Gerald Wirth

Professor and Choirmaster

Prof. Gerald Wirth received his first musical training as a member of the Vienna Boys Choir and at the Anton Bruckner University in Linz, Austria, where he studied voice, oboe and piano. In 2001, he became artistic director of the Vienna Boys Choir, in 2013, its president.

Wirth was a choirmaster of the Vienna Boys Choir and chorus master at the state theater Salzburg. After 1991, he took over the direction of the Calgary Boys’ Choir, became musical director of the Calgary Civic Symphony in Canada. Gerald Wirth has conducted choirs and orchestras all over the world. His first love is the human voice. He holds workshops all over the world, and he can get practically anyone and anything to sing.

Most of his compositions are vocal works. He has written three children’s operas, several large oratorios, motets, and songs. “Carmina austriaca”, his most recent large-scale work, is a cycle of medival songs for large orchestra, mixed chorus, and boys’ choir. Gerald Wirth is often inspired by myths and philosophical texts.

Over the years he developed his own method of music pedagogy. In 2003 he founded the wirth music academy in order to educate music teachers and choir directors according to the wirth method which combines classical music theory, consciousness for sound, training in listening, rhythm training and singing within a holistic approach.

Gerald Wirth trains teachers in schools with little or no access to music, and supports a number of organisations offering workshops for refugees – children and adults – in Jordan, Greece and others. To him, music is the language of emotions understood by everyone; through music, other subjects become accessible. “Music is a gateway to learning, and this is particularly important for children who have never been to a school.”

He is convinced music has a positive influence on every aspect of a person’s being.

Hope Masike

Musician

Hailed as one of Zimbabwe’s Mbira music custodians, Hope Masike has been bringing her brand of Zimbabwean music to diverse global audiences since 2007.

Masike’s music is a fun-filled hybrid of music styles tied together by her signature sublime Mbira playing, sultry voice, and highly-charged performances. She mostly sings in little-known African languages like her mother tongue, Shona. Her live performances seamlessly move from classic Zimbabwean traditional music to her compositions of of the traditional mbira together-blended with different music styles.

Hope Masike draws her inspiration from all things Art and Africa, leaning very heavily on nearly a century of a strong Mbira music legacy but not ignoring the obvious influences from modernity. She has brilliant hopes for the future of Africa and basks in carrying her African culture with her all the time. Fans come to a Hope Masike concert to have fun, feed their spirituality and experience the beautiful Zimbabwean culture. She takes pride in her culture and heritage, often challenging colonial-induced stigma against it and championing it’s documentation and youthful re-packaging both through her music and brand.

Masike has three studio albums to her name, namely ‘HOPE’ (self-released in May 2009); ‘MBIRA, LOVE AND CHOCOLATE’ (self-released in May 2012) and ‘THE EXORCISM OF A SPINSTER’ released on London-based label Riverboat. She has also published two poetry anthologies; one in English titled ‘Ask Me Again’ and published through Amazon on February 7 2020 and an anthology of Shona Erotic Poems called ‘Dzevabvazera’ published on February 11 2022.

Hope Masike has collaborated with other musicians such as Salif Keita, the late Oliver Mtukudzi, Steve Dyer and Loius Mhlanga. She has several international tour credits including performing in Southern Africa, Asia, Europe and the west coast of America. Her versatile music approach has seen her venture into different music collaborations of note such as with the Afro-Nordic outfit, Monoswezi, the Southern African collaborative, Mahube and the Austrian-Zimbabwean collaboration named ‘Kunzwana’. She has also collaborated with Zimbabwean alternative Hip Hop outfit The Monkey Nuts and American horn band, The Huntertones among many others. In the early years of her career she was part of the Norwegian cultural exchange programme Umoja CFC which composed Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa and Norway; and Onebeat music exchange programme which comprised numerous different countries including Zimbabwe and USA.

She has thrilled music lovers and critics globally. She has graced numerous cooperate and national events as well as festivals in Zimbabwe, playing at presidents’ inaugurations, product launches, weddings and many other kinds of events.

Besides performing, Masike is a music teacher, offering lessons in Mbira, voice and Music Theory. She also ventures into mentoring younger musicians through her TribeHope Trust program called ‘The Seven of Us’. Masike has featured in Zimbabwean local soap opera Muzita rababa’; acted in and done scoring for the short film on child marriages called ‘Ruvimbo’s Wedding’; as well as directed her NAMA-nominated 10 years of Hope autobiography documentary ‘One Woman and her Mbira’.

Hope Masike holds a Degree of Music from the Zimbabwe College of Music in affiliation with Africa University, a Diploma in Fine Art and National Certificates in Applied Art and Design and in Musicology. Currently she is studying for a Master of Philosophy in Art with Arrupe Jesuit University in Harare and also studying French with the Alliance Francaise de Harare.

Hope Masike’s work – collaborative and otherwise- has earned her several awards and nominations both locally and internationally, including Zimbabwean NAMA awards, KORA Awards, ZNCC Women in Enterprise Awards and The Zimbabwe Achievers Awards. She has been interviewed by CNN Newsroom, BBC, SABC’s Morning Live, ZTV’s Good Morning Zimbabwe and numerous other platforms in and around Zimbabwe.

Hope Masike is a board member of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe, and a member of the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association and Zimbabwe Writers’ Association.

Press

‘An accomplished mbira player and vocalist with a watertight backing band, she balances tradition and experimentation to carry ancient rhythms effortlessly into the 21st century.’ -Liam Brickhill – Mail and Guardian

‘Hope Masike is a mbira musician making a big name for herself.’ -Kumlar Dumor – BBC

‘In motion picture, Hope Masike’s video to Huyai Tinamate can only be likened to Madonna’s epic Frozen video …,’ -Tapiwa Zivira – News Day Zimbabwe..

Links to music

Click here to listen to Shuwa.

Click here to listen to Ndinewe.

Click here to listen to Tsubvubone.

Click here to listen to Huyai Tinamate (Winner Best Video of the Year, NAMA Awards and nominated for KORA Awards under Best Female).

Click here to listen to Povo m’povo.

Click here to listen to Idenga .

Chris Underhill

Social Entrepreneur and Professional Mentor

Chris Underhill MBE is a social entrepreneur and professional mentor. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council on Mental Health and the Chair of the Catalyst 2030 Mental Health Collaborative. Chris is attending the Well Being Summit, Bilbao, with two interests in front of mind. Eldership and Community Mental Health Practice.

Regarding Eldership he is the cofounder of the Elders Council for Social Entrepreneurs. At the age of 73 he is a “young Elder” and is involved in the support of founders as they make transitions in their organisations and in the encouragement of younger social entrepreneurs as they field the complex challenges that inevitably confront them.

Regarding Community Mental Health Chris is the creator of the Model for Mental Health and Development which has been disseminated in some 15 developing countries. Over the years he has founded organisations in the field of wellbeing, resilience, and mental health. For example, Thrive, an organisation working in gardening, disability, resilience, and wellbeing. Also, Action on Disability and Development, working in the developing world with disabled people creating systems of representation, advocacy, and policy creation. In the field of global mental health, he has founded BasicNeeds working on community mental health, and co-founded citiesRISE in the field of mental health youth and the big city.

As a mentor and organisational development advisor he is working with a number of organisations including Spark Inside, CorStone, BecauseYou, Health Leads USA and VidaAfrolatina. Chris has been married to Giselle for 52 years, has three grown up children and six grandchildren. He is a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, an awardee in Social Entrepreneurship of the Schwab Foundation, and a Senior Fellow of Ashoka and has been honoured with an MBE by HRH the Queen for his work in disability and development.

Click here to learn more about Mentor Services.

Connect with Chris Underhill on social media :

Shruti Jayaraman

Chief Investments Officer, Chicago Beyond

Shruti Jayaraman is Chief Investments Officer at Chicago Beyond, a funder that invests in organizations, people and ideas towards all youth being free to live their fullest human potential. Beyond funding, our team works hand-in-hand with investments to deploy an array of resources. We have noticed that through this approach, rooted in humanness and mutual learning, what is possible grows.

Chicago Beyond has invested in holistic healing since our founding, ranging from collaboration with the city’s school system serving 350,000 young Chicagoans and the adults around them, to creating meaningful spaces to bring together children and their incarcerated parents, to telling one’s story through art to heal, to holistic health clinic, to 100 investments in healing during this pandemic. Chicago Beyond’s guidebook Why Am I Always Being Researched? has been used in all 50 states and more than 90 countries to shift practices around evidence in the social sector.

Shruti’s professional experience includes infrastructure construction and finance as a lawyer; launching one of the largest public hospital systems in the country’s Medicaid health plan; and forming strategy and new initiatives in diverse settings—Fortune 100 company, rural maternal-child clinic, municipal government, youth nonprofit, venture-backed startup.

Shruti holds a J.D. from the Yale Law School and an A.B. in History and Science from Harvard College. She is grateful for ancient wisdom and wellbeing practices, which have changed the course of her life.

Click here to find out more about Chicago Beyond.

Connect with Shruti Jayaraman on social media :

Monira Rahman

Executive Director, Managing Trustee and Ashoka Fellow

Monira Rahman is an Ashoka Fellow and a commonwealth alumni.

Her leadership role in tackling acid attack in Bangladesh and making a model for the world for combating acid violence has been recognized by the Amnesty International, Americans for UNFPA, World’s Children’s Prize and the French Government. BBC radio interviewed Monira to capture her contribution for combating acid violence in Bangladesh (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csywv3). Her leadership role in Acid Survivors Foundation established a BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL model in 1999 which was replicated in 5 other countries.

From her 15 years of successful experience at the Acid Survivors Foundation, she has established a new organization named Innovation for Wellbeing Foundation (IWF) in 2014 to promote mental health equity for sustainable development (www.iwellbeing.org).

Monira established Bangladesh Mental Health Network (BMHN) in 2015. This is country’s first and only network for all stakeholders working on mental health field and successfully advocated for replacement of the Lunacy Act 1912 by Bangladesh Mental Health Act 2018. Monira also played a crucial role for drafting National Mental Health Policy 2019 and National Mental Health Strategy 2020-2030 which is now waiting for government approval.

In the year 2015 she has established Mental Health First Aid Bangladesh (https://mhfainternational.org/international-mental-health-first-aid-programs/) to raise mental health literacy of the mass people. Mental Health First Aid is an Internationally accredited training program currently being adopted by 25 countries including Bangladesh. MHFA Bangladesh has trained 74 National Trainers who has trained 5000 certified mental health first aiders and 10,000 mental health Champions since 2015.

Monira’s idea for promoting women’s mental health win women innovation camp award 2017- a government run project and developed country’s first ever digital platform for promoting mental health in Bangla.

With the support of UNDP Monira’s organization also developed country’s first ever mobile application named mon janala (an android smart phone based application) to provide psychosocial support in Bangla during COVID 19 pandemic and beyond.

Monira has secured funding from Comic Relief and along with ADD International implementing a 4 years’ project started from June 2020 for developing community based mental health services for children and young people living with disability.

Monira and her organization is part of a UK-Bangladesh Global partnership led by Imperial College London and Bangladeshi partner include IWF, BRAC JPG School of Public Health and icddr,b and developing evidence based mental health care pathway model for rural Bangladesh.

Monira’s expertise on promotion of mental health and wellbeing developed from her early career in Concern Worldwide in 1992 where she developed mental health services for the homeless people living with mental illness from the scratch.

Monira obtained Masters degree in Philosohy from University of Dhaka. She was elected Vice President of student’s union of Shamsunnahar Hall of the University of Dhaka in 1989 and led many movements for peace and equality.

She frequently appears in media and a voice for the unheard.

Facebook page: Mental Health First Aid Bangladesh

Facebook page: Innovation for Wellbeing Foundation

Youtube video: How acid violence In Bangladesh is disappearing

Youtube video: Monira Rahman Fights for Life Free of Violence

Youtube video: Celebrating International Women’s Day with Monira Rahman and Anika Rahman

Youtube video: Monira Rahman, Child Right Hero, Bangladesh

Connect with Monira Rahman on social media :

Edgard Gouveia Jr

Co-founder, Architect and Professor

Edgard Gouveia Jr never tires of putting people to play. Architect and Urbanist and Post Graduate in Cooperative Games, he dedicates his career to mobilize children, youth and adults by designing and applying virtual games, scavenger hunts and collective actions that lead to small community revolutions. He is the president of Epic Journey, a company that promotes the regenerative communities in organizations such as companies, schools and NGOs. Co-founder of LiveLab hat specifically acts with the youth leading regeneration in their own communities, highlighting Jornada X and Primavera X

Ashoka, Berkana Exchange and TRIP Transformers Fellow, Professor of Post-graduation Cooperative Games Pedagogy at YIP, MSLS SWEDEN, Knowmads in the Netherlands and Gaia Training in Brazil. He is co-founder or partner of other organizations and programs such as Projeto Cooperação, Elos Institute, Warriors Without Weapons Program and the Oasis Game.

Lecturer in several TEDx and international consultants in countries in Europe, North America and Asia where he applies social technologies such as Cooperative Games, World Cafe, Open Space, Circular Dances, Nonviolent Communication and Jornada X. He is the creator of Jornada X, an online scavenger hunt that challenges children and young people in real-world tasks and aims to engage 2 billion people to restore balance in the Biosphere. He believes that changing the world can be fast, fun and without putting your hand in your pocket.

Click here to learn more about Edgar.

We are stronger than we look: Edgard Gouveia Jr. at TEDxAmazonia

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Dr. Deepa Narayan

Founder, Author and Public Speaker

Dr. Narayan is the creator and host of What’s a Man? Masculinity in India Podcast. She is also author of the ground-breaking book, Chup: Breaking The Silence About India’s Women and the founder of Chup Circles.She is a TED speaker and her talk focuses on how to support women in leadership.She was the former Senior Adviser at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and wrote the influential series Voices of the Poor. She has written 17 books and is the recipient of many awards, including being named as one of the 100 most influential global thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine in the USA and as one of India’s 35 Great Thinkers by India Today. Dr. Narayan spent many years living in village communities in Africa, South and East Asia. This led to her focus on ‘people first.’

Her books include, Voices of the Poor, Measuring Empowerment, Empowerment and Poverty Reduction, Moving out of Poverty.

Deepa Narayan’s website can be found at www.deepanarayan.com

Watch Deepa’s Ted talk in English

Connect with Dr. Deepa Narayan on social media :

Grimanesa Amorós

Interdisciplinary Artist

Grimanesa Amorós was born in Lima, Peru, and lives and works in New York City. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse interests include social history, scientific research, and critical theory. A direct relationship to technology is one of the distinctive features of Amorós’ practice. Some elements must be planned and programmed but others, such as the exact placement of the lines of lights, come to Amorós while she installs. In this sense, the technology does not determine but complements the concepts of her work. Her art incorporates video, lighting, and electronic elements to create monumental sculptures activating architecture and engaging communities.

Grimanesa Amorós draws upon important cultural legacies and landscape for inspiration. Still, she does not hold an essentialist or nostalgic view of her subjects. In the art of Grimanesa Amorós, the past is meeting the future. She is often invited as a keynote speaker at museums, foundations, and universities where her lectures empower young women, attracting future artists, students, and faculty involved in architecture, science, and technology.

Amorós has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Latin America. She was a guest speaker at TEDGlobal 2014, a recipient of the ‘NEA Visual Arts Grants Fellowships 1993’, and has the distinction of being part of the ‘Art In Embassies Program of the U.S.’ and the Civita Institute NE Chapter Fellowship Grant. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums including the Ludwig Museum, CAFA Museum, and Katonah Museum.

For more information about Grimanesa Amorós, visit grimanesaamoros.com

Watch this clip to find out more about Grimanesa and her project to be exhibited at The Wellbeing Summit in Bilbao-Biscay:

Watch this exclusive interview with Grimanesa and Arts Curator, Manuel Bagorro, ahead of the Summit:

FIND OUT ABOUT SCIENTIA TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SUMMIT

Read on for an exclusive Q&A with Grimanesa Amorós ahead of the Summit:

What does wellbeing mean to you?

I always say that when we have our health, we have everything. Wellbeing is attending to our inner selves.

We must live in balance, physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is a process we are required to nurture and foster throughout our lives, but it is well worth the effort. We cannot effectively share ourselves to the world if we are not whole.

Why are you looking forward to being part of The Wellbeing Summit?

I’m looking forward to contributing to the summit as it allows me a platform to share the message of wellbeing and connection throughout the arts. My goal is to make people think, and to have them become inspired to live more purposeful, creative lives.

How does your work connect to wellbeing?

When creating monumental sculpture, I consider how our architectural surroundings influence and affect our state of mind.

Art provides a means, and has the power to, access our emotional selves. It makes us more empathetic, it gives us the space to nurture and prosper. Studies have shown how light improves our mood and mental health.

As a medium, it has the ability to bridge cultures and diverse audiences; we all connect to light.

Aakash Odedra

Dancer and Choreographer

Aakash Odedra was born in Birmingham, UK and lives in Leicester. He is a globally recognised and award-winning dancer and choreographer. He trained in bharatanatyam and kathak, then moved to India as a student of the renowned Bollywood choreographer Shiamak Davar. Aakash Odedra’s work forms the heart of the company and as a soloist he has performed over 300 full length performances in 40 countries in the past decade. His choreography pushes boundaries, responding to and drawing inspiration from contemporary issues. As a British-Asian, Aakash Odedra uses his voice to translate ancient and contemporary movement languages to tell new stories

Awards include the Amnesty International Award for Freedom of Expression; Best Dance at the Eastern Eye ACTA Awards 2018; a nomination for Best Stage Production at the 2019 Asian Media Awards for #JeSuis; and in 2021, Aakash was a awarded a British Empire Medal in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours for his services to dance. Notable commissions include James Brown: Get on the Good Foot (Apollo Theater, NY). In 2017 Aakash choreographed the Royal Opera House production Sukanya composed by the late great Pt Ravi Shankar and was movement director for Curve Theatre’s Pink Sari Revolution.

As a solo performer his awards include: Danza&Danza award (Italy); Dora performance award (Canada); Audience Award Dance Week (Croatia); Infant Award (Serbia); Bessie Award New York (Best Male Performer); and a Sky Academy Arts Scholarship.

Connect with Aakash Odedra on social media :

Nikhil Choprra

Indian contemporary artist

Nikhil Chopra is an Indian contemporary artist based in Goa, India. Chopra’s art—a complex amalgam of durational performance, painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography—critically explores issues relating to identity, politics, history, and the body.

Born in Kolkata to a Kashmiri family, after attaining a degree in commerce, Chopra began studying fine arts. After first completing a BFA at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1999, he moved to the United States to further pursue his studies. He completed an MFA at Ohio State University in 2003.

His often improvised performances dwell on issues such as identity, the role of autobiography, the pose and self-portraiture, and the process of transformation. Many of Chopra’s performances originate in Mumbai, but are often re-imagined in different cities around the world. Although not explicitly politically motivated, Chopra’s performances have at times attracted intervention from authorities, which the artist says points to the ongoing critical capacity of drawing and performance.

At the core of Nikhil Chopra’s art are theatricality and performance. The body becomes a tool and canvas for art. He is best known for durational performances in which he takes on the persona of different characters, inspired by personal familial history and broader national, regional, and colonial histories. The paintings, drawings, and other objects these actions create are a residual component—the object legacy—of the performance.

Chopra’s characters draw upon his sensibilities, influences and upbringing in an upper middle-class urban Indian family descended from land-owning aristocracy, yet they are not faithful toautobiography, taking on a life of their own during the performance.The artist employs carefully conceived costume changes, appearance alterations, sets and props as signifiers of identity, fairly fluid and constantly reinvented. As each performance progresses, rituals of transformation, usually informed by common cultural practices, mark the shifts between personages.

Chopra’s most reprised roles include Sir Raja—a figure loosely inspired by the affluent westernised Indian princes of the British Raj period and the artist’s own instilled upper-class sensibilities—and Yog Raj Chitrakar, who presents as a well-travelled, turn-of-the-century landowner and draughtsman, and is partially inspired the artist’s grandfather.

Nikhil Chopra has performed and exhibited his art before a global audience since the mid-2000s. His art has featured in gallery and institutional shows, art fairs, and other major art events worldwide. In the live performance Lands, Waters, and Skies (2019), the artist worked in the galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art for nine consecutive days, adopting various personae and critically engaging with the museum’s collection and its organisational principles.

Chopra co-founded the artist-run residency HH Art Spaces in 2014 with his wife Madhavi Gore—a fellow performance artist—and the French performance artist Romain Loustau.

FIND OUT ABOUT WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SUMMIT