Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

Maria Lucia Cruz Correia’s cross-sectoral and hybrid practice speaks to her deep engagement with the ecological crises as a guardian of nature. Since 2009, her temporary collaborative processes are like a living organism that grows in kinship with ecologists, rivers, activists, resilient plants, environmental lawyers, restorative justice practitioners (…). Correia’s visual installations, action performances and participatory laboratories express a sense of geo-politics, environmental advocacy and kinship with the more-than-human-world. Her artistic practice weaves rituals of care, embodied performance, walking-with practice and social design to fabulate environmental social services, such as “Urban Action Clinic”, “Common Dreams School”, “voiceofnatureKINSTITUTE” and “Natural Contract lab” . These proposals are attempts to engage communities with tools from rights of nature, restorative justice, environmental grief, regenerative activism, climate survival and reciprocal care for critical landscapes.

Marine Calmet

Marine Calmet  is a member of Natural Contract lab, she is an environmental lawyer and spokesperson for the movement Or de question opposed to the “Montagne d’or” project and the mining industry in French Guiana, Marine Calmet campaigns for the recognition of the rights of nature. With one foot in the Amazon and the other in metropolitan France, she develops new responses to the ecological crisis, inspired by the intelligence of ecosystems and the knowledge of indigenous peoples. At thirty two, she is president of Wild Legal, an NGO whose mission is to be a school and an incubator for future trials in defense of the rights of nature. She is the author of the book Devenir Gardiens de la Nature (Becoming Nature’s Guardians), book prize of the European Institute of Ecology in 2022.

Margarida Mendes

Margarida Mendes is a member of Natural Contract lab, activating member with Tejo river, researcher, curator and educator, exploring the overlap between systems thinking, experimental film, sound practices and ecopedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensing practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action. Mendes has been long involved in anti-extraction activism and ecopedagogy, collaborating with marine NGOs, Universities and institutions of the art world. She is a member of Natural Contract Lab, a collective working on restorative justice and river rights across Europe.