Alexander Leon (he/him) is an internationally recognised facilitator, educator, speaker, and writer.
Throughout his career, Alexander’s work has spanned a variety of industries and topics, focusing primarily on advocacy / communications strategy, and anti-oppression. Whether training government ministers on LGBTQ+ inclusion, upskilling grassroots activists on how to integrate race and class into their campaign messages, or educating businesses on the importance of understanding systemic oppression, Alexander’s approach is anchored in a strong sense of justice, an avid curiosity, and an openness to play. He has co-designed and delivered trainings for NEON, Greenpeace, Ulex, Stonewall, LinkedIn, and others. His writing has been featured in The Guardian, BBC, Huffington Post, 14poems, and more.
Tamsyn is Director of Evidence at FrameWorks UK. She works to understand how people think about social issues – and what changes those things. An expert in narrative and strategic communications, Tamsyn works with mission-driven organisations across Europe to translate framing research into practice on such issues as health inequality, homelessness, child welfare and access to justice.
Before joining FrameWorks, Tamsyn was a consultant at the FrameWorks Institute, and headed digital and strategic communications at Equally Ours, a network of organisations working to advance equality and human rights. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history and an MA from the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Damian is a facilitator, creative producer and engagement specialist, with extensive experience supporting communities to bring about change.
He has worked extensively in the cultural/creative sector as well as undertaking roles at Welcome Connecting Science and the national innovation foundation, Nesta, helping people with lived experience of health conditions influence and change policy and research. For 11 years he was Head of Arts at Cambridge University Hospitals and he also set up and ran London Arts and Health, campaigning for the role of storytelling and creativity in challenging health inequalities.
As well as joining the PIRC board in 2024, Damian is a trustee of Suffolk Artlink and he is on the board of 64 Million Artists.
Lucy supports and trains organisers and charities on campaigning and media, including with NEON and Sheila McKechnie Foundation.
Her career has focused on working directly with people facing injustice and marginalisation to share their stories to inform and create change.
Lucy also works as a community organiser at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Before joining the Bureau, Lucy led on media and communications at the charity INQUEST for more than seven years. She directly supported families bereaved by deaths in state care, custody and detention to share their stories and challenge the issues arising to prevent future deaths. She also co-created and co-present the INQUEST podcast, Unlawful Killing.
She has a background in journalism, including coediting the print magazine STRIKE!, which platformed radical voices. Lucy is Scottish and is currently based in Hastings.
My involvement with PIRC focuses on reshaping elements of the curriculum through an accessible, decolonial lens and dreaming up new ways of bringing PIRC’s wealth of resources to those who are ready to make some magic with them.
Narrative change happens to be the ‘golden thread’ that ties together the various elements of my professional journey, from challenging dominant narratives through spoken word artivism, music, writing on marginalised topics for platforms including the Huffington Post and Elephant journal, to consulting for NGOs and commercial brands and decolonial comms and thought-practice. So I’m very much looking forward to the natural connections, insights and developments I anticipate will emerge through this work.
Outside of office hours I enjoy making music, hyperfocusing on my latest research interest(s), getting messy with my little ones and experimenting with ways to divest from colonising systems, inside and out.
#freepalestine #freecongo #freehaiti #freesudan #decoloniseeverything
Kennedy (they/he) is a facilitator and strategic campaigns and communications specialist with 10 years of experience.
They’re currently a senior organiser campaigning around energy justice and they recently worked with NEON to develop their messaging and framing training.
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 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.
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
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 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.
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.
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
#ReframingEducation #ParticipatoryLearning #MealsWithFriends #TransAndProud #CatPaws #BoardGames #DragKings #TreeClimbing #GayPoetry #TrashyLesbianFilms #VeganBannoffeePie
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.
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).
