Ash Holwell

Ash is a Place Facilitator - creating the physical and social infrastructure to turn spaces into places for good - most recently founding and designing Aotearoa's only climate positive coworking + events place - two/fiftyseven.

Collaborating with 30,000 bees to make work for the world's largest art fair ArtBasel, breaking into a building the Netherlands and living in it for a year, sneaking into the Natural History Museum of Vienna as a fake employee for a month, creating a theatre company and large community arts hub with someone he hitch-hiked with one time, and finding himself an ex-squatter property owner through his father's illness, Ash has often found himself drawing together disconnected things. Sometimes a wonderful thing, sometimes less so.

The liminal can be a powerful space between for connection, interaction, friction and understanding that can bring about incredible things, yet can also be used as a place of division. Ash will speak about his experiences making places and artworks that draw people together, learning (slowly) how to share spaces, and turning them into places for good.