Anthony Head is an artist, designer and senior lecturer at Bath Spa University. His practice includes coding as a way to create digital artworks. His work often uses or generates data that is shown visually on screen or projected onto buildings, either with interactivity or live calculations. His project for Forest of Imagination is a new development in to a more physical realm – paper.

Anthony also runs the outdoor projection festival Illuminate Bath (www.illuminate2015.org) and curates the MediaWall at Bath Spa University (http://artdesign.bathsp.ac.uk/mediawall). See www.anthonyhead.co for examples of Anthony’s work.

Cabinet of Curiosity Studio are a visual art & design partnership whose practice explores the crossover between architecture & the body. Their work across different art forms involves research that is site specific, investigating visual storytelling through materials, crafts & design. Their specialism is the use of paper materials & techniques including paper engineering, origami & paper cuts to make three dimensional works & illustrations.

After a first career as a BBC television producer, Jessica Palmer embarked on her second as an artist and illustrator working in 2 and 3 dimensions with paper of all kinds.  Her paper objects are commissioned for public installations, for design and decoration, for book and album covers, websites and magazines.

Jessica’s work mixes the techniques of paper cutting, collage and sculpture to capture movement, shape and space. Paper is cut, crumpled and layered. She works with Bible paper, recycled and vintage and lace papers. Her work is sometimes decorative and detailed, sometimes sculptural and story-telling.  She exhibits in London and internationally. Jessica has an MA in Illustration from Kingston University. She is a Bristol Drawing School Tutor.

Alison Harper‘s work is about resources; she deconstructs, unpicks and reworks mass produced ‘waste’ materials using ’low-tech’, and sometimes domestic, craft techniques such as papermaking, knitting and crochet. She makes work from materials that are usually taken for granted, used once and discarded: post-consumer waste that has no-where to go. Alison believes that sustainability starts at our finger tips – the things we touch and use every day. She is ‘rescuing’ these materials – materials we are usually distanced from by a veil or a shield of familiarity – obstinately re-inserting them back into the world with a new value and status, and by doing so, is questioning the processes and values of mass production.

Eleanor Shipman is an artist and social entrepreneur whose work explores notions of community, urban space and regeneration through playful, participatory workshops and projects for diverse audiences. Eleanor’s social business ‘something good, something useful’ uses creative community consultation to engage people in issues around regeneration and sustainability.

Jess Tanner and Clare Bissell are an educational, arts and nature–based collaboration, facilitating multi-sensory activities and workshops for all ages that ignite and nurture one’s inner creativity, imagination and wonder.

Emily Wilkinson is a Shropshire based artist and writer. She works with mixed-media and words across different art forms, including visual art, poetry, book arts and textiles. She has exhibited in Scotland and Shropshire, and has created installations at community events such as Wenlock Poetry Festival.

Foraging changes our relationship with the world. We learn to slow down, becoming intimately connected with our surroundings. Looking for clues, our senses sharpened, we become ever more present.

Martin Bailey, founder of Go Foraging, runs walks and workshops in Bristol and the surrounding area, Bath, Clevedon, The New Forest and South Wales.

Éilis Kirby completed a BA in Fine Art at UWE in 1996 and an MA in Arts and Ecology at Dartington College of Arts in 2008.  She lives in Bristol and has a studio at Spike Island where she makes collages, books and objects and runs the monthly Baby Art Hour; she has also facilitated other family workshops. Her main source of art material is the recycling bin.

There are many layers to Clare Day‘s work: it is about surfaces, texture, and imprint. The ceramic pieces are handbuilt, sometimes using press moulds, and imprinted using found objects and clay stamps that she has made.  The work is on a mainly human scale; something you can hold in your hand. Clare also makes mono prints using clay to print from. The clay gives a soft and richly textured feel to the prints. All of the different elements of her work (ceramics, prints, work with children) are interconnected, and the immediacy of working on a monoprint can help to resolve the ceramic work. Similarly the playful aspect of working with children helps to nurture the experimental in Clare’s own work.

Clare also regularly run workshops that aim to support people’s own creativity.

Agnes Javor is a passionate supporter of children’s right to an education which acknowledges and supports their innate curiosity, creativity and thirst for discovery. An education that does not measure their worth exclusively in test results but creates a joyful and respectful environment in which they can flourish. Agnes trained in linguistics, speech pathology and psychotherapy and worked in broadcasting and education, teaching in UK mainstream as well as in Steiner Waldorf schools.

Steve Thorp is a poet, coach and creative activist. He runs the 21st Century Soul Network; he is author of the book, Soul Manifestos and Pieces of Joy. He also edits Unpsychology Magazine – the latest edition on Childhood is out now, and is being launched on Saturday 4 June at a Forest of Imagination satellite event.

Matthew Leece is a talented Experience Designer, recently graduated with a degree in Three Dimensional Design – IMO (Idea Material Object) from the Bath School of Art and Design. He joined the Forest of Imagination team in 2014, and his final degree show piece, ‘Head in the Clouds’, featured in Forest of Imagination 2015. He is producing a bespoke artwork and workshop for the 2016 event.

Holly Dabbs is a creative producer, workshop leader, singer, occasional actor and teacher.

Josh Roughley is a multi-disciplinary designer from Manchester currently in his 2nd year at Bath Spa University where he studies 3D Design. He has a passion for creating objects, products and experiences that are able to convey a story.

The Will-o’-the-Wisp tree featured in The Creative Forest is made entirely from concrete coated hessian and is based upon the Will-o’-the-Wisp found in English folktales. The tree features a series of mystical luminous Wisps hidden within its branches.

Watching Toby Thompson is like watching the first atomic bomb, a firework set off in your bedroom and two people having sex, at the same time, on repeat. He’s explosive, intense and deeply honest. One of the brightest stars on the spoken word scene, his words leave you breathless, his passion for saying them speechless and his age, will probably leave you jealous at how a man of his few years (20), can know so much and say it so well. He’s written and performed commissions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, he’s won the prestigious Glastonbury Poetry Slam, he’s even performed in the House Of Lords.