How can our communities create lighter and more equitable living and working situations?

What art infrastructures are needed for an inclusive, green transition?

Where is “forward”? At what cost? At whose expense? 

Being born in 1980’s Dubai to English and Iranian-Assyrian parents, I have always known that there are many ways for two or more worlds to touch. I have never believed in simple solutions, particularly to complex problems, and, in the journey of my life so far, I have learnt that it is only by acknowledging that intellectual, emotional and relational ways of being are collectively formed that we can weave our own path. Because of this, I am deeply committed to collective learning as a way to encourage difficult conversations, form new approaches, and expand our capacity to navigate the uncertainty ahead.

Over the years, I’ve brought people together to co-create a holistic decarbonisation plan for art workers, build immersive game-environments that learn from hostile designs, trace the social histories of polluting chemicals in industrialised waterways, and set up an alternative ethics committee with a More-Than-Human Rights Bill. In 2020, I founded Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline, a collaborative learning project exploring just green transition in the arts. With an international coalition of dream weavers, growers, healers and caregivers, together we made a holistic decarbonisation plan for art workers. Read the plan here. 

I value 

• Ethical collaborations – engagement across different sectors of society in non-extractive ways and in response to a shared problem.

• Intellectual depth – acknowledging the limits of our knowledge and accountabilities to human and more-than-human communities. 

• Reparative redistribution – there is no change without just systems change.  

I have generated significant experience working with complex climate change dynamics to better facilitate inclusive art practices around green transition. From reducing air miles through “proxy” hosts, where international artists are paired with local artists to realise projects, enacting a carbon reparations debt pledge, or putting in place sensitive ways of working with natural and circular systems, my work is dedicated to reaching as many people as possible in lighter, inclusive and accessible ways.  I currently run a slow “companion-planting” working group New Rhythms, funded by Creative Scotland, exploring regenerative cultures, emerging technology and alternative configurations of working in the arts.

I was an Artangel Making Time resident (2023) and Stanley Picker Fellow (2020). I have curated numerous exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and edited books, in the UK, the EU and internationally. I wrote my PhD in Curatorial Practice and World-Making with an AHRC funded grant and am a visiting tutor in Design Research at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. I am on the advisory editorial board of ‘Digital Materialities and Sustainable Futures’ Book series, Emerald Press. 

If you would like to talk more please get in touch. I would love to hear from you.

You can reach me at: dani@daniadmiss.com

People I have worked with include:

• Artangel

• Abandon Normal Devices, Manchester 

• Arts Catalyst

• Barbican Centre, London 

• BFI, London

• British Council

• Design Museum, London 

• Dezeen, UK

• Digital Asia Hub, Hong Kong

• FACT, Liverpool

• Furtherfield, London

• Future Fantastic, India

• Global Sustainability Institute

• Goldsmiths College University 

• Greenpeace

• Julie’s Bicycle

• Kingston University

• Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Portugal

• MAAT Museum, Portugal

• Manchester Metropolitian University (MMU)

• Newbridge Projects, Newcastle

• Porto Design Biennale, Portugal

• Radar, Loughborough University

• Royal Academy of Art, The Hague

• Royal College of Art, London

• RixC, Latvia

• Serpentine Gallery, London 

• Somerset House, London

• Sonic Acts, The Netherlands 

• SPACE [ART+TECH], London

• Stanley Picker Gallery

• TAJ, Bangalore 

• TASCHEN, Germany

• transmediale, Germany

• University of Edinburgh

• Walk&Talk Festival, Azores