Steward of the Land...

I am Imogen and I will be around for the weekend to support with anything needed. I’m a musician and have sung for a time in Companion Voices, who sing for people at the end of life. I have also worked with pregnant women and as a birth doula. I feel really strongly that how we as a society approach birth and death is a massive indicator of how we are living, so I’m excited to be part of this ConFest.

@gatherings.with.heart 

Willow Aislinn Ro 

I am Willow Aislinn Ro (they / them) and I work as a Cneasaí, an Irish word  meaning "being with skin" and evokes a sense of healing by drawing forth scaring. This is gentle work that is rooted in deep embodied listening and companionship with the body and the land.

www.willowbywater.com

Dead Good CIC

Alexandra Derwen 

I am Alexandra Derwen (they / them) and I live in Eryri (Snowdonia), I am a death and grief doula, keener & lamenter, ceremonialist, poet, pilgrim and community educator.

My near distance ancestral roots come through Liverpool but are woven of Celtic and pre-Celtic diaspora (Irish, Scots and Welsh) reaching further back to Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea. I am part Oak, part Rock and lover of rivers.

My dream for this world is that we collectively mourn all that is dead and dying; in order to midwife a new world, together.

Eilio

Eve Goodman

Eve Goodman (she / her) from North Wales, writes in both English and Welsh. Using music to transcribe and transmute her emotions, Eve combines honest lyricism with mesmerising musical hooks and patterns. Each song is shared with a captivating presence and clarity; from her crystalline vocals to the clarion beauty of her words. Inspired by nature and the more-than-human world, her songs connect deeply to our inner and outer landscapes. In 2024 Eve released her debut album, ‘Summer Sun, Winter Trees’, a collection of songs about healing through the grieving process, followed by her second album ‘Natur’ in Autumn 2025, a Welsh language collaboration with SERA. Her songs have garnered plays on Radio 2, Radio 6 and she has featured as a vocalist on BBC One’s drama, Wolf. In recent years Eve has dived into a yearlong study of ritual singing and vocal improvisation, performed internationally, and featured as guest vocalist, alongside Sting, Welsh bass baritone Sir Bryn Terfel’s album ‘Sea Songs’ with two duets in both Welsh and Breton. 

“Her rich voice flows like deep water" Songlines 

“Shamanic and crystalline” Adam Walton BBC Wales 

www.evegoodman.co.uk

Rachel Hawthorn 

I am Rachel Hawthorn (she / her), an artist, death doula, and shroud maker.

I have roots in English and Scottish soil. I grew up in London but always felt pulled north, and now live in the wooded valleys of West Yorkshire.

My wish for this world is that we recover our deep belonging and intimacy with nature and land, and come back into reciprocity and kinship with the more-than-human world.

Ailsa Mair 

I am Ailsa Mair (she/they), a musician and sound-artist rooted in Wales. I grew up in Monmouth and currently live in the Dyfi Valley very near to where all four of my grandparents lived.

A singer-cellist, songwriter and improviser, I create elemental tapestries and original songs from my strings, voice and loop pedal - experimental folk offerings on the spectrum of grief and joy, woven with wild nature, magic and threads of Welsh language.

My work in the world spans performance, ceremony, facilitating collective vocal improvisation, creating music with and for the earth, using sound as a healing tool and sharing cyclical wisdom. I am strongly drawn to the path of Music Therapy.

Grief has become a huge part of my life; I am part of a local community grief-tending collective, the Dyfi Valley Grief-tenders. I am passionate about honouring nature’s cycles and am an advocate of Menstrual Cycle Awareness, and through training with Red School, a Menstruality Mentor.

My dream for the future is to restore respect for our cyclical nature, celebrate life in all its glorious diversity, for all humans to be fully in our creative power and live sustainably on this planet, and to grieve what is lost with utmost care and beauty.

Listen: thefairytalecellist.bandcamp.com
Website: www.ailsamairsong.org
Instagram: @ailsamairsong

Kestrel Morton

Kestrel Morton (they / them) is a queer, non-binary storyteller based in South Wales and usually found bewitching audiences with spiderweb tales spun from the echoes of the wild, blurring reality with myth and drawing the otherworld close. They've performed on stages and at festivals across the UK including at Brighton Fringe, Sidmouth Folk Festival, the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and Beyond the Border, most recently touring their show Binderella with The Ragged Storytelling Collective. 

Gauri Raje  

Tuomas Rounakari

I am Tuomas Rounakari (he/him), violinist, composer and ethnomusicologist and have worked over 25 years revitalizing, reclaiming and re-imagining lament traditions.

I am a descendent of two lines, east and west. My fatherline were sea-farers from the west coast of Finland and my motherline goes to Karelia and Ingria, parts in the east of Finland lost to Russia in WW2. The forced displacement of my grandparents has shaped my life in unexpected ways. It might well be the reason behind my interest in revitalizing Karelian lament traditions first with the diaspora in Finland, then abroad aligning with universal lament practices.

I live on the North-West coast of Finland. I have a special bond with the sea and thunder. I dream of a world where our common standpoint is we rather than I and them. 

Lies Verswijvel

My name is Lies Verswijvel (she/her): writer, artist, death doula, traveller, and facilitator whose work draws from the well of imagination, be/longing, and impermanence. I practice art and end-of-life work as forms of cultural tending, creating experiences where presence can be cultivated and the tender and shadowed parts of life welcomed and held.

I come from Belgium but, drawn to Celtic heritage, am currently living as an artist in residence at La Source, Centre for Research and Creation in Bretagne, France. Here, as an apprentice to the land, I am developing The Ecology of Endings, a process-based art and research project that explores how sustained engagement with ecological endings can teach us about presence and help reframe cultural narratives around care in relation to death, grief, and crisis.

My dream for this world is a remembering of our place within the living earth: to decentre ourselves as the gravity of importance and return to ways of living where embodied listening to place and the more-than-human world brings us back into relationship with humility, finding vocation rooted in radical love.

https://www.liesverswijvel.com
https://www.instagram.com/liesverswijvel
https://www.instagram.com/ijlland

Tanya Zere

My name is Tanya Zere (she / her).

I am the daughter of a Zimbabwean mother and a Swiss father, and I unite in me the clarity and consciousness of the lands of the mountains and lakes, as well as the healing forces and deep love of the beautiful motherland.

I feel called to bring balance and justice into this world by healing arts, ancient wisdom (that lies within all of us), and the medicine of the heart.

Only through tender guidance and humble processing I received my voice as a force to transform energies and heal what is broken – a simple but so powerful prayer to nature and humankind.