Irina-Simona Bârcă is a dramaturge and mediator. Born and raised in Romania, she studied acting in Bucharest and theater pedagogy at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. After working in Münster and Berlin, she was a dramaturge at the FFT (Forum Freies Theater) in Düsseldorf from 2017 to 2024, where she was responsible for the Young FFT section, including the programmatic focus "The Theater of Digital Natives". She has worked with pulk fiktion, Ives Thuwis, subbotnik, Leute wie die, machina eX and PINSKER + BERNHARDT, among others. She is part of various juries in German-speaking countries (Spielarten NRW, kicks! Theaternetzwerk Schweiz, Landesbüro freie darstellende Künste NRW) and was a member of the board of trustees at the Augenblick mal! 2021. As a lecturer, she gives seminars and training courses. Since January 2024, she has been Head of Artistic Mediation and Participation at Theater an der Parkaue.

Juliane Barz studied educational science and theater studies in Hildesheim and trained as a theater pedagogue (BuT) in Berlin. Most recently, she was employed at the Puppentheater Magdeburg for four years. Since September 2022, she has been working as a freelance theater mediator, director and production/project manager - including for the BANDE '23 format at Schauspielhaus Magdeburg and for the Moritzhof's socio-cultural district project "#moritz4all". In her work, she constantly explores new interfaces with other arts and media as well as new forms, formats and spaces and negotiates sustainable topics using a research-based and empowering approach. She is also involved as a spokesperson for the Arbeitskreis Ost for children's and youth theater, as part of the Adultism working group and on the Magdeb Cultural Advisory Boardurg.

Katrin Breschke studied German, Romance languages and literature and philosophy at the TU Dresden and then dramaturgy at the Hessian Theater Academy. She worked as a dramaturg at the Theater und Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg, at the state theaters in Nuremberg and Braunschweig and most recently at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. From 2017 to 2020, she was a member of the Performing Arts Working Group at the Office for Culture and Monument Protection of the City of Dresden. Since 2020, she has been one of three project managers at FLUX - Netzwerk Theater und Schule, a program to promote cultural participation in rural areas in Hesse. She also works as a freelance dramaturg at the Stadttheater Ingolstadt and the Hessisches Landestheater Marburg, among others. For the 2022 and 2023 festival editions of the Hessian Children's and Youth Theater Week KUSS at the Landestheater Marburg, she was part of the selection committee for the productions of the AK-Südwest.

After completing his master's degree in theater pedagogy at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2012, Nils Deventer worked for the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Junges Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and the Theater an der Parkaue Berlin. During this time, he gained extensive experience in the curation, conception and realization of participatory projects and participation formats of various types and sizes. After his projects increasingly dealt with topics of the digital world, he moved to medialepfade.org e.V. in 2021, where he is now part of the management team for the nationwide educational program "Jugend hackt".

Since 1994 artistic director and director of the Theater Mummpitz in Nuremberg and since 2000 artistic director of the biennial European-Bavarian children's theater festival "panoptikum". In addition, continuously active in the field of cultural policy as well as in various national and international associations for the promotion of professional children's and youth theater. Among other things, she was a long-standing board member and deputy chairwoman of the German ASSITEJ e.V. until January 2022.

Member of the Nuremberg Education Advisory Board, since 2009 responsible for the conceptualization , implementation and project management of the 1st Nuremberg Kulturrucksack.

Since 2019/2020 responsible for the project development "Mummpitz macht Schule. Klasse."

Since January 2022 artistic director of the three-year Jupiter project "Memories" in cooperation with CIE Gare centrale/Belgium, AdDK Regensburg and Theater Mummpitz.

Since 2022 member of the board of trustees of the Fonds Darstellende Künste.

Josef Gershenzon is 20 years old and was born in Moscow. He is currently studying philosophy and art history. Josef Gershenzon is a member of BAM! - Kollektiv, which mainly offers creative and social activities for refugee children. Since his childhood, he has been influenced by a strong interest in art and culture as well as socio-political issues, in particular by the experiences of injustice and totalitarianism he had in Russia. After the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, the family decided to emigrate to Germany. Since the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Josef Gershenzon has been working with friends to help refugee Ukrainian children. As he knows from his own experience what local initiatives and support can achieve, he would like to help support important artistic projects as part of the boys' jury.

Tessa Hart has been a culture maker and culture changer in the performing arts, film, community work and socio-cultural fields for over 15 years, working across interfaces and boundaries. Since July 2024, Tessa Hart has been a consultant for qualification programs at kultur_formen (Berlin Project Fund for Cultural Education). In addition, Tessa Hart's ongoing activities range from curation and participation in selection committees, such as at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival since 2020, to mediation and educational work, to artistic direction of the collective company Goblin Baby Co. since 2013. Previously, Tessa was project manager and artistic director of AfroPolitan Berlin from 2020 to 2024, co-founder and artistic and managing co-director of the Bread & Roses Theatre in London from 2012 to 2022 and has contributed to seven book publications since 2018. Born in the GDR, raised near Berlin and in Brussels, Tessa Hart lived in London for almost a decade and has been back in Berlin since 2018. Throughout all of this, Tessa Hart has navigated very intersectional worlds of experience, with expertise critical of power and discrimination as well as a commitment to equal opportunities and cultural reflection on actual social realities always being a leitmotif.

Sarah Fartuun Heinze is a Black(-gender-)Queer*Feminist; (wage) works as a freelance artist & author & cultural educator:multiverse(neurodiverse) &/ world changer:with theatre, games, Music and Empowerment, sees itself as an aesthetic researcher, is part of the Creative Gaming initiative and the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher.

Whether as a theater maker*, aesthetic researcher*, theater game designer*, musician*, as part of the Creative Gaming initiative or the New German Media Makers, as an author*, dramaturg* or cultural educator*: digital and analogue Basically, games have always moved Sarah Fartuun Heinze – and still do.

Her favorite game is: Zelda: Ocarina of Time, probably because the key to most of the puzzles is the music. As so often, far away from screens and (theater) stages.

She studied scenic arts at the University of Hildesheim and at the Università di Bologna, Italy, and worked as a dramaturge for drama and puppet theater at the Bühnen Halle as well as a freelance theater maker in various projects with young people, including for the Goethe Institute in sub-Saharan Africa and the UNART performance festival. She is also involved in various expert juries, e.g. for the allocation of state funds in the field of independent performing arts in Saxony-Anhalt and the NEUSTART KULTUR - Junges Publikum (ASSITEJ) funding program. Since 2023, Skadi Konietzka has been on the board of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft (BAG) Spiel & Theater.

Micha Kranixfeld works as an artist and cultural scientist. He is a member of the syndicate Gefährliche Liebschaften (Dangerous Liaisons) and the Frl. Wunder AG (Miss Wunder AG), with whom he develops research-based art projects in social fields. In the process, he creates wanderings into the future of work, colorful evenings about meat, or radio plays about the queerness of rural spaces. As a cultural scientist, Micha Kranixfeld conducts research at the University of Koblenz on social art in rural areas and images of rural diversity.

Julia-Huda Nahas initially trained as an advertising manager and worked for several years as a project manager, marketing and sales manager in the private sector. In 2011, she decided to change course and study cultural education at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, which she completed in 2015 with a bachelor's thesis on inclusive theater as part of the EU project “kunst verbind(e)t”. In addition to realizing independent productions and projects, she works for municipal and independent theatres. In addition, there are always thematically focused projects, such as the scenic reading “Heller Schatten”, a commissioned work on the occasion of the inauguration of the Nazi memorial in Neandertal. In 2020-2023, Julia-Huda Nahas led the project BITTER (SWEET) HOME, which she initiated with a focus on the promotion of BI*POC artists, anti-racist narratives and collaborative writing. In addition to her intensive networking work (theaterautor*innen-netzwerk, VThea, ASSITEJ), she is regularly represented on juries. She is currently a member of the jury for the German Federal Children's and Youth Theater Prize.

Dan Thy Nguyen is a freelance theater director, actor, writer and singer in Hamburg. He has worked on various productions at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Mousonturm Frankfurt, Kampnagel, MDR and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, among others. In 2014 he developed and produced the play "Sonnenblumenhaus" about the pogrom of Rostock -Lichtenhagen, which won the "Hörnixe" in 2015 in its radio play version and is still played at various institutions. Since 2020, he has directed the Hamburg festival "fluctoplasma - 96h Kunst Diskurs Diversität" with his production company Studio Marshmallow and he is deputy board member of the LAG Kinder- und Jugendkultur Hamburg. In 2021, together with the entire ensemble, he received the German Radio Play Award for his acting performance. In 2022 he published, among other things, his first volume of poetry "Über Wasser und Tote" and co-curated the exhibition "Wer wir sind" at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn in 2023.

Theresa Savasogan comes from Brunsbüttel in Schleswig-Holstein and is 18 years old. In addition to taking drama classes at school, she has been involved in various art and culture projects since childhood, particularly in the fields of theater and music. She has participated in various plays and recently completed training as a music tutor.

Elisabeth Schmidt from Anklam has been a member of the Anklam Youth Parliament since 2020 and chairwoman of the committee since winter 2023. Some of the youth parliament's achievements include a public barbecue area, “wish boxes” for Anklam's schools and several litter collection campaigns. The future title of “Blue Community” is also thanks to the parliament of 9 Anklam residents.
Elisabeth was also involved in the “Testament” theater workshop held in Anklam in June 2024.

Beata Anna Schmutz was born in Gdansk, Poland in 1975. After studying German at the University of Gdańsk, she continued her university education in the subjects of art history, educational science and literature at the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg. She is the artistic director of numerous theater, art and media education projects and was a cultural education employee at the Haus der Jugend Heidelberg from 2005 to 2016, where she headed the art and theater departments. Freelance director and dramaturg since 2006, university lecturer in the fields of aesthetic education, post-dramatic theater and performance. In 2005 she founded the theater and performance group RAMPIG, where she works as a director and dramaturg. From 2016 to 2018 she was head of the Volkstheater department at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Since 2018 she has been directing the Mannheim City Ensemble at the National Theater Mannheim. Member of the board of the Dramaturgical Society since 2016.

Katharina Warda ist Soziologin und Literaturwissenschaftlerin. Warda arbeitet als freie Autorin mit Schwerpunktthemen Ostdeutschland, marginalisierte Identitäten, Rassismus, Klassismus und Punk. Seit 2021 ist sie Beiratsmitglied von „Kein Schlussstrich!“, einem bundesweiten Theaterprojekt zum NSU-Komplex. In ihrem Projekt Dunkeldeutschland erkundet sie die Nachwendezeit von den sozialen Rändern aus und beleuchtet blinde Flecken in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung, basierend auf ihren eigenen Erfahrungen als Schwarze ostdeutsche Frau in der DDR und nach 1989/90.

Christopher Weymann (he/him) is a queer-feminist performer, computer scientist and theater maker for a transgenerational audience. At FUNDUS THEATER / Forschungstheater in Hamburg, he realizes projects and productions in co-creation with children and young people in the field of tension between society, science and art. With the preamble "Everything that is binary must be hacked!" he develops digital instruments and theater prototypes for the participatory deconstruction of heteronormative, classist and adultist power systems.

Jette Zempel is 15 years old and comes from Anklam in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She has been interested in theater for years and, until four years ago, played in a theater group for children and young people herself. She also loves singing and playing the guitar. Jette Zempel has taken singing lessons for a total of 6 years and has now been teaching herself to play the guitar for a year. She is a passionate music listener and has a broad knowledge of different genres and bands. When she finishes school, she would like to move to a big city like Hamburg and train as an educator there.