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About
Creatives of Colour was founded in 2024 by Kevin Leomo and Zahra Khosroshahi.
“Our stories. Our lens. Our terms.”
The annual Creatives of Colour Festival aims to celebrate our collective identity as people of colour (PoC), as well as the intersectionality and diversity of our stories, cultures, and art forms. The Festival offers a range of creative events including performances of music, poetry, and theatre, as well as screenings and workshops which centre the voices, experiences, and creativity of people of colour in Glasgow. Storytelling sits at the heart of these creative practices, and celebrates the resilience, joy, and talent of PoC artists.
Creatives of Colour Festival 2026 is supported by Thinking Culture, School of Culture & Creative Arts and is funded by the Ferguson Bequest.
Professor Thomas Ferguson (1900-1977), Henry Mechan Chair of Public Health (1944-64), bequeathed his estate to the University, with the instruction that the money should be used to “foster the social side of University life."
The annual Creatives of Colour Festival aims to celebrate our collective identity as people of colour (PoC), as well as the intersectionality and diversity of our stories, cultures, and art forms. The Festival offers a range of creative events including performances of music, poetry, and theatre, as well as screenings and workshops which centre the voices, experiences, and creativity of people of colour in Glasgow. Storytelling sits at the heart of these creative practices, and celebrates the resilience, joy, and talent of PoC artists.
Creatives of Colour Festival 2026 is supported by Thinking Culture, School of Culture & Creative Arts and is funded by the Ferguson Bequest.
Professor Thomas Ferguson (1900-1977), Henry Mechan Chair of Public Health (1944-64), bequeathed his estate to the University, with the instruction that the money should be used to “foster the social side of University life."
2026 Festival Team
Zahra Khosroshahi (she/her) is a lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK. She is currently working on her forthcoming book entitled Iranian Women Filmmakers: A Cinema of Resistance (Edinburgh University Press). Zahra is a co-editor of the recently published Handbook of Iranian Cinema (IB Tauris 2004). She is also the Co-Director of the Creatives of Color Festival based in Glasgow and the co-founder of Thousand&One, a global feminist community that support women of colour.
Kevin Leomo (he/him) is a Scottish-Filipino sound artist, researcher, curator, and activist. He works as the Community and Engagement Manager for the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Glasgow and is Co-Director of the Creatives of Colour Festival. He directs the sound artist collective Sound Thought and is one half of Project Somnolence with Maria Sledmere. Kevin is a board member for the Scottish Music Centre and the Anti-Racism Observatory for Scotland. Kevin was elected to the Scottish Trades Union Congress Black Workers’ Committee and the Musicians’ Union Regional Committee for Scotland & Northern Ireland.
Anesu is a researcher, campaigner and creative working at the intersection of climate justice, decolonial knowledge and community storytelling. She is currently completing a PhD in Anti-colonial Climate Education, exploring how communities learn about and respond to climate change beyond traditional institutions. Outside of research, she’s a keen climber and outdoor enthusiast passionate about widening access to nature and diversifying the outdoors.
Keni Li is a China-born photographer and researcher based in Glasgow. Working across photography, text, and book form, her practice explores the porous boundaries between image, language, and memory. Drawing on literature and autobiographical writing, she is particularly interested in photo-text practices, intermediality, and women’s artistic narratives. Her works have been exhibited in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. Recent projects investigate memory as fluid and sensorial, unfolding through sequences of images and fragments of text. Her solo exhibition Fluid Memory: Wings (Glasgow, 2026), accompanied by an artist’s photobook, reimagines memory as something constantly shifting, recomposed through images, spaces, and intimate acts of looking and remembering.