29th January 2025

25 for 2025

From a photographer running a free library of books and objects related to African and Caribbean culture to a restaurant critic fighting for the diversity of London, an activist taking on Big Oil, a regenerative gardener and much more. There is no easy catch-all term to encapsulate the diversity of skillsets, perspectives and experiences on the list - this is Zetteler’s annual list of people we admire is back for 2025, and we think it’s a special one.

Architectural visions of better ways to live, disability-led critiques of normativity, learning from the diaspora, empowering disadvantaged youth, Palestine and the climate crisis are all common touch points, but perhaps it’s easier to say that the people featured here give us hope for change and a radical new way of understanding the world.

We hope you’ll take the time to discover their work, and if you’re commissioning projects, looking for experts or assembling panels, you couldn’t go wrong with anyone here.

Tomi Balogun

Architect on the rise

Portrait courtesy of Tomi Balogun

Tomi Balogun is undeniably a force of nature. Her CV would be impressive for someone several years into their career, but for a second-year architecture student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, it’s spectacular stuff indeed.

From joining the inaugural cohort of the Ardagh Young Creatives at the Design Museum to being selected for the Open City Curators and Open City Accelerate programmes, to winning the Beyond the Box People’s Pavilion competition, Tomi is doing important work exploring how the built environment can be opened up to more voices.

As she continues to pursue her passion for architecture and community with drive and focus, we can’t wait to see where her career goes next – and feel very lucky to have crossed paths along the way.

Freya Bruce

Waste collector

Portrait courtesy of Freya Bruce

A close neighbour of Tom James’s Absolute Beginners in Park Royal (also on this list), Freya Bruce is a co-founder of ReCollective, a collaborative network that works together to change attitudes around ‘waste’ materials. ReCollective critiques the existing system to prove that alternatives are possible through action. Rooted in radical ideas of community building, they have developed systems to design, build and embed their reclaimed materials into community infrastructure.

You may have noticed a collaborative tendency in the people Zetteler likes to shout about. This is not an accident. Everything about Freya’s ethos is about bringing people together to create positive change, putting the ‘we’ before ‘me’. That’s the energy we need more of in 2025.

Cissy Bullock

Flower empowerer

Portrait by Roger Bool

With upwards of 70% of the UK’s flowers coming from the big supermarkets (read: Tesco), and countless independent flower shops flying in their produce with a needless carbon footprint, Cissy Bullock is definitely a voice worth listening to.

Within five minutes of our first conversation, we not only felt furnished with fascinating facts about floristry but driven to actually do something about it. Founder of a maverick floristry studio, Cissy is creating a new blueprint for future florists through the School of Sustainable Floristry, and aiding the good fight across the sector by joining the board of the industry group Flowers from the Farm.

Opting for flowers that are local and in season sometimes means you can’t get what you want. Thanks to Cissy, seasonality is increasingly part of the conversation about flowers, a more than welcome change. Next on the chopping block: the shocking overuse of pesticides. Stay tuned.

Christian Cassiel

Image-making archivist

Portrait by Kadi Jatta

Christian Cassiel is a photographer who cares deeply about stories and the cultures that nourish them, with work spanning portraiture, travel and ecology. Through both commissioned and personal projects, he has documented landscapes and communities throughout Central and South America, as well as West Africa.

Christian is also the founder of Seed Archives in Tottenham – an independent, free library that hosts books and objects related to African and Caribbean design and culture.While providing an essential resource for research, Seed Archives is expanding its mission in impressive ways, turning the archive into a dynamic platform for collaboration. That includes teaming up with design agency Explorers Club to host monthly game nights with traditional games such as Ayo and dominoes, as well as taking over the Barbican’s Curve gallery space to explore ideas of play and learning on a larger scale.

September 2024 saw him work with designers Mikey Krzyzanowski and Andu Masebo for the London Design Festival to curate a library space for the week-long programme Making Room.

Mark Cridge

Big green man

Portrait courtesy of Mark Cridge

Brits pride themselves on being garden lovers, yet the UK’s green spaces are ever diminishing and the ecosystem rarely receives the support it deserves. Our friend Charlie Peel sent us a map of London that exclusively showed its greenery – whether that’s the side of a road, a private garden or a luscious public park. That map was from National Park City, one of the coolest digital campaigns ever.

A grassroots movement dedicated to making our cities greener, healthier and wilder, it is led by the impressive business and charity leader Mark Cridge. Among his long list of accolades, Mark was previously the chief executive of mySociety, a highly regarded UK-based civic technology charity, he was made a Fellow of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, and founded the UK’s first digital advertising agency in 1999, before leaving that all behind in 2012 to focus on helping people be more active citizens.

Zetteler is proud to say we’ve got National Park City onto the official list of organisations you can donate to through 1% for the Planet, and fully support its mission to connect people with nature that’s all around us.

Darren Cullen

Guerilla satirist

Portrait courtesy of Darren Cullen

Britain needs more people like Darren Cullen. The artist and activist does more than poke fun at politicians, he bravely breathes wit and humour into the dystopian horrors of advertising, the media, military and modern imperialism. We say ‘brave’ not just because he’s been attacked by the tabloids and sent threatening legal letters by Big Oil, but because he takes creative risks to change minds and demolish apathy, reaching the public with vital messages in a way that others have failed to do.

It’s no secret that making it as an artist is hard, an experience that Darren lived personally when his project the Museum of Neoliberalism was evicted due to rising rents. We all benefit from satirists with moral clarity at the heart of their work – people like Darren deserve support!

Teshome Douglas-Campbell

Architectural polymath

Portrait by Jerry Florez

London-based architectural designer Teshome Douglas-Campbell is one of the sharpest writers around, a regular of Architects Journal, The Developer, Wallpaper* and many others.

We’re blessed that he’s penned reviews of our clients, most recently exploring themes of DeafSpace in Manalo & White’s work for Heathlands school, and always find our spirits lift a little when looking at his Smiling Pots, a series of handmade ceramics sporting comforting grins.

Teshome is also a co-founder of Patch Collective, a group making spatial interventions, designing ephemeral events and curating intimate discussions about the built environment from the lens of the diaspora.

Joe Gray

Period gent

Portrait by Shady and Nika Zanbaghy

You wouldn’t expect a man to have played such an important role with the UK's leading menstrual equity charity, Bloody Good Period, but Joe Gray is exceptional in more ways than one.

The social entrepreneur is doing bloody good work busting myths and breaking down taboos in the workplace, demanding more of employers, and helping women and people who menstruate work towards parity.

And if that wasn’t enough, Joe bridges the gap between young people and the creative industries too; working with Turner-Prize-winning artist Jasleen Kaur in empowering young residents in Thamesmead; advising the Paul Hamlyn Foundation on their youth-focused investments; programming at the Barbican; and bringing considered youth voice into conversation with a range of global brands for insights work.

Jessi Gutch

Creative with a camera

Portrait by BAFTA/Jamie Simonds

Jessi Gutch is a Folkestone-based filmmaker living with incurable ovarian cancer. Pushing the conversation about representation and inclusion is essential and exciting work, and 2025 is set to be a big year for Jessi.

After a phenomenally successful crowdfunder, her debut feature documentary Blue Has No Borders is due for imminent release, bringing nuance and compassion to some of the most divisive and inflammatory issues around social identity in Britain. She is also working on her debut narrative film My Cells are Trying to Kill Me, which takes on a seemingly impossible task – to portray mortality in a more profound, political and humorous way. These upcoming projects build upon a string of successful short films, awards and nominations: The Forgotten C was BIFA nominated and Until The Tide Creeps In received Best Documentary and Best of Festival from Aesthetica. In 2024, Jessi was an artist-in-residence at Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage.

Aya Haidar

Community-inspiring artist

Portrait by Suleika Mueller

Once we were properly introduced to artist Aya Haidar, we realised that she was deeply embedded in many of our favourite projects and places. We have huge respect for her commitment to using art to galvanise communities, and were impressed by her unflinching passion for Palestine long before it hit the headlines, and the fundraiser for Lebanon she held on her birthday, co-hosted with Rosie French.

Much of her work turns found and discarded objects into poetic reflections on urgent social questions – labour, migration, the politics of the home – while always being firmly rooted in a complicated web of histories, particularly from the Middle East.

You’ll soon have the chance to witness her ‘Love Song for Whitechapel’, a new light-focused artwork for East London with UP Projects that will bring together intergenerational local groups. And you’ll have the opportunity to witness ‘Safe Space’ as it was acquired by the V&A Museum, soon to go on show as part of the permanent display in May 2025.

Tom James

Next-generation maker

Portrait by Nathaniel Télémaque

Education as a tool to empower the next generation was a huge topic for Zetteler through the last year, particularly as so many of the UK’s art and design courses are in crisis. As we researched the topic, we continued to come across inspiring individuals and independent initiatives doing things differently. No such list would be complete without Tom James, a London-based artist who creates participatory projects where people can learn real skills, imagine new ways of living, and actually get their hands dirty.

He runs Absolute Beginners, a platform for young people based in Park Royal, the largest business park in London. The park has plans to become the UK's largest regeneration scheme – dubbed the ‘Canary Wharf of West London.’ Set in a former industrial hub, the project is creating a new kind of factory. Since 2021, Tom has helped young people to learn how to make everyday products in radically sustainable ways, paid them the London Living Wage for their time on the project, and sold the resulting wares in Factory Shops. It’s a community-driven and socially impactful vision that we strongly believe the rest of the creative sector needs to learn from.

Imandeep Kaur

Good neighbour

Portrait courtesy of Imandeep Kaur

Imandeep (aka Immy) Kaur is a co-founder and director of CIVIC SQUARE, a Birmingham-based studio that creates neighbourhood-scale civic infrastructure for social, ecological, economic and climate transition.

We met Immy through our work with Material Cultures and were immediately struck by what she is doing to change what’s possible with public space, building systems, infrastructure and movements that outline a blueprint for wider societal change. Committed to serving the public good, she previously ran the Impact Hub Birmingham, which won her an honorary doctorate in 2019 from Aston University’s School of Life & Health Sciences for services to the city.

If you have five minutes to think big about change, we’d strongly recommend reading 3ºC Neighbourhood, a collaborative research paper with Dark Matter Labs that grapples with the risks posed to UK urban neighbourhoods by rising global temperatures. It’s an excellent example of her collaborative ethos, always working with new partners to nurture new possibilities.

Basma Khalifa

Curatorial storyteller

Portrait courtesy of Basma Khalifa

A director, filmmaker, and writer with a remarkable knack for storytelling, Basma Khalifa is the co-founder of Zola Studios, a creative studio focused on the SWANA region (South West Asia and North Africa). Her curation of events is creating a genuine creative community, reflecting her desire to empower others to take pride in their identity.

She notably explored her complicated relationship with her place of birth, Saudi Arabia, in the BBC3 documentary Inside the Real Saudi Arabia: Why I Had to Leave, and is working on a feature-length documentary with a newly completed short film about henna. The likes of Meta, Apple, Amnesty International and Netflix have benefited from her campaign direction, and she regularly consults with brands and speaks on panels about diversity.

Prem Krishnamurthy

Cultural bridge builder

Portrait courtesy of Prem Krishnamurthy

A lot of our favourite people understand themselves as working within a context, not just shaped by the world around them, but striving to change it too. Driven not only by a career but also by a sense of community, Prem Krishnamurthy is a designer and curator who we admire for fostering cross-cultural dialogue within the global design community.

We first met through the Sharjah Biennale in 2018, one of the most fascinating projects we’ve ever worked on, and we continue to admire everything he does today through the Department of Transformation, an artist-organised group that prototypes new formats for togetherness, learning and collective healing.

Poppy Levison

Architectural access activist

Portrait by Kes-Tchaas Eccleston

Poppy Levison, a blind designer, researcher and disability activist, works to help architects understand how the built environment is experienced in more complex, holistic ways. Listening to Poppy speak upended how we thought about the built environment and ableism, an urgent task considering only 1% of registered architects identify as disabled (in comparison to 20% of the total population), and sets forth a radically refreshing perspective on beauty and aesthetics under the theme of BlindSpace.

Poppy is taking her mission to undo the visual bias of the sector to every level of the industry, whether that’s through curating the London Festival of Architecture, supporting the next generation through the Architecture Foundation’s Young Trustees or pushing the conceptual limits of the conversation through DisOrdinary Architecture. Poppy is also co-founder of the Access Adventure Film project and the creator of blind-led creative audio description for Sky Sports documentary Untethered.

Vanessa Maria

Cultural curator, broadcaster and DJ

Portrait by Hannah Faith (@delikastudios)

Named in the GUAP 30 Under 30 Blacklist and recipient of the Limitless Black Influence Award in 2023, Vanessa Maria is a dynamic force within the music industry. Beyond her vibrant DJ sets and broad musical influences, she champions mental health awareness, fostering important conversations through openness and advocacy. Notably, she led Resident Advisor’s mental health project in collaboration with Black Minds Matter, funding Black-owned music businesses across the UK. In 2024, she made history by drawing a record-breaking 5,000 attendees to the V&A Late, the most successful event since 2019. Her electrifying performances have captivated audiences at Glastonbury, Koko, Warehouse Project, Boiler Room, All Points East, and El Dorado Festival, cementing her status as a standout figure in UK music culture.

Beyond her work as a DJ, Vanessa leads the way in nurturing the next generation of talent. At the nationally renowned charity Sound and Music, she spearheads transformative artist development programmes, empowering emerging creatives across the UK to innovate, thrive and reach their full potential.

Parvinder Marwaha

Cultural intersector

Portrait courtesy of Parvinder Marwaha

Zetteler had a wonderful team day where Parvinder Marwaha taught us how to make chai, and most importantly, led us into an enlightening conversation about everything from the legacy of colonialism to the craft of the vessels we drink from.

Our world first collided with Parvinder almost 10 years ago through her work at the British Council – where she delivered sustainable and socially driven programmes across the UK, Europe and South Asia, tackling themes of climate, gender and racial justice – and today she’s a freelance maverick, charting her own path by pursuing projects at the intersection of food, faith, architecture and identity.

There are few people as capable and curious as Parvinder, so we have no doubt she’s set to continue making a major impact. If you care about knowledge exchange and community dialogue, give her a call – we suspect her calendar is about to fill up quickly.

Meg Molloy

Class activist

Portrait courtesy of Meg Molloy

A communications professional with a decade of experience in the arts, Meg Molloy understood the bias and obstacles that working class people faced in the rarefied art world. That led her to launch the Working Arts Club, a network dedicated to supporting those from working class backgrounds in the arts sector both professionally and socially. Zetteler’s Chris attended the launch party, winning a bottle of champers from a fundraising raffle. (We promise this didn’t influence Meg’s selection for our list).

More than simply raising awareness, we’re impressed by Meg’s commitment to building community and a positive ecosystem, work that is all the more important when the cultural sector is under attack from all sides.

Rebecca Moore

Housing visionary

Portrait courtesy Rebecca Moore

Action on Empty Homes is close to our heart. With more than a million empty homes in England and more than 300,000 people in need of a home, the injustice of short-let rentals and second (third, fourth…) homes is clear. Having studied social entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, its director, Rebecca Moore, comes from a background in the arts, which has included heading Creative People & Places, a £1.6 million Arts Council England-funded initiative aimed at boosting arts engagement in Norfolk.

Zetteler founder Sabine proudly joined the board of Action on Empty Homes at Rebecca’s invitation, and we’re aiding the campaigning organisation on how to share its message and research with the people who need to hear it (namely, journalists and policy wonks).

Driven to make the world a better place for everyone, Rebecca’s steady leadership reflects the exact kind of political nous paired with a strident social vision that is needed to turn the housing crisis around.

Jonathan Nunn

The man who puts London on a plate

Intentionally anonymous photo of Jonathan Nunn at at Uncle Wrinkle, a great British-Chinese takeaway in New Cross, taken by Michael Protin.

Food is where we come together and where cultures meet. Yet, the status quo of food writing is narrow and exclusionary, ignoring the rich diversity that makes London a special place to live.

What grabbed our attention about Jonathan Nunn wasn’t just his ability to open our eyes to the new possibilities that a plate could hold, but the phenomenal success ofhis magazine Vittles, which is now co-edited by Rebecca May Johnson, Sharanya Deepak, Adam Coghlan and Odhran O'Donoghue. Independent, reader-funded and fearless, Vittles easily rivals the food sections of the best of the broadsheets – platforming a diverse roster, pushing the conversation in a new direction, and actually making it work as a business.

Poppy Okotcha

Model gardener

Portrait courtesy of Poppy Okotcha

The regenerative grower Poppy Okotcha is more than a delight on Instagram (most of us follow her), but an inspiring example of how to make environmentally conscious ways of living accessible and fun.

Her journey began with a turn from modelling to gardening, where learning about growing nutrient-dense food prompted Poppy to understand the holistic relationship between the environment, health and happiness. She trained at the Royal Horticultural Society and spent time working with a number of community gardens in London, studying alongside Martin Crawford, the creator of the oldest ‘food forest’ in England.

You may have read her columns in newspapers such as The Observer and The Guardian; heard her Royal Horticultural Society’s podcast or seen her on BBC2’s Gardeners’ World, sharing her inclusive, community driven and uncompromisingly ecological message. Poppy recently relocated to Devon to enjoy greater space to grow, working with an established network of sustainably run farms and community gardens.

George Pope

Place-making educator

Portrait courtesy of George Pope

We met the architectural educator and writer George Pope when they joined social enterprise MATT+FIONA, and again through the Young Architecture Foundation Young Trustees, when we lent them the use of our studio. Education and the generally nurturing side of architecture has long been a focus for George – which is all the more impressive considering they never formally studied architecture.

At MATT+FIONA, they are working on meaningfully integrating the ideas and expertise of children and young people into placemaking, with a particular focus on working with teenagers. The more diverse voices contributing to conversations about how our cities should be built and lived in, the better. That goes for George, and all the people they’re helping break through.

Hani Salih

Future-facing curator

Portrait by Justine Trickett

Wherever we turn, we keep coming across the work of the researcher, writer and curator Hani Salih. First, we read his writing in Sound Advice’s publication Now You Know, then heard his name again when he was a senior researcher at the Quality of Life Foundation (employer of fellow Zetteler-list-nominee Jordan Whitewood-Neal). Over a coffee in 2023, we talked about the sector and our shared friends.

But it was Hani’s co-curation of the Rotterdam Biennale in 2024 that really knocked our socks off. Sabine attended in July, feeling fairly despairing about the state of the world. Through the exhibition, Hani platformed a dizzying array of boundary-pushing architecture projects making real impact across the globe. Unlike so many of the flimsy greenwashing messages we encounter on a day-to-day basis, Hani’s curation put forward a hard-hitting account of what is possible, including a film by Material Cultures, Phin Harper’s Architecture of Repair, and many others.

Kyle Soo

Good for business

Portrait by Ben Wilkin

The B Corp movement rates highly in the eyes of the Zetteler team (we’re on our way to officially joining) and, in part, that’s because genuinely brilliant people like Kyle Soo are behind it. A former criminal lawyer, Kyle is the partnerships and product manager at B Lab UK, a Design Council expert, trustee of the Year Here Foundation, organiser of popular PechaKucha Night talks, and someone we’ve admired for at least half a decade.

Originally hearing his insights on how to use business as a force for good at a conference in Manchester, we continue to be impressed by how he holds onto his values and his ability to bring people together all these years later.

James Zakha-Haas

Artist for access

Portrait by fellow Zetteler-lister Poppy Levison

Co-founder of Dis Collective, a disability-led research group he started with previous Zetteler-lister Jordan Whitewood-Neal, James Zakha-Haas is an artist and writer interested in the circulation of ideas and the experiences of disabled people, often as a means of deepening our collective understanding of disability.

He’s previously collaborated with DisOrdinary Architecture, showcasing how creativity can interrogate and reimagine the world around us, and writes art criticism for Disability Arts Online. James’s art has been seen across the UK and abroad, and he currently teaches at the London School of Architecture and Central Saint Martins.

Smart, committed to community and brimming with insights about the radical potential of access, James is someone we want to hear a lot more from in 2025 – if you’re organising panels, commissioning writing or anything else in that vein, you won’t regret working with him.