Meet the Team
CARINA TENEWAA KANBI
Co-director: Academic and Research LeadCarina Tenewaa Kanbi is a Ghanaian and Scottish spatial practitioner, researcher, and creative producer whose work explores the intersections of culture, migration, and urban space. Her practice focuses on African spatial justice and mobility through the arts, with particular attention to how creatives build community and navigate cities such as Accra and Lagos.
She is completing her PhD at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand, where her research engages with the translocal movement of people and ideas across West Africa. She has held fellowships with the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), the Caribou Mastercard Foundation (AI Fellow), and CODESRIA (African Indigenous Knowledge Fellow).
Carina supports the MA Cities programme at Central Saint Martins, contributing to teaching and research on placemaking and community-led infrastructure. Her work is rooted in embodied, practice-led methodologies that foreground movement, making, and lived experience as critical tools for understanding spatial dynamics. She prioritises alternative, non-textual research methods that centre community knowledge, including aural and material forms of recording.
CHANTEL AKWORKOR THOMPSON
Co-director: Strategy, Development and Partnerships LeadChantel Akworkor Attakakra Thompson is a curator, educator, and cultural strategist dedicated to reclaiming African visual narratives and advancing feminist-led creative power across the continent and its diaspora. She is the founder of DēpART Consultancy and winner of the 2025 Gavel Prize from Sotheby's Institute of Art for her work on Akuraa, a project shaping spaces where African creatives define the lens, the story, and the future of visual culture.
Her work extends to education and advocacy. She developed The World Reimagined's art-based curriculum (implemented in over 250 UK schools) and, as Partnerships Officer, was integral to raising over £3 million for the UK's largest national art project for racial justice. In partnership with The What If Experiment and The Cherry Groce Foundation, she has supported organizations to develop anti-racist practices.