Our Community

Agnieszka Bułacik

​I am an experienced creative, facilitator, and consultant with a broad history of working in culture, arts, and education with a focus on holistic anti-discrimination and critical global education. I am all about learning, creativity, and human connection and I love designing interactive and participatory learning spaces and tools.  

With an educational background in Cultural Studies (Adam Mickiewicz University), Photography and Multimedia (University of Arts in Poznań), and Audiovisual Communication (University of La Coruna) I have worked in various contexts and geographies. As an educator and facilitator I have facilitated numerous workshops across Europe impacting groups of students, teachers, employees, event organizers among others by creating spaces for uncomfortable conversations about discrimination and unlocking capacities of imagination, compassionate self-reflection and critical thinking. I created learning tools that facilitate self-paced learning, educational video materials, and published texts and photos dealing with the topic of systemic oppression. I am passionate about learning and designing learning experiences and therefore transforming realities of mine and those around me. And still, I design and facilitate learning experiences, tools, and events focusing on global power structures and their influence on human (and non-human) relationships. I work with passion and engagement, would it be doing university research of local street art influence on our communities, designing global learning programs for students and teachers, or using photography as a tool to shift narratives. 

Transdisciplinary and intersectional approaches lay at the center of my interest, just as bridging the political and spiritual in the work we are doing. I am privileged to do what I love and believe in - and this is what enables me to keep learning and growing. I believe that change happens in connection. 

I cannot live without art, music, and nature and do my best to live a simple life with gratitude. 

I live in Kreuzberg with my partner Róż and the sweetest dog Lola.

Liene Jurgelāne

I have been working at the intersection of culture, arts, education, and activism for most of my life. One of my biggest strengths and passions is designing and holding spaces for exchange and collaboration among people.

As an anthropologist, observing, listening to stories, taking a critical approach to relationships and unquestioned status quos of different kinds is a crucial starting point for any work that I am doing - be it a mentoring session, a consultancy, or a workshop. 

I was co-running what has grown into the most well known independent cultural center in Riga - Kaņepes Culture Centre, being responsible for program curation, fundraising, and relationship building between the cultural centre and both local and international organisations, artists, activists, and other cultural spaces. 

Working with the New Theatre Institute of Latvia I was coordinating NTIL’s participation in Imagine 2020 (2.0) - a network of eleven arts organizations focusing on raising awareness in the cultural field and in a broader civil society context around climate change and the socio-ecological crisis, as well as modelling artistic creations and experiments that allow alternative perspectives to emerge.

I am also a co-organizer of the annual cultural festival Komēta in Riga, Latvia, and together with Agnieszka we co-curate the learning space of the festival - Komēta Academy.

new visions is a space for fusing all my past experiences and learnings into one, to address the questions that both in my own experience and practice and in observing other people and organisations have repeatedly reemerged. Among others, those are questions of collective and transformational leadership, building teams that represent the communities they are serving, creating healthy, encouraging and nurturing relationships among team members, creating art and curating programs that resonate with the challenges and issues of our time. 

It is also a personal and professional commitment to contribute to the collective effort of building a world with social and ecological justice at its core.

Judith Rakowski

I was born and mainly raised in Berlin, yet also lived in rural areas of Germany, Bolivia and the Caucasus region. Experiencing different realities and narratives while witnessing environmental devastation and social injustice fuels my passion for creating understanding and connection as crucial means for pathways to a sustainable future. 

My affairs of the heart are science and socio-political engagement:
As a geographer (graduated from Humboldt University Berlin) I like to see “the bigger picture” of our human-environmental system, spatial and temporal interdependencies and interconnectedness from global to local phenomena. My focus is on nature conservation and sustainable development. I use integrated approaches and want to dissolve the boundaries between natural and social sciences. Thus, I want to use all evident-based thoughts and methods in order to induce transformation that benefits both nature and people. 
Since 2016 I am facilitating seminars and workshops for students, professors and employees about women's empowerment, diversity and inclusion and decision-making. I have accompanied individual learning cycles and for the last eight years I was engaged as the students and womens representative at the university. I love conceptualizing and holding spaces for exchange, questioning and renegotiation of settled narratives, structures and dynamics. I am fervent in engaging in processes that enable me and others to listen, to reflect and to find compromises that acknowledge each other's needs and our connectedness.

I am envisioning a future where everyone is connected to oneself, other humans and nature in a respectful and appreciative manner. I acknowledge that great transformations are necessary to get somewhere close to this idea. However, I want to contribute to this with empathy and honesty, communication and my constant striving for learning, development and change.

Margaret Amaka Ohia-Nowak

I am a critical linguist, and a diversity consultant and anti-discrimination trainer.

In 2010 I graduated from the Black Europe Summer School and Dimensions of Citizenship, Race and Ethnic Relations, a research seminar on racism, xenophobia, black women equality and human rights. In 2012 I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct my doctoral research at the Department of African–American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. I was then a Visiting Fellow at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley with specific focus on race and gender relations in public discourse. I was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Race, Ethnicity and Migration, City University London.

In 2014, I received my doctoral degree with the thesis “Racism against people of African descent in Polish language and public discourse” from the University of Wroclaw. My focus is primarily on anti-black racism, stereotypes, and hate speech. I author and co-author lesson scenarios, educational materials and scientific publications on cross-cultural, human rights, anti-discrimination and global education topics.

I have published and presented academically on race and racism in contemporary public discourse, racist discourse and representations of black ethnic/gender minorities portrayed by media discourse in Poland and CEE. I conduct trainings for various organisations and training centres including Warsaw Center for Educational and Social Innovation and Training, Polish Humanitarian Action, Global Learning Network, Facebook, British Embassy Warsaw, Open Institute, the Critical Education Association and the WrOpenUp Foundation amongst others. I currently teach at the Tischner European University in Krakow. I am a member of the Never Again Association, Association of Poles of African Descent (SPPA) and the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research. 

I was raised both in Poland and in Nigeria.