Meet the collaborators
When you work with Digital Weavers, you work with a trusted team of collaborators who are organisers, facilitators, researchers, filmmakers, designers and artists. We are flexible and creative. Above all, we are good listeners who love to listen deeply to your stories – the ones that already exist and the ones not yet told.
Founder
Rosie Downey
Rosie has a nose for a story, a laser eye for detail and a knack for animating community. She has been carving her way into a new offering to the world that brings together these three unique attributes. As with most worthwhile things, her work of weaving people together around interesting ideas started on this side - a passion project playing second fiddle to her old life, having worked as a marine biologist, educator and researcher for many years. This changed in 2019, and since then Rosie has worked with some of the most interesting donor organisations, research networks and civil society movements out there. She also hates talking about herself and asked her husband to write her bio.
Consultant | Researcher | Mobile filmmaker
Dr. Luke Metelerkamp
Luke is an academic, artist and quiet-activist who tries to live by the simple life principle: Always leave the spaces around you in a better condition than you found them in. Luke has spent 14 years immersed in civil society organisations and fledgling research institutes, working at the forefront of transdisciplinary research and transformative learning, and specialising in urban food security programmes, food systems governance and social-learning processes. He has worked extensively with global leaders across the spectrum of system change – from grant-makers and policy think-tanks, to universities and social movements. Luke leads the AfriFOODlinks project hosted by ICLEI Africa focusing on transforming urban food environments by strengthening inter-city linkages in Africa and Europe. He is on the board of the Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve and chairman of the Friends of Verlorenvlei conservation group. Luke also has a small flock of chickens and some young fruit trees that are teaching him a lot about patience and collaboration.
Consultant
Dr. Mary Richardson
Mary is a bilingual social and cultural anthropologist and fibre artist based in Quebec, Canada. Her work and personal interests focus on issues related to the environment, agriculture, and community development.
She uses participatory action research, interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge creation, and anthropological inquiry to build understandings and support those seeking to make changes. Mary works with foundations, networks, community-based organizations, universities and artists at local and international levels. She also has an artistic practice focused on local fibres, plant dyes, felting and contemporary basketry techniques.
Visual Designer
Stefania Origgi
Stefania is a strategic and multidisciplinary designer based in London, with a special interest in design as a catalyst for social change. She aims to combine her knowledge and experience in the areas of content creation, campaign facilitation and branding to build relationships, share knowledge and empower people. Her graphic design studio is a facilitatory space using design as a tool for transition and transformation and focuses on communication in healthcare and educational spaces. Stefania specialises in design strategy, communication and layout design, infographic design, branding and visual identity systems, social media marketing, campaign management and art direction. In her spare time Stefania illustrates children's books, thinks about the sea and likes to pat every dog that she passes.
Artist | Scholar Activist | Sociologist | Ecologist
Dr. Dylan McGarry
Dylan has several tentacles touching the world, as an Educational Sociologist, Political Ecologist, multi-media artist, theatre and film maker. His areas of research span a wide spectrum, including Transgressive Social Learning, Theatre and Arts-based Research, Visual anthropology, Queer Eco-Pedagogy, and Post-humanist approaches to co-engaged research. Dylan is the co-founder of Empatheatre, the Director of One Ocean Hub and a Senior Researcher at the Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC), Rhodes University, South Africa. He is constantly entranced by the power of public storytelling as a mechanism for healing, empathy, meaning-making and fostering inclusive forms of governance in complex social-ecological entanglements. The closest thing Dylan has to a religion is the place where ecology, story and mythology meet. Dylan is also responsible for a magical “singing” dog named Pearl, who goes everywhere with him.