Theme: Hidden Treasures

This year, we wanted to look behind closed doors and find secrets. We wanted to discover new places and take a peak at things we perhaps should not look at. We wanted to discuss the value of privacy and understand what privacy generally means to us. We wanted to discover hidden talents and retrieve ancient wisdoms. And of course we wanted to meet real treasure hunters, and find out how treasures are found nowadays – on other planets, underwater, hidden deep in the earth or just at the flea market here in Munich.

Circus Krone
Marsstrasse 43
München, Bayern, 80335
Germany

Fee

Fee, actually Felicia Brembeck, is the winner of the German U20 poetry-slam championships in 2013. She writes her own texts and occurs in poetry-slams throughout Germany. She has just published her first book for teens, "Mach Fehler!" which means “make mistakes!”

Bob Carey

Bob Carey is a commercial photographer based New York City, and has operated a successful studio for over 20 years. Bob’s commercial clients, both impressive and varied, appreciate Bob's fine art approach, which fuels his distinctive and often conceptual imagery. In 2002, as part of a new project exploring stereotypes and transformation, Bob began photographing himself in a pink tutu. When his wife, Linda, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003, the project took on a different meaning. It became a powerful tool for self-therapy; expressing, vulnerability, isolation, and humor. Carey’s wife shared them with other patients, bringing laughter and levity into their chemotherapy treatments. This shared laughter became the inspiration for the couple to self-publish a book of the images, Ballerina, and begin raising funds for those living with breast cancer. This body of images, known as The Tutu Project, went viral in 2012 and has since been entertaining people around the world.

David Jacob

David Jacob was born in 1990 in Berlin and also grew up there. He studied Communication Design at the HTW Berlin and currently works as a designer at the agency Edenspiekermann in Berlin. He is the co-founder of workeer, a project which was established with his fellow student Philipp Kühn as a final project of their studies. workeer is the first training and job exchange platform in Germany, which is specifically aimed at refugees. With the platform, the team tries to create a suitable environment in which this particular group of jobseekers are able to encounter matching employers.

David Matas & David Kilgour

David Kilgour is co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran, past chair of the Latin America and Caribbean policy working group of the Ottawa branch of the Canadian International Council, a director of the Washington-based Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD), a Fellow of the Queen's University Centre for the Study of Democracy, a director of the New York-based NGO Advancing Human Rights and a director of the Ottawa Mission Foundation. David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is also an author who has produced eleven books. One of those books, titled "Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for their Organs", he co-authored with David Kilgour. As a result of the work he and David Kilgour did on that issue, an America based German doctor Torsten Trey founded the NGO Doctors against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH).

Aeham Ahmad

This man from Syria is not a pop-star in a spotlight-sense – but therefor maybe a even greater man. Ahmad, a pianist and music teacher, played on its rolling piano in the ruins of Damascus, for hope and against the terror of the terrorist organization IS. The images and YouTube videos of him, sitting on a wooden chair at his instrument, the bombed houses in the background, went around the world.

Alison Killing

Alison Killing is an architect and urban designer based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands where she runs her own studio Killing Architects. She works to engage people with their built environment, via design of buildings and urban strategies, film making, exhibitions and events. She explores the relationship between death and modern architecture, looking at how cities are rebuilt after disaster. Recent projects include Death in the City, a touring exhibition about death and modern architecture; work with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on better rebuilding after disaster and how to integrate relevant urban design tools into humanitarian response; and a study of financial models for arts and community projects temporarily using vacant buildings to help these projects become self-sustaining.

Brent Brisben

Brent Brisben has spent the majority of his career in the real estate business, having founded San Simeon Homes, a business focusing on the purchase, renovation and sale of existing single-family homes. In May 2010, Brent joined 1715 Fleet Jewels, LLC as Operative Manager and, under his watch, the company enjoyed a very succesful 2010 season when a subcontactor recovered the only bronze swivel gun ever found on the 1715 Fleet. Subcontractors of Brisben’s company recovered one of the most amazing artifacts in the history of the 1715 fleet, the incredible “Pelican in Piety”. In July 2015 Brent and his crew made one of the most significant finds in 1715 Fleet History by recovering 300 gold coins of the sunk 1715 fleet. The story of the recovery of 350 Spanish Escudos and 9 Royals worth 4.5 Million Dollars made headlines worldwide.

Cobus De Swardt

Cobus joined Transparency International in 2004 and was appointed Managing Director in 2007. His experience spans the fields of globalisation, development policy, international relations and business management. Cobus has taught and worked at universities, multinational corporations, trade unions and research institutes in managerial and research related roles around the world. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he was active in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa including as Chair of the African National Congress in Cape Town. He is Chair of the International Civil Society Centre, member of the Board of the UN Global Compact and member of the International Integrated Reporting Council. Cobus is also a member and former chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Agenda Council on Transparency & Anti-Corruption. In addition he serves on the Board of the WEF Partnering against Corruption Initiative (PACI).

Daniel Überall

As a trained communications specialist, Daniel worked in various advertising agencies until 2007. He found his true calling in the founding team of Utopia.de, the online community for sustainable living. He then launched the initiative “Stadtimker” (City Beekeepers) and has been working on establishing the “Kartoffelkombinat" (the Potato Combine) in Munich since 2012. The aim of this cooperative is to provide themselves with their own regional and seasonal food. In September this year, Daniel traveled to the Serbian-Hungarian border to help the refugees that were arriving there. There, the decision to establish an NGO was made. The mission of the "InterEuropean Human Aid Association" (IHA) is to provide refugees with protection and assistance on their journey - quickly and efficiently with a team of volunteers, in close coordination with NGOs, directly in the forming refugee camps at the EU's external borders.

Martin Walker

Martin Walker, born in 1947 in Scotland, is a writer, historian and political journalist. He studied History in Oxford and International Relations and Economics at Harvard. After his studies, he spent 25 years working as a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian. Martin Walker acts as Chairman of the Global Business Policy Council, a private think tank for top executives based in Washington. He has written numerous non-fiction books about the Cold War, Gorbachev and Perestroika, President Bill Clinton andthe new America, amongst others. Martin Walker's Bruno novels have appeared simultaneously in fifteen languages and have sold 1.5million copies in Germany alone (as of June 2015). Martin Walker lives in Washington and in the Périgord.

Ralf Belusa

Ralf Belusa learned writing code at the age of 6, and started his first company at the age of 16. Ralf recently studied a year of astrophysics and immunology, wrote his doctoral thesis on human cell research, master and diploma thesis in nanotechnologies and system theory and now advises the German Federal Government. He acts as a mentor for companies such as Volkswagen and Axel Springer and is also an investor at Microsoft Ventures. The Wirtschaftswoche awarded the Digital Manager and startup founder as one of the 100 most important Digital Managers of Germany and Europe. He is Chief Digital Officer at PublicTelescope.org – building a Space Telescope for everyone, Senior Director at Europe’s largest Online Marketing Network, was an Executive Manager at one of the largest Online Retailers, co-founder of start-ups, and sits on multiple startup advisory boards.

Sarah Sophie

What happens if you combine a young singer-songwriter and a beatboxer? Sounds as if these two types of music don´t fit together. However, the band project Sarah Sophie shows that this can indeed work in a very harmonic way. With a mixture of pop, hip hop and singer-songwriter the band captivates their audience with their beautiful, melancholic songs. Listen and enjoy!

Stuart Acker Holt

Stuart Holt was born into a North West London family and raised in large part by Yami, a Mauritian lady who was like a second mother. Yami would pack his lunch box with raw red chillis, vegetable rice and chapati. This was atypical for a 6 year old’s lunch box at the Jewish Junior school he went to. The experience invigorated a taste for the unfamiliar, which was so much more fun and appealing then jam and peanut sandwiches! Later, this curiosity would drive his career as a photographer and film-maker, motivating him to seek out subjects that were at first strange but would be made familiar to him. However, nothing would prepare him for the journey that the Most Interesting Person project has propelled him on. This project of interconnected films which he started as a ‘happy accident’ has taken him on a voyage of hidden people, ideas and relationships that has challenged many pre-conceived ideas.

Tamara Ben-Halim

Tamara Ben-Halim has worked in non-profit and civil society for over 6 years. She co-founded Cycling4Gaza over 6 years ago, and led various communication and outreach efforts while working with venture philanthropy organisation Alfanar. Her documentary film, Ain El Hilweh, was nominated for an award at the California Arab Film Festival in 2011. Tamara holds a first class MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics. She is co-founder of Makan, an educational platform dedicated to reframing the Palestinian-Israeli issue for a mainstream audience by using a language of rights.