As the Creative Climate Changemakers (CCC) programme gathers in Switzerland, we’re excited to introduce the facilitators who will hold and shape this shared space.
Across the week, they will guide participants through collective learning, exchange, and creative exploration, supporting new ways of thinking, connecting, and acting in response to the climate crisis.
What is Creative Climate Changemakers?
Previously named Creative Climate Leadership, CCC is a transformational residential programme for creative changemakers committed to taking action on the climate crisis through the arts and culture. Acknowledging the urgent need for renewal, our approach is rooted in reciprocity and care, creating an immersive experience where participants can learn and unlearn together, develop new creative approaches, strengthen communities of practice, and reimagine what leadership looks like in driving meaningful climate action through arts and culture.
CCC will be held at Mattli Antoniushaus in Morschach, Switzerland in 2026. This year’s candidates work in areas as varied as critical theory, architecture and visual art.
Meet the FACILITATORS
Alison Tickell, Founder & CEO of Julie’s Bicycle
Alison (she/her) established Julie’s Bicycle in 2007 as a non-profit company helping the music industry reduce its environmental impacts and develop new thinking in tune with global environmental challenges. JB has since extended its remit to the full performing and visual arts communities, heritage and wider creative and cultural policy communities. JB is acknowledged as a leading organisation bridging sustainability with the arts and culture.
Originally trained as a cellist, Alison worked with seminal jazz improviser and teacher John Stevens. She worked for many years at Community Music and at Creative and Cultural Skills where she established the National Skills Academy. She has been on many advisory and awarding bodies including Observer Ethical Awards, RCA Sustainable Design Awards, D&AD White Pencil Awards. She has been on the boards of the Music Business Forum, Live Music and Sound Connections, and is on the board of Energy Revolution.
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso – JB Head of Programmes
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso (she/her) joined Julie’s Bicycle’s Senior Leadership Team as Head of Programmes in March 2024. She is a cultural worker with fifteen years of curatorial, producing, and educational experience working across contemporary performance, multi-art form festivals, participatory arts, and cross-cultural programmes. Prior to JB she was Joint CEO at Shubbak Festival, where she was committed to forging more just cultural ecologies; developing collaborative and decolonial curatorial approaches and artistic development opportunities that centre equity while reducing access barriers to the arts. She is passionate about the transformative power of culture to mobilise for the environment, social and climate justice; particularly in relation to restoring nature, food and land sovereignty, resilience, circular economy, just transition, ending fossil fuel capitalism, and the liberation of indigenous peoples. She frequently presents, speaks and leads workshops across JB’s programmes, including Creative Climate Changemakers. She is a trustee with the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy, Book Works, and Another Sky.
She has worked in partnership with major institutions and across site-specific locations in the UK and the SWANA region. Taghrid began her artistic journey in performance-making and facilitation, directing projects like At Home in Gaza and London (Station House Opera). As an associate with Kazzum, she led education programmes with young people going through the asylum-seeking process. As a facilitator, she has worked within school and criminal justice environments, and shaped Shubbak’s community engagement programmes for a number of years. Taghrid has been a mentor on the Crossing Borders Programme at Scottish Refugee Council and was on Equity’s International Solidarity Committee. She continues organising in the context of Palestinian cultural resistance, antiracism, and is committed to transforming our extractive relationships to the earth.
Zamzam Ibrahim, JB – CCC UK Lead
Zamzam Ibrahim (she/her) is a climate justice organiser and strategist working at the intersection of migration, diaspora power, and environmental governance. She joined Julie’s Bicycle in 2022 and brings over a decade of leadership across grassroots organising, policy, and global youth movements.
She is the co-founder of Students Organising for Sustainability UK (SOS-UK), co-founder of the Alliance for Youth Organising, Director of Somalis for Sustainability, and Founder of the Muslim Leadership Foundation. Previously based in Brussels, she served as Vice President of the European Students’ Union, representing millions of students across Europe. Zamzam made history as the first Black Muslim woman elected President of her Students’ Union, before becoming President of the National Union of Students UK.
Zamzam currently serves as a Youth Advisor for the UN Green Jobs Pact. Her work focuses on dismantling Eurocentric climate narratives, amplifying Global South voices, and advancing justice-led approaches to climate and education.
Danielle Pipe, JB Programme Manager
Danielle (she/her) joined Julie’s Bicycle in October 2021 as part of the Creative Green Programme (now Creative Climate Partnerships). She has worked across a wide range of projects supporting creative climate action across the sector, including cinemas and film festivals, arts festivals across Latin America and the UK, fashion awards events, libraries and artists touring in rural areas of the UK.
She now works as a Programme Manager across the Creative Climate Partnerships and Creative Climate Changemakers programmes managing the delivery of the latest residential in Switzerland in March 2026.
Before joining Julie’s Bicycle, she worked in the social housing sector on energy efficiency and renovation projects before focusing more on environmental work.
Danielle holds an MSc in Sustainability and Consultancy from the University of Leeds, during which she completed a research project placement with Leeds 2023 Year of Culture, focusing on sustainable events and exploring best practice from events and festivals working to reduce their environmental impact.
Switzerland based facilitator
Rahel Aschwanden, Co-director Climate Alliance Switzerland
Rahel Aschwanden (they/them) is co-director of the Climate Alliance Switzerland and project lead for OK Klima. This project empowers people to take action on climate policy at a local level. Prior to joining the Climate Alliance, Rahel co-founded the NOW Association and Instituto NOW, working with learning design and facilitation at the intersection of education, organizational development, and social change. They live with their partner and two kids in Bern.
Laura Giudici, VlF Co-Lead – CCC Switzerland Project Manager
Laura (she/her) joined Vert le Futur in 2022 and has been co-leading the association since 2024. Her primary focus is on sustainability in the visual arts and museum sectors as well as on cultural policy, and she is responsible for relations with the cultural scene in Italian-speaking Switzerland. She studied art history and cultural management, and has worked for various cultural and artistic organisations in different regions of Switzerland over the past 17 years. She lives in Bern with her husband and their two kids.
From 2017 to 2024, she worked for Studio Mirko Baselgia as an exhibition, documentation and communications manager. Alongside her work as an independent curator, author, educator and lecturer, from 2021 to 2022 she worked as a project manager for an arts and cultural centre in Graubünden, promoting cultural participation and social cohesion in a peripheral region. For the past nine years, the relationship between the visual arts, ecology and sustainability has played a central role in her research and activities. Laura is also a mentor on the VKKS Mentoring Programme, supporting art historians in their careers.
Stefanie Günther Pizarro, VlF Co-Lead – CCC Switzerland Project Manager
Stefanie (she/her) has been part of Vert le Futur since its creation in 2020 and has been co-leading the association since 2024. Trained in law, journalism, acting and cultural management, she has worked in the cultural field for almost 20 years, particularly in theatre and film. Her work focuses on integrating sustainability and ecological awareness into cultural practice and policy through national organisations such as Vert le Futur and reflector, as well as local networks such as fOrum culture. Guided by a permaculture-inspired approach, her practice connects ecological thinking, cultural ecosystems and locally rooted collaboration. Since 2015, she has also worked as a TV presenter and journalist for the regional broadcaster TeleBielingue.
Alongside this engagement, Stefanie develops long-term artistic research exploring cultural institutions and initiatives as living ecosystems in times of social and ecological transition. In her study Art, Culture and Climate Action – Environmental Impact Assessment in the Cultural Sector (University of Basel, 2021), she mapped sustainability initiatives across Europe and Canada and contributed to the Tatenbank, a collaborative knowledge platform developed by Vert le Futur. Her projects include the long-term filmed inquiry All Roads Lead to Delémont (2018–2023), documenting the emergence of Théâtre du Jura as a cultural ecosystem, as well as the ongoing research journeys Tour de Suisse in 80 Theatres and Tour du Monde in 80 Cultural Places (2025–2030), conceived as an intergenerational artistic exploration developed together with her daughter, now 15, which explores theatres and cultural initiatives as sites of resilience and transformation. Her work has also taken shape through grassroots cultural initiatives rooted in the places where she has lived — Geneva, Berlin, Spain, Chile, the Bern region and now Biel/Bienne — promoting locally grounded cultural practices, short circuits and solidarity networks. This trajectory now continues with the second edition of CCC Switzerland, developed with Julie’s Bicycle, which aims to strengthen sustainability networks within the Swiss cultural sector and internationally.
Valentina Ronzo, CCC Switzerland Assistant Project Manager
Valentina (she/her) comes from a background in economics and spent ten years working in the banking sector, while always nurturing a deep passion for theatre and performing arts. Over time, this passion led her to shift from the business world to the cultural field. After completing a Master’s program in Cultural Event Management, she worked at BASE Milano, a vibrant hub for contemporary culture and experimentation.
She currently collaborates with the FIT Festival in Lugano, supporting a youth-focused project while working across administration, logistics and production. This year marks her first CCC: a great opportunity to connect her work in the cultural sector with the urgent conversations around climate change.
The Aims of the Programme
Creative Climate Changemakers will:
- Strengthen the role of culture and creativity in responding to climate change and environmental challenges.
- Offer a powerful opportunity to collaborate and develop creative ideas in a serene environment, and a space to develop cultural leadership on climate action and justice.
- Share case studies, research, approaches and collaborative ways of working to maximise impact in the creative sector, civic society, and policy making.
We are planning a wide range of leadership development programmes (including more seed grants and mentorship) this year, if you would like to stay up to date and be notified when other applications for CCC open up, please sign up to the Julie’s Bicycle newsletter.
CCC Switzerland will be delivered in 2026 by Julie’s Bicycle in partnership with Vert le Futur, initiated and funded by the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia and Stiftung Mercator Schweiz.
Spread the word