Luisa Spina

Born in Italy and working between London, Palermo and Berlin, my practice as an artist, social sculpture practitioner and educator/facilitator builds on professional development that started fifteen years ago with a career in acting.

I graduated in Fine Art in 2011 from Central Saint Martins, London, and specialised in sculpture, initiated an artist-led residencies and exhibitions programme called Loopart and participated with the project as artist, organizer and curator at Deptford X Festival, London.

In 2015 I was shortlisted by Turner Contemporary for ‘Art inspiring change’, a children-led regeneration project in Margate, UK, supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

I am a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts and was chosen to represent the launch of a new community engagement crowdfunding campaign for my cooking project ‘Small Gatherings for Big Thoughts’, a participatory dialogue process that looks at food as a catalyst to discuss cultural differences. I was employed by the International Academy of Greenwich in London to devise ‘Small Gatherings for Big Thoughts’ into a creative learning workshop for children.

I have participated in various festivals in the UK and London, including Fringe Arts Bath, AntiuniversityNow! and Spark Festival and exhibited in London, Berlin, Portugal, Latvia and Poland.

In 2017 I initiated a project that looks at the relationship between the human being and nature by working on a creative process that uses mycelium as a source of inspiration to initiate a dialogue on how we can live together more sustainably. By observing and understanding how mycelium works as the neurological network of nature -- a 'sentient membrane' that links the roots of different plants and helps out their neighbours even if widely separated -- we can open up a space for thinking and questioning our way of living in relation to nature.

What can we learn from mycelium's characteristics? How can we learn to coexist with nature?