We are pleased to be sharing the next Creative Climate Changemakers (CCC) Switzerland cohort.
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 Participants
Alejo Duque is a Medellín-based Colombian-Swiss artist working with sound and analogue media. A proponent of Free Software and community networks, he co-founded the Latin American labSurlab network to foster socially engaged collaborative art and technological appropriation. Currently completing a second doctorate while doing research at the Manakai reserve (Tropical Dry Forest), he integrates Machine “Intelligence” and Blockchain protocols into bioacoustic monitoring. His work focuses on ecological listening to support conservation efforts on a “more-than-human” horizon.
Alexa Jeanne Kusber is a Zurich-based curator and cultural facilitator whose practice encourages public resonance through collaborative, socially conscious projects. Over more than a decade, she led the curatorial direction of the Verbier 3-D Foundation, transforming its Artist Residency and Sculpture Park into a “living laboratory” for ecological dialogue. She previously served as Curator of Public Programmes at Zurich’s MuDA (Museum of Digital Art) alongside a portfolio of diverse cultural initiatives across London and Europe.
Anneliek Sijbrandij is the Founder of the Verbier Art Summit, a Swiss non-profit platform dedicated to advancing social and environmental transformation through contemporary art. Through cross-disciplinary exchange and international collaboration, her work positions culture as an active agent of change, fostering collective responsibility and long-term impact within the global arts ecosystem.
Aude Cattin is a circus artist who has toured globally with the Quebec companies Le Théâtre à Tempo and Cirque Éloize and trained at Quebec Circus School in 2015. She co-founded the company “Si le colibri” in Switzerland, to create circus and multidisciplinary shows. She is currently touring a solo piece, Quarks, and a duo “Hats2Heads” created with the Belgian company Keeping Company.
Bruno Brandes is a director, studying scenic arts in Hildesheim and theater directing in Zurich and Lyon. He directs in the independent scene in Berlin and Zurich and often for specific locations, including the new Botanical Garden in Zurich Seefeld. He also studies biodiversity out of an interest in the beauty of evolutionary shifts and the regeneration of ecosystems. He continuously writes plays and other texts. He is currently working on a production for a skate park, which will premiere in May 2026.
Christophe Burgess is an actor and theatre director, who studied at the Haute École des Teintureries in Lausanne. He continued his training with a Master’s degree at EDHEA in Sierre (School of Design and Art College of Valais), where he began numerous experiments with the sound of bells. He is currently developing a new science fiction narrative framework: Alpine Punk.
Eva Moreno is a designer, artis/t/an and researcher from Alhama de Granada, Spain. After studying Industrial Design Engineering and Product Development between Sweden and Spain, and working on innovation and community projects in Japan, Moreno continues her studies in Switzerland while developing a practice focused on rural contexts, material cultures, and regenerative connections between ecology, economy, and emotions in Eco Social contexts.
Gonzague Rebetez is a new media artist with a scientific background in the physics of light and bioelectronics. After completing his PhD, he co-founded WÆXE, where his expertise in light, sensors, and algorithms converges to create reactive audiovisuals environments. Alongside his artistic work, Gonzague oversees mediation and events at Photoforum Pasquart and gives workshops on creative coding and artificial intelligence.
Juanita Schläpfer-Miller is an artist and exhibition developer with a PhD in transdisciplinary art and science research and many years’ experience designing inquiry-based learning exhibits in the natural sciences. Her artwork Climate Garden 2085 (2011- present) is a narrative environment to engage visitors with the effects of climate change on food and landscape. Tree Stories, from Botany to Biography (2017, 2023) connects through storytelling under city trees. Just completed is an exhibition Plants Talk! for the Natural History Museum in Zürich. Current projects include Tree Love (2024-present) about the rights of nature. She teaches science communication at ETH Zürich.
Julia Rajacic is an independent art curator ICOM & GCC member working at the intersection of art, ecology, and community-based practices. She graduated from ARTEM and École du Louvre. In 2019, she founded Jardino, a creative agency promoting sustainable change through art. In 2025, she co-curated the School of Artivism in collaboration with the Biennale des Jeunes Créateurs de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée.
Karolina Sobecka is an artist and researcher with a PhD from Kunstuniversität Linz and the Institute for Experimental Design and Media at HGK Basel. Karolina’s artwork has been shown internationally, from the Queens Museum NY, to National Art Museum of China, to ZKM Karlsruhe, and Transmediale Festival, and has received numerous awards, including from Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Princess Grace Foundation.
Magali Wagner is an art historian, curator, and cultural practitioner with a background in museology, comparative cultural studies, and exhibition analysis. Her specialisation in the Environmental Humanities emerged from her PhD position within the interdisciplinary and international SNF research project “Mediating the Ecological Imperative” at the University of Bern (2021-24). In her dissertation she examines forms of multispecies curating and art practices that address questions of food, politics and climate which are informed by and through her involvement with “foodculture days” in Vevey.
Marino Sampayo is a multidisciplinary artist and sustainability-focused creative producer who trained in Physical Theatre at Accademia Teatro Dimitri and currently an MA student in Dance Movement Psicotherapy (UAB). He founded VESALMAR, a documentary-led platform amplifying ocean and coastal protection, and leads SUSART, an interdisciplinary art–science project developed within Switzerland’s U Change ecosystem exploring body, nature and sustainable development. He is a Swiss Study Foundation scholar, U-Change and Ernst Göhner awardee, and a TEDx changemaker speaker.
Meng Li’s work moves between architecture, art, and research. With a Master from Harvard GSD and projects supported by Innosuisse, Pro Helvetia, and the IKEA Foundation, she explores how design can connect material, digital, and social ecologies. She is founding Partner of Studio Pararum and co-initiated Pionierquartier, an interdisciplinary project rethinking neighbourhoods as catalysts for social and ecological transformation.
Noemi Grütter is a DJ, music producer, and feminist human rights activist working at the intersection of gender and climate justice. She designs, leads, and supports programmes with feminist organisations worldwide through the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), translating global advocacy into actionable strategies on gender-just climate solutions. She is co-creator of ALÉLÉFI and HI-NRCHY deconstructing electro with feminist and political messages, co-founded Elle Kwa Mziki in Rwanda and collaborates regularly with the Festival Les Créatives.
Reto Riggs is an interdisciplinary critical theorist on climate and energy politics, science and technology. Drawing on his experiences in environmental system science at the ETH Zürich, transversal design at the Institute for Experimental Design and Media Cultures at HGK Basel and independent publishing with the megafon newspaper collective, he searches for strategies to reorient scientific and political paradigms towards a philosophy of care and kinship.
Riikka Tauriainen (she/they) is a visual artist and researcher whose installations, films, and sculptures explore ecology, oceanic literacy, and gender politics. Working between art and science, she investigates water phenomena and material kinships through feminist and posthumanist lenses. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bern and researcher at EcoArtLab, Bern Academy of the Arts. Based in Zurich, she holds an MFA from Zurich University of the Arts.
Rosadina Güere Ticona is a Peruvian artist and designer from La Oroya, Junín, trained in Argentina at the National University of the Arts and specialised in ceramics, with experience in artistic studios and creative laboratories. She has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects with a focus on contemporary methodologies in ceramics and art, integrating research, hands-on making, and the development of exhibition projects.
Seraina Grupp is a trans-disciplinary artist with a social practice in art and food, and holds a master in conceptual and contextual practice from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and an alternative master in food and art from the Gramounce Institute. Seraina collectively researches taste, edibility, decay, biodiversity and multispecies communities, co-creating empowering imaginaries towards a regenerative food system.
Sindi-Leigh McBride is a writer and scholar from Johannesburg, based in Bern. Her current research explores labour in climate fiction; her interests include contemporary art and literature; climate change epistemology; youth and work. In addition to peer reviewed publications, her arts criticism and short stories have appeared in Africa’s a Country, Artthrob, Mousse Magazine, and more. She is co-editor of Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives (2023). She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Basel and has held numerous fellowships, most recently at Princeton University.
Sonia Loenne is a composer, singer and player of instruments, currently living in Bern. She works as a freelance artist and organiser, with projects like BUREAU BUREAU, Aino Salto or solo. Sonia is currently enrolled in a BSc Environmental Science.
Sylwia Orczykowska is a Systemic Transformation Designer and Transformative Art Curator working at the intersection of communication, design, art, science, and embodied movement with a focus on Deep Ecology and relational dynamics. She is actively involved with Systemic Design Labs at ETH Zurich and its partner, the Living Systems Lab at the MonViso Institute in Italy, and is also the founder of Art Now. Engaged in social transformation, she invites reflection on human beliefs and habits, holding spaces that nurture post-anthropocentric thinking, interspecies care, and life-centric cultural development.
Tamara Fischer is a science teacher turned director and co-founded the Bernardes company. Their show “Medea SUPERSTAR” won one of the eight Premio talent national awards in 2023. Tamara holds a CAS in Dramaturgy and Text Performance and currently works as a director and dramaturg for several theatre companies. Her work explores marginal perspectives, social and political themes —including gender stereotypes— and seeks collective ways of making theatre in a more sustainable way.
Zoe Bilgeri is an architect, artist, and material researcher. Working with textile waste and natural binders, she develops hybrid surfaces that merge the organic and the synthetic, the structural and the fragile. Bilgeri creates new continuities within material remnants, allowing matter to act as a carrier of memory and narrative. She earned her Master’s from the Bauhaus University Weimar in 2024, where her thesis “Soft Architecture” received the Graduation Scholarship for its artistic-research approach. In 2025, she was awarded the Emerging Artists Grant for Architecture by the Austrian Federal Ministry. Recent exhibitions include Fabric Visions as part of the European Capital of Culture, 2025.
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.
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