OUR Mentors
Melika Zar
LGBTQ rights activist
Melika writes about her experiences as a queer person on her instagram and tries to raise awareness about LGBT community and build contacts with the other LGBTQI people in Iran. Since 2019 she works with the LGBTI organisation @6rangiran (Iranian Lesbian& Transgender Network). There she tries to demonstrate the problems of the community in Iran and to address and fight against the human right violations of LGBTI community by Iranian authorities.
She is one of our amazing mentors from the project, "From Idea to Self-Determination". She mentored a project about giving voice and building a safe space for persian-speaking migrant and refugee women living in Germany who experienced sexual harassment or rape. The project has been developed a lot but has not yet reached to a face-to-face stage due to Covid 19.
Rhea Ramjon
Writer, educator and podcaster
Rhea is a writer, educator and podcaster from Trinidad & Tobago via Boston and Berlin. She hosts Hormonal and is the creator and executive producer of the @tantitablepodcast. In 2019, Rhea co-founded the @blackbrownberlin organisation and is an avid community organizer and anti-discrimination facilitator.
Rhea is one of our amazing mentors from the project, "From Idea to Self-Determination". She has mentored two projects and supported our community by producing podcasts. The podcasts will be introduced and partly published soon from our channels. Rhea is now a community member and a permanent mentor for the upcoming projects in the area of her expertise.
Muhammad al-Kashef
Co-founder of the Refugee Solidarity Movement
Muhammad is co-founder of the Refugee Solidarity Movement in Alexandria. He works as an advocate and consultant researcher on migration policies and border control in the context of EU affairs with North African countries. Kashef is an Art & Social activist and coordinates several projects with refugees in Berlin such as “Radio Exile” which was co-created by @manuabdo and is a podcast hosting people in exile to share their lives experiences, obstacles and ambitions in exile (InExile.de).
“The focus of "Radio Exile" is to create a space for people in exile to talk about their life situations and to express themselves about the challenges and troubles they have experienced on their ways to the new country and how they make it to form a new life in a country where they feel isolated and sometimes like a stranger.
Javier Toscano
Visual artist, documentary filmmaker and interdisciplinary researcher
Javier Toscano is a visual artist, documentary filmmaker, and interdisciplinary researcher in the fields of new media, migration, and urbanism. His work has involved a continuous search to collaborate with minorities, communities, and groups with disabilities towards the production of alternative narratives of self-affirmation and vital exploration. He is a founding member of Nerivela, a collective that has worked with experimental and socially-engaged art practices.
Javier is one of our amazing mentors from the project, ‘From Idea to Self-Determination’. He mentored a film-based project called "Someone asked who we are and we didn't know what to answer" from Giuliana Kiersz.
Zoha Aghamehdi
CEO of Studio Notatio
Zoha (born in Tehran, lives as work in Berlin) is the founder and CEO of Studio Notatio. Notatio is a newly founded Organization in the intersection of gender equality and digital technologies. Notatio’s vision is a just digital transformation and its mission is to provide a discourse around the gender aspect in digital technologies, creating bridges between data science and human science and accelerating gender equality through technology and innovation.
Azin Feizabadi
Filmmaker, visual artist, and educator
Azin lives and works as a filmmaker, visual artist, and educator in Berlin and elsewhere. His usage of poetic and experimental language and tools stand in contrast to scientific, often ideological and empirical approaches towards questions of historiography, identity and migration. He is a member of the Berlinale Shorts selection committee and the programming team for the Kassel Video & Documentary Film Festival.
https://azinfeizabadi.com/
Azin is one of our amazing mentors from the project, "From Idea to Self-Determination". He mentored a film-based project called “Ancestral wisdom“ from Ifeatu Nnaobi.
Ifeatu Nnaobi
Queer feminist filmmaker and photographer
Ifeatu is a queer feminist filmmaker and photographer. She is working on themes of identity politics and is based in Berlin. Ifeatu is one of our great mentees who had a mentoring set with Azin Feizabadi. In this project Ifeatu worked on developing a film-based project called “Ancestral wisdom“. Ancestral Wisdom is a film about searching for and creating one’s present and future self through the past. It focuses on Black and Brown diaspora individuals in Germany who are linking across time and place by invoking their migratory experiences, genealogy, cultural and traditional heritage in their present-day life.This film is about uncovering and inventing the past of Black and Brown diaspora people in Germany, and moulding it to suit the present.
Ben Osborn
Writer, songwriter, composer, and sound designer
Ben Osborn is a writer, songwriter, composer, and sound designer. Coming from a poetic folk song tradition, his work draws also from electronica and classical music to create a space in which highly personal and deeply political stories can be told.
Ben's albums and writing have been published by several well-known publications and media.
Since 2017, he has been one of the directors of the Open Music Lab: an activist-led musical cooperative and collaborative learning space for refugees, migrants, and others from marginalized communities. He gives writing and composition workshops in a variety of cultural and educational institutions and is a visiting lecturer at Mountview University (UK).
Ben is also one of our great mentors. He accompanied @Kimia Bani in her musical project,
“Rhythm Therapy".