Javier Arias is Director of Business Creation at EIT Culture & Creativity, where he drives the strategy for incubation, acceleration and scaling up of ventures in various culture and creative industries and sectors.

With over 15 years in commercial and marketing roles, Javier is a growth-oriented leader skilled in demand generation and expanding businesses into new markets, including Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. His career spans roles in global demand generation, venture growth and business strategies in sectors like advertising, FMCG, international higher education and sustainable energy. 

GREEN-BiT's mission is to reduce the gaming industry's carbon footprint by monitoring energy use and carbon output per game for players, and by utilising anonymised data to empower developers with an innovative Green Software Development Kit. Our SDK will provide ease of access to performance data and optimisation tools, democratising optimisation development for game and software developers. 

Our ultimate goal is to revolutionise the software industry: from gaming to expanding across all platform holders, cloud, enterprise and AI sectors; with our software at the forefront of sustainable software development practices, with millions of carbon saved each year due to greener-software.  

We re-use the waste heat from our  compute network to provide free hot water to people who need it. 

Heata began as an innovation project with British Gas; how could we help people living in fuel poverty? At the time there was a lot of coverage of Bitcoin mining and the vast quantities of energy miners were using, and the vast quantities of waste heat they were generating. 
 
We wondered if we could utilise that waste heat to help, so we put a miner in a barrel of mineral oil and connected it up to a radiator to demonstrate the idea. 

But radiators are only used for part of the year. 

We re-engineered the system to work with domestic hot water cylinders where demand is fairly constant all year round, and switched from Bitcoin mining to general compute so it could support the decarbonisation of a rapidly growing industry. 

Since joining Dupe in 2018, Robin’s strategic operation and management skills have helped build the visual effects company, from inception to the experienced facility it is today. Responsible for people, operations, tech and finance functions, he works alongside founder Jono Harris to grow and scale the company with consideration for team and clients, environment, community and governance. 

Mete Coban MBE became the Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy in July 2024, overseeing the Mayor’s world-leading climate action plan for the capital.

Before becoming Deputy Mayor, Mete was a Councillor and Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Environment, and Transport in the London Borough of Hackney, delivering a £61 million Green New Deal to tackle the climate crisis. He is best known for pioneering Hackney’s Community Energy Fund, providing clean, green, community-owned energy to 39 not-for-profits.

Mete is widely credited with making politics more accessible to young people as the Founder of the youth-led charity My Life My Say. He led the Give an X voter registration campaign, which resulted in over 488,000 newly registered voters ahead of the UK General Election in July 2024.

Salli Deighton is a world-leading expert in the denim industry, known for consistently driving success, growth, and sustainable solutions for top brands and retailers. She has worked with many major brands including Wrangler, Lee, F&F, Fat Face, and M&S, and in 2018 introduced a sustainable wash process at ASOS, reducing water consumption by over 50%. Leading the charge for responsible and ethical production within the global denim industry, Salli has been instrumental in helping markets like Bangladesh and Turkey transition to cleaner denim production and finishing since Rana Plaza tragically happened in 2012. 

Seeing the urgent need in the UK for a sustainable, on shore solutions, Salli founded LaundRe, the UK’s first circular denim finishing hub. LaundRe provides flexible, on-shore, services to brands, retailers and recyclers to reduce waste and carbon impact, offering an innovative, circular alternative to long-haul fast fashion.  

Salli was honoured in 2020 with a Rivet 50 award, recognized by peers for her influential contribution to the denim industry. 

Inspiring Yarns CIC was established in 2021 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it was having on the mental health and wellbeing within our community.  As small business owners in the yarn industry we saw the impact on the wider online yarn community and our customers who often linked their social and travel activities to their yarn and textile-based crafts.  At the core of our organisation is the provision of supportive services which are accessible to all within the community.  We provide a community hub where we can demonstrate the meditative properties of these crafts and encourage those within our community to explore the mental health benefits of taking part in creative activities.  To maintain our services and to make them as low cost as we can to ensure full accessibility,  we strive to generate income from sales of retail goods and events such as crafting retreats, and we also continually develop a product range to demonstrate the skills within our organisation.  We skilfully combine traditional methods to promote and maintain heritage crafts, with innovative solutions to ensure we can create unique, hand-crafted products that are affordable and make best use of the resources available to us.  We rescue fabrics from a local upholstery fabric manufacturer, which would otherwise be destined for landfill, and we work closely with local farmers to consider sustainable uses of undervalued natural resources such as raw fleeces.  Textiles are a huge part of our heritage and our local area is well known for textile production.  We want to maintain knowledge and skills for future generations but make it relevant to today’s climate and consider how through circular economy and enhanced knowledge of the environment and sustainability, we can continue to develop training and employment opportunities for those in the creative industries who may otherwise not have the opportunity to access the skills, knowledge or support to access these roles otherwise.

Laura Elvin is the founder of Iusegenius, engineering compound positive impact through systems change. For startups, corporates and VC, Laura leads on impact investment, blending business strategy, development, frameworks, data strategy, AI, technology, and growth-focused partnerships. Iusegenius' cross-sector impact is mapped to impact KPIs in areas including Fintech, Health, Sustainable Consumption, Edtech, Energy, Water, and Quantum. Formerly lead counsel at an impact family office and an entrepreneur from 17, Laura's experience includes launching UK solar innovations inaugurated by the energy minister. She champions positive impact on platforms like Microsoft, CogX, and the London Stock Exchange. 

Very simply I’ve spent most of my professional life working in, working with, investing in, and buying from young businesses driven by a passion to change their customers' outcomes for the better.  And an insight into me.... I’m a farmer’s husband. My wife and I run a suckler beef herd on a small island in the south-west of Ireland where I spent my early childhood. We are adopting agroecological systems, long word for our ambition to reduce emissions, recycle resources and prioritise local supply chains. Whether on farm or otherwise I love being outside, being present in the rhythm of the outdoors.

Tam has been in practice for 20 years, establishing their own practice in 2011. During this time they have worked on over 30 projects concentrating on the residential sector, with experience working with schools, arts organisations and communities. They have been Director of Resort Studios, sat on the South-East Committee, Architects Declare and have delivered EU Interreg capital projects in partnership with Kent County Council. 

Tam is an advocate for a Circular Economy, a passionate environmentalist and a certified Passive House Designer. They have great technical knowledge in new build passive homes and retrofit design and a brilliant network of low-carbon, natural and innovative material suppliers.  

Having left home at 16 they have been curious about what home means to them and to others and how we shape our identity within these spaces. After studying individuality of the home during their masters their interest continued. You can see the product of this 20 years later in their enthusiasm, engagement and commitment to clients, creating homes which strengthen people’s connection to themselves and the natural world. 

Tam is passionate about the future of low carbon, regenerative architecture. You will find them hard working, engaging and optimistic, smiling despite the rain.

Dr Sam Lynch is on a mission to help creative industries businesses scale and grow. As the Innovation Lead for the Create Growth Programme, backed by the Department of Culture Media and Sport and delivered by Innovate UK, she brings extensive expertise to supporting growth within the sector . Sam’s career spans academia, marketing and innovation, providing her with an interdisciplinary perspective to the challenges faced by the creative industries. A passionate advocate for women in careers and business, Sam supports women to unlock their professional ambitions. 

Rahul Misra is Investment Principal at Creative UK. Since joining Creative UK in 2021, Rahul has led investments in creative companies across gaming, animation, immersive entertainment, music, architecture, design and advertising, from across Creative UK's commercial and impact funds. Rahul previously worked in institutional asset management, with a focus on investment strategy and governance, where his clients were blue chip and global pension and sovereign wealth funds. Rahul's career transition to SME investment happened through his own interest in the creative industries.

Alongside finance, Rahul has created his own body of work in music and audio visual production, featured on platforms such as Rolling Stone India and Resonance FM London. Rahul uses his finance experience and investment track record to empower the creative industries, which he sees as a catalyst for positive change. 

Jamie spent 8 years heading up a portfolio of major music festivals and was instrumental in growing Boardmasters Festival into Europe’s most commercially successful sports and music event. He has a design background and has also worked producing content-led marketing for a host of global consumer brands including Red Bull. 

Key experience: 

• BA Hons in Consumer Product Design 

• Worked as a graphic & product designer 

• Ran a portfolio of Music festivals 

• 4 years at Red Bull 

• Grown a startup event to scale which sold 

• Previously co-founded a marketing agency 

Cathy Runciman Is Co-Executive Director of EarthPercent, the music industry’s climate foundation, a charity co-founded by Brian Eno whose mission is to unleash the power of music in service of the planet. EarthPercent seeks to include the planet as a stakeholder across the music sector, and leads music development and conservation fund governance for the Sounds Right initiative which recognises and rewards nature’s contribution to music. Cathy co-founded and curated the storytelling platform Atlas of the Future and Barcelona's Fixing the Future Festival, and previously led the media organisations openDemocracy and Time Out International. 

An Environmental Scientist by training, Rob became “accidentally” involved in festivals and events over 25 years ago, helping to run an area at Glastonbury Festival which is completely battery & solar powered. Since then he has been a key person in sustainably powering many events in the UK, Europe, North & South America & Asia, along with ongoing work with Glastonbury. In 2020, Rob helped to lead a team of sustainable energy professionals and technical partners to design and build a battery energy system for Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres World Tour. Now in 2024, after powering more than 50 shows on the tour, this team is developing the working prototype into the Showpower SmartGrid - a system which will revolutionise the sustainable use of energy in global events. 

Rob is a Fellow of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment and an Associate member of the Energy Institute. 

Justine Simons is Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. She has played a central role in the cultural transformation of London for two decades. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 by Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth for Services to Culture in London.

Justine founded and is Chair of the World Cities Culture Forum – the principal leadership network on culture and the future of cities, now grown to over 40 global cities reaching across six continents.

She led the capital’s biggest ever festival for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games with over 5000 events and is now overseeing its legacy. East Bank in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, is a new £1 billion culture and education district, the most significant for over 150 years.

She shapes London’s Investment Strategy for the Creative Industries covering film, fashion, games and design, growing their influence on the world stage. She has designed new policy innovations including the world’s first Creative Enterprise Zones, a new Culture at Risk Office to protect fragile cultural infrastructure, established the London Borough of Culture and hardwired culture into London’s planning system with the first Cultural Infrastructure Plan. 

Justine established the Fourth Plinth as the UK’s biggest public sculpture prize, is co-chair of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and chaired the Mayor’s Suffrage Statue Commission placing the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett. She positioned culture at the heart of the Let’s Do London recovery campaign, attracting 800,000 visitors and bringing London back to life post pandemic.

“Digital arts play a vital role in creating and modifying our relationships with technology. Communities of practice in the arts can help steer a cultural shift away from wasteful and extractive tech industry practices, and towards something like permacomputing. I'm therefore absolutely thrilled to get the Challenge fund grant, which will allow us to continue building relationships with artists spanning the worlds of games and theatre, as we further develop our open-source software for interactive online live performances.”