ABOUT

Fredrik Elg

Previously a filmmaker, Elg is now a strategic developer in the field of arts and culture. He specialises in issues concerning democracy, inclusion and freedom of speech, at the crossroad of arts and human rights. He has managed independent art organisations, worked for the Swedish Arts Council, Malmö City and partnered with several global organisations working with democracy and freedom of speech, as well as conceptualised and launched the Safe Havens Conference for creative professionals under threat. Elg has developed initiatives for inclusion, democracy and free speech for more than 15 years. In 2015 he was appointed leader of the feasibility study, for the Museum of Movements. He is one of the founders and a general manager of the non-profit organisation Safe Havens Freedom Talks (SH|FT). Elg has studied arts, journalism and social studies at Lund University, Malmö University and at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Photo: Sofia Elg

Paminder Parbha

Paminder Parbha is a human rights worker, artist, and a keen advocate of culture as a driver for social change and cohesion. During a career spanning over 25 years which have included working for Amnesty International as well as Freemuse as the Research and Policy Advisor, her key focus has been on addressing systemic forms of discrimination. Paminder joined PEN International in November 2020 as the Head of International Programs.

Eleni Tsitsirikou

Eleni Tsitsirikou lives and works in Helsinki. Currently she is the Residency Manager at HIAP - Helsinki International Artists Programme, a non-profit artist residency organisation that offers artists and arts professionals based in Finland and abroad time and space for open-ended research and experimentation, as well as opportunities to undertake creative work and engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue with the local art scene. During her time at HIAP she has managed projects, events and exhibitions, and has worked with residency programmes that highlight a geographical area, an aspect of artistic practice or focus on specific topics such as freedom of artistic expression, as well as art and ecology. Before coming to Finland, Eleni worked as curator’s assistant in organising temporary exhibitions at the Teloglion Foundation of Art in Thessaloniki, Greece, and coordinated a team working with digitization of the Foundation’s archival materials. Born and raised in Greece, she holds a BA in Archaeology and Art History from the Aristoteles University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and a MA in Museum Studies from the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany. She complemented her studies with an international exchange at the Institute of Art History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

Jan Lothe Eriksen

Jan Lothe Eriksen has served as General Manager for Safemuse since its creation: A former musician and cellist of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, vice president of the Norwegian Musicians' Union (now Creo - Norwegian Union for Arts and Culture), administrative director of the Norwegian Traditional Music and Dance Association (NFD) & Norwegian Traditional Music Agency, and initiator and first director of Riksscenen (National Venue for Traditional Music and Dance, Norway). Jan initiated Safemuse together with Creo in 2011 in close cooperation with Freemuse. Safemuse was formally established in December 2013 as an independent membership organisation by musicians and composers in Norway, with the main purpose to facilitate safe places to work and stay for persecuted artists and artists at risk. Jan and Safemuse have followed and have had different assignments and positions in connection to Safe Havens since the very start of the initiative.

Photo: Even Finnsrud Musikkultur

Lotta Schüllerqvist

Lotta has been working as a journalist all her life, most of the time with the leading Swedish morning daily Dagens Nyheter. During her 36 years there she held many different positions: reporter, local trade union leader, editorial management, and finally four years Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. Since her retirement in 2007 she has been working as a freelancer, reporting mainly from the Middle East: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. Her stories have been published in Dagens Nyheter and other daily newspapers and magazines. From 2008 to 2021 she was a board member in the Swedish branch of Reporters Without Borders. She was mostly working with security training projects for journalists in conflict zones (Gaza, Jordan, Egypt). The last two years she has worked with training projects for journalists in exile in Sweden, to improve their chances to continue their profession in a new country.

Kagiso Lesego Molope

Kagiso Lesego Molope is an Indigenous South African, an award-winning novelist and playwright. She writes post-apartheid, feminist and resistance literature. Her work centres the history and experiences of indigenous South Africans and tackles issues of race, class, sexuality and identity and her books are read in schools across Southern Africa as well as in parts of Europe. Her published novels are Dancing in the Dust, The Mending Season, This Book Betrays My Brother and Such a Lonely, Lovely Road. Her play, Maya Angelou: Black Woman Rising has been produced and staged at Oslo’s Nordic Black Theatre. She became the first indigenous South African writer to be on the IBBY List in 2006 and to win the Patrick Fitzpatrick Award for Young Adult Literature. In 2019 she won both the Ottawa Book Award and the Inaugural Pius Adesanmi Memorial award, for her third and fourth books respectively. She has been living in Canada for the past two decades.