As the days get shorter, and the first winds of autumn rush through our hair and the trees, filling sails with fresh air and orientations towards future horizons, Radical Ecology’s new team gathers at our studio on Webber’s Yard, Dartington. Guided by Director Ashish Ghadiali and Head of Research and Community Iman Datoo, we are incredibly excited to announce a new season of exciting people, projects and programmes that we hope to grow out of this fruitful grouping - a complex system that is even more than the sum of its parts. This newsletter marks the launch of this fresh set of relations, introducing the newest core staff of Radical Ecology: Megan Roberts, Megan Wilson-De La Mare, Debs Ashfield and Laila Shah.
MEGAN ROBERTS: MEDIA PRODUCER
Megan Roberts is our Media Producer. Meg is a filmmaker and artist whose practice is rooted in collaboration and co-design. Through participatory filmmaking, she amplifies marginalised voices and explores urgent social and environmental issues in partnership with communities, researchers, and advocacy organisations. She has worked with groups including Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support, Say No to Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), The Routes to Wellness Project, Cornwall Climate Care, and 99p Films. Her recent three-screen film, In Conversation with Plymouth Hoe, created for The Box’s Re-Imagining the Film Archives programme, exemplifies her approach. Developed in response to the anti-immigration unrest of 2024, the piece layers archival footage with contemporary interviews to explore how public space in Plymouth is shaped and reclaimed through power, class, civic joy, and shared memory. Megan’s practice centres civic joy as a tool for resilience, exploring spaces where collective care and resistance thrive. Her current commission for Plymouth Culture’s Sea for Yourself programme marks a shift into installation-based, co-created works that place communities at the heart of both process and outcome. She joins Radical Ecology to develop a film unit, furthering community exploration of the intersections between art, ecology, and social change - using film to challenge divisive narratives and support more inclusive, hopeful futures.
MEGAN WILSON-DE LA MARE: STUDIO AND OPERATIONS MANAGER
Megan Wilson-De La Mare is our Studio and Operations Manager. Her photographic background and education, as well as engagement with participatory practices, informs her approach to developing a community-centred programme. Her previous experience spans operations and arts administration, education, photography, and community engagement. Her exploration into participatory practice began during her residency with Knowle West Media Centre and project Salt of the Earth in 2018, which led her to form deep local relationships and explore the history through personal stories and archival material. Her writing similarly has explored themes of collaborative practice, play therapy, and performance photography, and from 2020-2023 she contributed to Loupe magazine as Online Editor.
DEBS ASHFIELD: DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER
Debs Ashfield is our Development Researcher. She is currently undertaking an AHRC-SWWDTP-funded PhD in Environmental Humanities, a collaborative project between the University of Exeter and the University of Southampton. Her interdisciplinary research spans critical technology studies, poetry, sound studies and environmental sciences, informed by a strong commitment to anti-colonial practice, environmental justice and community organising. At Radical Ecology, Debs leads on development research with a particular focus on capacity building - supporting the organisation’s growth through strategic partnerships, funding opportunities and infrastructure for long-term sustainability. She brings a relational approach to her work, centring inclusive practices and co-creative methodologies that foster resilience and autonomy within Radical Ecology’s environmental and cultural networks.
LAILA SHAH: COMMUNICATIONS AND RESEARCH PRODUCER
Laila Shah is our Communications and Research Producer. A recent graduate from the University of Oxford’s Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology (MSc) programme, she brings a deep engagement with storytelling, dreaming and alternative modes of expanding imagination as central to knowledge production. Her research interests span from engaging with the intersections of decoloniality and surrealism, DIY cinema as a spatially-located practice to ecologically informed and “pluriversal” approaches to making in museum contexts. She also explores digital ecologies and multi-modal methods, including photography and participatory artmaking, for experimenting with the unbounded nature of space and cityscapes. She has previously worked with the Fowler Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as community led organisations including the Bristol Palestine Museum and Cultural Centre and the Cube Microplex.
All of us arrived into Radical Ecology from different routes; by chance encounters, previous projects and intrepid emails, and we hope this diversity, plurality and lateral projection - like rings in a tree, waves over the ocean and sound rippling across ground - reverberates in our upcoming projects, including an enlivening of our research networks such as Archipelago and an energised studio programme including an exhibition, after-school clubs, a reading group, and many talks, films and dreams! And don’t forget to register for Tuesday’s online collective sharing from our brilliant Time of the Rivers fellows. Stay tuned for more.
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