. I’m interested in how our personal stories, myths and identities interface with social and collective narratives as well as their connections to nature and natural cycles.
I also love to dance, buffoon and be out in wild places. Travel is a lifelong love and feminist sci-fi a newfound love. I also quite like loafing around, random sweaty (though average) squash sessions, and hanging out with the amazing people of the Dyfi Valley.
