About Us

Team

Almir Koldzic

Almir Koldzic

Director

Almir Koldzic is Director and Co-Founder of Counterpoints Arts.

The main focus of his work so far has been on developing creative strategies and national networks for arts and refugees; building long term collaborations with leading inter/national arts, cultural, advocacy and philanthropic organisations; and curating and producing a wide range of commissions and programmes relating to displacement, diversity and social justice.

Lara Deffense

Lara Deffense

Producer

Lara Deffense is Refugee Week UK Coordinator. She has a background in facilitating large scale community-powered festivals, producing and programming.

She has previously worked for Walthamstow Garden Party, Leytonstone Loves Film, Barbican, Tate, Eden Project, Kew Gardens, London Borough of Culture 2019 Waltham Forest and Time Out among others.
In her work Lara is passionate about relationship-led work, collaboration and the power of networks. More than anything she sees art and stories as radical empathy machines with potential to shift ways of thinking and being. Lara is also passionate about ways we can respond to the climate crisis and culture’s role in this. Lara currently holds a Level 1 Food Growing and Level 2 Practical Horticulture Skills certificate.

Tom Green

Tom Green

Producer

Tom Green is a Senior Producer working primarily to support artists and organisations including through our Platforma network. He produces the biennial Platforma festival and also helps oversee our international work.

Previously he has worked for organisations including the Refugee Council, where he first began work on Platforma and the Writers’ Guild, where he was first involved in supporting artists.  Tom’s background is in creative writing and his work has been performed in theatres and on BBC Radio 4.

Dijana Rakovic

Dijana Rakovic

Producer

Dijana Rakovic is a Senior Producer at Counterpoints Arts. Her role spans production, curation and participation, with special interest in climate change and environmental justice.

Dijana leads on the production of Counterpoints Arts’ music programme; Refugee Week UK London artistic programme, in collaboration with flagship cultural institutions; and supports the organisation’s  commissioning strand, focusing on place-based and participatory art projects.

Dijana has worked on a number of productions over the years, including Insomnia at Southbank’s Bargehouse; Counterpoint at Rochelle School; Dis/placed at Shoreditch Town Hall; Adopting Britain with Southbank Centre; Everyday on Canalside, a participatory project with residents on a local housing estate; and the multi-platform collaborative programme Who Are We? at Tate Exchange. Currently, she is leading on the ‘Music For Social Change’ PRS Foundation funded project which includes a youth engagement project on hip hop in Kent, South East England; and is a research partner on Picturing Climate, an international networking project which is exploring the role of arts and humanities-based methodologies in developing local and international educational capacity on climate change.

Dijana was a participant in the Creative Europe funded Creative Climate Leadership programme in Slovenia in October 2017, coordinated by Julie’s Bicycle and Slovenian social development organisation PiNA, joining the alumni of creative and cultural people working on climate change related issues and campaigns.

Annie Hall

Operations Manager

Annie Hall is Counterpoints Arts’ Operations Manager. Her background is in the fine art and gallery sector, with a focus on supporting creative teams through systems creation, team management and organisational planning.

She has previously worked in creative and arts spaces, with a focus on increasing operational efficiency and alongside promotion of best practice.

Annie is also a portrait artist, having practiced drawing most of her life. She has a passion for the arts and a strong interest in the role that art plays in our wellbeing.

Hossam Fazulla

Hossam Fazulla

Digital Producer

Hossam Fazulla is the Digital Producer for Counterpoints Arts. Fazulla’s work merges arts, technology, and social justice, and he previously worked for several international media networks and NGOs.

Prior to joining Counterpoints Arts, Fazulla worked as a Multimedia Producer and a Journalist for The BBC World Service, Digital Manager for Pen International, and a Researcher for Essex University, department of Film, Literature and Theatre. He is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Bosla Arts, a platform for art activists from all over the world.

Fazulla’s work is rooted in new media as extensions of the human senses and how the choice of the medium is essential to the message.

Fazulla has an MA in Global Media and Postnational Communication from SOAS, University of London. He believes that arts and media have an essential role in driving social justice and positive change in the world.

Laith Elzubaidi

Laith Elzubaidi

Producer

Laith Elzubaidi is Pop Culture & Social Change Producer at Counterpoints Arts. He is a British-Iraqi drama and comedy screenwriter, director, producer and Arts Facilitator.

His scripts have won awards at The Edinburgh TV Festival and Soho House and he is the founder of the ‘British-Arab Writers Group’. The British-Arab Writers Group hosts and facilitates writers rooms, workshops and events that seek to take their members’ writing to the next level; they have over 100 members across the UK. He is also the co-producer of The British-Arab Writers Group’s variety show at Soho Theatre; ‘Hakaya: A British-Arab Variety Show’.

He also has a sitcom in development with Three Little Birds Pictures called ‘The Weekly Wembley’, a love letter to multicultural London school life- inspired by his own experiences and work he has done with kids from 2nd generation refugee and immigrant backgrounds. He also recently wrote and directed a short film that will be the first Sci-Fi film from an Iraqi filmmaker. He is currently also working part-time in a development capacity at Oscar-nominated, BAFTA winning filmmaker Bassel Ghandour’s newly launched UK-based production company.

Daniela Nofal

Producer

Daniela is a Producer at Counterpoints Arts, with a particular focus on producing, commissioning and programming artistic projects at the intersection of displacement and mental health.

Daniela has been working as a cultural organiser and arts practitioner, and has produced various artistic projects and creative interventions, sitting at the intersection of art, arts education and social engagement. Over the years, she has collaborated and worked with a number of organisations across the UK and internationally, including Beyond the Now, Shubbak Festival and Ettijahat.

Central to her artistic practice is experimenting with forms of organising and collectivising to reimagine forms of assembly and solidarity. She has been a member of several artist collectives including Cross Commons Collective, Makkam and Sadaa Sound Syndicate.

Daniela is one of the initiators of SACF, London’s Syrian Arts and Culture Festival, which is an annual ten-day multi-artform festival. She is also the co-founder of Zamakan, a nomadic arts organisation working with artists from across West Asia and North Africa.

Ornella Mutoni

Producer

Ornella Mutoni is a Pop Culture & Social Change Producer at Counterpoints Arts. She has a background in research and producing documentaries for British and international broadcast television and has worked for the BBC and Channel 4 on award winning shows.

She is in the process of directing her first independent short documentaries, one exploring intergenerational healing in her homelands Rwanda and another exploring reclamation of identity through the lens of Black women who play rugby. She develops her body of work through collaboration with the global and intersectional communities she is part of to weave intimate stories of healing, joy, perseverance and the resilience of the human spirit.

She is also a cultural worker, passionate about working at the intersections of social justice, liberation movements and DIY culture with film and music. She previously co-founded Lossless Radio, a community focused radio station in Melbourne, produced a podcast series and has curated parties and exhibition programmes. Ornella currently hosts a bi-monthly decolonial reading group and hosts a monthly radio show on Balamii Radio.

Freelancers & Associates

Vanessa Stone

Vanessa Stone

Producer

Vanessa is a Producer for Counterpoints Arts Across Borders programming in the South East of England. She is a producer of social engaged arts projects and productions and also has significant senior management experience and expertise, gained across a wide range of creative organisations.

Vanessa is a Producer for Counterpoints Arts Across Borders programming in the South East of England. She is a producer of social engaged arts projects and productions and also has significant senior management experience and expertise, gained across a wide range of creative organisations.

Vanessa is a passionate believer in the power of the arts – to bring joy, enhance wellbeing, create a sense of place and as a catalyst for empathy, dialogue and social change. She is interested in building agency and the broadest possible public engagement through programming and participation.

She is particularly committed to supporting work around refugees and migrants, the climate crisis / alternative futures and identity-belonging (individual and collective).

Vanessa is Chair for Futures Theatre and a Trustee for Creative Folkestone.

Selam Amare

Producer

Selam is a cultural producer, comedian and advocate for migrant issues based in London. She works with Counterpoints on our No Direction Home comedy programme. Her own projects include Azmari, platforming her native Ethiopian culture by promoting Ethiopian music, styles, artists, food and performance.

Current roles include Facilitator for A New Direction, Project Coordinator for UCL Institute of Making, Community Researcher for The Yard Theatre, Partnerships Manager at Huq That, Assistant Producer/Director for Daedalus Theatre Company, Editor of WOWZINE by Women of the Wick, Writer for Theatre Full Stop and Trustee for Icon Theatre.

Tasnim is developing her first full-length play The Final Trumpet which follows a mother & daughter who have lost their home in a terrible flood. Set in an imaginary Bangladesh the play seeks to raise awareness of internal displacement in countries in the Global South impacted by climate change.

Tomo Ikegami

Associate Researcher

Tomo is a Curator for socially engaged programmes in Japan and an Associate Researcher at Counterpoints Arts.

Tomo has worked for various Japanese contemporary art museums as a Curator and Program Coordinator for the past 5 years. During this period, she was mainly in charge of educational, socially engaged, and artist residency programs. She graduated with a BA in Art History and MA Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.

In April 2024, she started a one-year research program at Counterpoints Arts, funded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan (Bunkacho). The purpose of this research is to explore how arts and cultural projects drive social change and support migrant communities. She believes that taking the ideas from this research in order to launch Refugee Week in Japan will be an effective way to develop and nurture positive perceptions of refugees in Japanese society.

Zafeerah Heesambee

Producer

Zafeerah is a Producer for Refugee Week UK. Zafeerah is a cultural producer, multidisciplinary artist, facilitator and educator.

Zafeerah has worked with leading organisations across the UK to produce projects, public art, and facilitate community workshops that challenge systemic injustices. Using art as a language to centre healing, inspire collective reimagining and social change.

After graduating with a BA in Law, Zafeerah founded Paintbrush&Co in 2018 partnering with major platforms to curate spaces that centre and celebrate the global majority through creativity. In 2023, she produced ‘On Blank Pages’ for Lumiere Durham, a nationwide project which explored justice and systemic issues through stories collected from 200 participants.

Zafeerah’s artistic practice explores printmaking, illustration, and ceramics, exploring themes of love, grief, social issues and human connections. Her project, All the Things We Have Loved. How Do We Reclaim Them? debuted during Refugee Week 2024, explores and archives love as a reminder and reclamation of our humanness in the face of oppression. Her previous project, Searching for You, Searching for Me, has been published and exhibited on billboards across the UK. She is also part of Kites in Solidarity, a grassroots collective organising a global movement to fly kites in solidarity with Palestine.