CULTURE: Kathryn Briggs: Originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, in 2012 Kathryn moved to Scotland to pursue her Masters, and loved it too much to leave. She is an award-winning graphic novelist, combining her classical fine art training with a love of pop culture to create comics which range from slice of life to comparative mythology. She is also an arts educator, teaching in museums, contemporary arts centres, higher education and facilitating workshops for charities. Her comics work can be found in Treehouse Comic, Dirty Rotten Comics, Sliced Quarterly, TYCI, Meanwhile..., The Drouth, and released through her own small press, Ess Publications. @withryn

COMMUNICATION: Sam Gonçalves is the Digital Producer at Creative Dundee where, amongst other things, he has produced the weekly original content that has been released in the last few months. Outside of this role he makes documentaries via film, writing and podcasts. His previous work has been selected for the LUX Scotland archive and received an award by Fife Decorative Arts. The kinds of stories he has worked on have touched on the history and urban development of Dundee, creativity, sailors, mice, Aretha Franklin and Brazil - his home country. @SidlingBears

HEALTH: Christina Neuwirth was born in Austria and now lives in Edinburgh. She has written, produced and directed short films, performed at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, and dabbled in music production. Her short fiction has been published in Gutter and 404 Ink, and her non-fiction can be found on CommonSpace, The Dangerous Women Project, and most recently in Nasty Women and Marbles Mag. Christina’s novella Amphibian was shortlisted for the 2016 Novella Award. She is currently working on her first novel and pursuing a PhD at the University of Stirling, researching gender equality in writing and publishing in Scotland. @gwynn255

MONEY: Andrew Staines first came to Dundee 20 years ago from a small village in Norfolk, to study Genetics at Abertay Dundee and then stayed, with a wee sideways move to Perth 10 years ago. Since University he’s been incredibly lucky to work as a futurist (he still can’t believe this sometimes) for a range of organisations including the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Enterprise and in 2013 became the UK Cabinet’s first ever dedicated futurist. Andrew has worked as a jobbing futurist on diverse topics such as demographics, trade, law, climate change and money and has advised amongst others the EU, OECD and various world governments on futures practice and emerging areas of interest. Andrew firmly believes that people, their behaviours and society make the future, not the latest technology trend.

PLAY: Lynn Parker came to Dundee from the West coast of Scotland in 2000 as a student and is happily, still here. She now finds herself as an animation and interactive art lecturer at Abertay University and a practicing artist, who produces ‘play interventions’ that aim to bring people together through interactivity, social experiences and playful spaces. She likes to make strange things that are social and playful, whether they be games, events or objects and this is the focus of her PhD which she is undertaking as part of Abertay Game Lab. Most recently she has collaborated on projects including a three-player social play game where players’ don a poncho and hold hands to play a digital game with their bodies, a set of sensing cuffs which can be used by players to imbue inanimate objects with narrative potential and a digital dance system which uses abstraction and sound to encourage players to experiment with different kinds of movement. Lynn is passionate about play and believes we all could benefit from being a little more playful in our everyday lives. She is also a little obsessed with using projectors in her work. @toadrick