In this session, we explore how waste is not an end point, but a beginning — a site of transformation, storytelling and design. Our guests examine how shifting both material systems and cultural language around waste can open new pathways for collaborative futures. From zero-waste methodologies to land-based making and regenerative design, they invite us to question what we’ve been taught to discard — and to imagine new vocabularies, values and infrastructures that honour entanglement over extraction, repair over replacement and reciprocity over refusal.

Hannah Fletcher is the founder of Sustainable Darkroom, an initiative rethinking analogue photography through environmental stewardship. She transforms chemical waste into creative opportunity, exploring how traditional darkroom processes can become portals for zero-waste experimentation and education.

Kerry A Cleaver is a designer whose work navigates the boundary between material innovation and ecological justice. Kerry’s practice explores how everyday objects can be reimagined through regenerative principles, questioning the lifecycle of design and the language we use to describe it.

Louise F Smith is a visual artist whose practice engages directly with found, discarded and foraged materials. Through mixed-media installation, she highlights overlooked matter — soil, textiles, paper — as textures of memory and reciprocity, reframing waste as a site of creative renewal.

Evelyn Yap is a chef innovating at the intersection of gastronomy and sustainability. Her kitchen becomes a laboratory for circular food systems — from fermenting peels to composting scraps — questioning our culinary vocabulary and reweaving food production into ecological care.