KEYNOTE
Robin Moira White - Robin was the first barrister to transition from male to female in practice at the employment and discrimination bar in 2011, she has appeared in some ground-breaking and law-making trans cases and is joint author of the only specialist legal text in the area, A Practical Guide to Transgender Law.
PANEL
Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor - Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor is an award-winning director and producer. She is the founder of Joi Productions. She produced the box-office hit Blue Story (2019) and Aml Ameen’s Boxing Day (2021), the UK’s first all-Black Christmas film, and was named a Screen International Star of Tomorrow and a BAFTA Breakthrough in 2020. Joi Productions also received a BFI Vision Award and later partnered with Ringside Media as part of the Studio TF1 Group. More recently Joy has produced Ashley Walters’ debut feature film Animol for BFI, F4 and Sky Studios, which premiered at the 76 Berlin Film Festival in 2026.
As a director, Joy’s short For Love (2021), supported by BBC Film, premiered at the BFI London Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Short, before screening in competition at SXSW, Aspen, Outfest and BlackStar amongst others, winning multiple awards.
Her debut feature Dreamers (2025) premiered in the Panorama section at the 75th Berlinale, where it was nominated for the Teddy Award, and went on to compete at BFI London Film Festival for the First Features Sutherland Award. The film has since screened internationally at Frameline in San Francisco and GAZE in Dublin, where it won Joint Best Feature Film. Dreamers was also longlisted at the BIFAs for Best Debut Director and Writer.
With Dreamers, Joy has established herself as a bold new voice in British cinema, crafting intimate, lyrical stories that centre underrepresented voices while reaching audiences worldwide.
Chris Bush - Chris Bush is an Olivier Award-winning playwright, lyricist and screenwriter whose work has been produced by many of the UK’s leading theatres, including the National Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Sheffield Theatres, Birmingham Rep and Lyric Hammersmith.
She is perhaps best known for writing the landmark musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which transferred from Sheffield to the National Theatre and the West End, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Musical, alongside a South Bank Sky Arts Award and UK Theatre Award. More recently, her acclaimed play Otherland was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and she was named one of The Stage’s 100 most influential people in British theatre for the second time.
Her wide-ranging body of work spans plays, musicals and adaptations, including Rock/Paper/Scissors, Faustus: That Damned Woman, Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, Pericles, The Odyssey and A Doll’s House. Alongside her theatre work, her short filmMars, produced by Yungblud, premiered at the London Film Festival and was selected for Tribeca.