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In this Human Rights Day special of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Maddy Crowther, co–executive director of Waging Peace and long-time human rights advocate dedicated to documenting atrocities and amplifying the voices of Sudanese communities.

Maddy shares the story behind one of the organisation’s most impactful initiatives, the Sudan Children’s Drawings Project, which began in 2007 and now holds over 600–700 drawings created by children who lived through conflict. These drawings, raw and unfiltered, have become critical evidence of war crimes and a tool for advocacy, informing public awareness campaigns and even parliamentary engagement.

Together, they explore:

✨ How the Sudan Children’s Drawings Project became a living archive of testimony
 ✨ The emotional and political weight of children's perspectives in documenting violence
 ✨ Maddy’s path into human rights work and the challenges of advocacy within the UK and global policy landscapes
 ✨ The ongoing humanitarian and political crisis in Sudan, and why it demands sustained international attention
 ✨ The importance of art, storytelling, and community voices in resisting erasure

Released for Human Rights Day (10th December), this episode honours the courage of Sudanese children, the resilience of survivors, and the critical work of those fighting for justice when the world looks away.

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🔗 Nuria's Instagram, Waging Peace's Instagram                                                              📚 Prospect Magazine article where a former child artist was interviewed here. 🔗Resources: For instance, see Françoise Héritier, anthropologist & ethnologist, and commentary on a drawing, an interview with the person who 1st gathered the cohort of drawings from camps in Chad. 

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Host: Łucja Hawking

Music: Yago Cardalda 

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In this urgent and deeply moving episode of The Human Frame, Łucja speaks with Nuria Zyden, an Uyghur activist using her voice to confront an ongoing Uyghur genocide.

Nuria shares her personal journey of growing up in China as an Uyghur woman, navigating systemic discrimination, cultural erasure, and the ever-present fear imposed by the Chinese state. After relocating to Ireland, she found both safety and the responsibility of speaking openly, despite the real risks and harassment faced by Uyghurs who dare to tell the truth.

Together, they explore:

 ✨ What it means to carry a culture targeted for destruction                                         ✨Her establishment of the Irish Cultural Uyghur Association                                       ✨ Transnational repression and the reach of authoritarian control
 ✨ The emotional and psychological weight of activism
 ✨ Why global silence fuels genocide
 ✨ How individuals and communities can take action  to protect Uyghur rights

Released for Genocide Prevention Day (9th December), this episode is a call to remembrance, accountability, and global solidarity.

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🔗 Nuria's Instagram

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Host: Łucja Hawking

Music: Yago Cardalda 

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In this thoughtful and energising episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Melanie Spencer, writer, director, creative coach, and long-time architect of stories, to explore the deep connections between creativity, identity, and the science of storytelling.

Melanie reflects on her journey through acting, writing, directing, and now creative coaching, sharing how years of navigating the industry shaped her understanding of story as both an artistic tool and a form of healing. She opens up about her philosophy of “story science,” the emotional landscapes behind the creative process, and the personal experiences that shaped her unique approach to coaching artists.

Together, they explore:
 ✨ How story “rewires” us and why humans are biologically shaped for narrative
 ✨ Creativity as a tool for self-understanding, healing, and resistance
 ✨ Navigating the challenges of being a working-class creative in an industry of barriers
 ✨ The realities of burnout, reinvention, and reclaiming your artistic voice
 ✨ Melanie’s vision for Artists Anonymous, a supportive, accessible space for creatives
✨ Why storytelling remains one of the most powerful tools we have for making meaning

A warm, insightful, and deeply human episode for anyone who creates, or wants to.

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🔗 Melanie's website

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Host: Łucja Hawking

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In this thought-provoking episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Sheila Hayman, a BAFTA and BAFTA Fulbright-winning documentary filmmaker whose work explores the shifting borders between technology, humanity, and storytelling.

Sheila reflects on her path into filmmaking and how her curiosity about the human condition, from artificial intelligence to displacement and migration, shapes her approach to crafting intimate, accessible documentaries. She shares her experience translating complex scientific ideas for wider audiences and how working closely with refugees and migrants deepened her belief in art as a tool for connection, dignity, and healing.

Together, they explore:
✨ Filmmaking as a bridge between science, society, and public understanding
✨ Making cutting-edge concepts, like AI and robotics, human, emotional, and relatable
✨ The role of documentary in amplifying refugee and migrant voices
✨ How personal history and identity shape artistic and political consciousness
✨ Art as a catalyst for empathy in a rapidly technologising world
✨ Sheila’s hopes for future storytelling that challenges apathy and nurtures human connection

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🔗 Sheila's website

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In this powerful episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Chiara Fabbro, an Italian documentary photographer whose work illuminates the lived realities of migration, displacement, and human rights abuses across the globe.

Chiara shares her journey into documentary photography, reflecting on the ethical foundations of her practice, from building trust with individuals living through profound instability to navigating consent in contexts marked by trauma, precarity, and danger. Her work spans refugee communities in Kuala Lumpur, migrant squats across the Balkans, and the perilous Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, documenting both resilience and systemic neglect.

Together, they explore:
 ✨ The responsibilities and ethics of documenting migration
 ✨ How to build trust and obtain meaningful consent in unstable environments
 ✨ Stories of migrant women, trans individuals, and families on the move
 ✨ The tension between representation, safety, and dignity in visual storytelling
 ✨ The role of photography in human rights advocacy and public memory
 ✨ Chiara’s upcoming projects and the narratives she believes must be centred next

A conversation for anyone interested in photography as testimony - where the frame becomes a site of care, responsibility, and resistance.

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🔗 Chiara's Instagram, website.

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In this thought-provoking episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Fay Beck, a filmmaker, director, and founder of Beck Academy of Dramatic Art and Aberrant Gene Films, and acting coach whose work pushes against the boundaries of performance, embodiment, and artistic resistance.

Fay reflects on her unexpected journey from science into filmmaking and how this nonlinear path shaped her distinctive approach to acting and directing. She shares the evolution of her signature acting techniques, rooted in emotional precision, physical awareness, and the mechanics of the human body, and how these tools support actors in accessing truthful, grounded performances.

Together, they explore:
 ✨ The intersections of science, art, and embodied storytelling
 ✨ Developing acting techniques that merge emotional awareness with physical control
 ✨ The making of her film I XXX My Sex Doll and its interrogation of societal expectations
✨ The role of discomfort, disruption, and risk in artistic practice
✨ Art as resistance in a cultural moment marked by conformity
✨ Fay’s hopes for future work that challenges, questions, and refuses to fit neatly into the expected

A conversation for filmmakers, performers, and anyone who believes art should unsettle, provoke, and expand the frame.

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🔗 Fay's Instagram, Beck Academy of Dramatic Art courses and Aberrant Gene Films. 

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In this thought-provoking episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Zuza Kamińska, a Polish artist, writer, and activist whose work pushes against societal norms and confronts the political policing of bodies, identity, and autonomy in modern Poland.

Zuza reflects on her creative journey, from studying art and activism to developing a distinctive visual and conceptual language rooted in resistance. Drawing from lived experience, feminist movements, and Poland’s shifting political climate, her work exposes the fractures between public morality and private reality, particularly surrounding reproductive rights.

Together, they explore:
 ✨ Art as a form of dissent under rising authoritarianism
 ✨ The state of abortion rights in Poland and the human cost of criminalisation
 ✨ How identity, gender, and social pressure collide in society
 ✨ The role of artists in documenting and challenging injustice
 ✨ The generational divide in Poland’s cultural landscape
 ✨ Zuza’s upcoming book on human rights and her evolving artistic practice

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🔗 Zuza's Instagram, Website

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In this thought-provoking episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Marta, a Portuguese-based writer, performer, actor and theatre-maker whose work explores the intersections of body, migration, identity, and resistance.

Marta reflects on her creative journey, from studying journalism and literature to building a career in theatre, and how her personal experience as a migrant woman shaped her acclaimed play “My Body Is Not Your Country.” The piece confronts borders both physical and intimate, examining how women’s bodies become battlegrounds for politics, violence, and belonging.

Together, they explore:
 ✨ Theatre as activism and a tool for social change
 ✨ The emotional landscape of migration and displacement
 ✨ The power of storytelling rooted in lived experience
 ✨ Violence against women in the arts and beyond
 ✨ Using the stage to challenge silencing, shame, and erasure
 ✨ Marta’s upcoming projects and the futures she hopes to build through art

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🔗 Marta's Instagram, Website

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Host: Łucja Hawking

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In this powerful episode of The Human Frame, Łucja chats with Crystal Marshall, actor, advocate, and ambassador for Changing Faces UK, to explore her journey through osteosarcoma, facial difference, and her work as an actor.

Crystal shares her lived experience growing up visibly different, navigating bullying, public perception, and the emotional complexities that come with living in a world obsessed with conventional beauty. She opens up about the path that led her to acting, the healing she found through performance, and her mission to challenge stigma by showing the world what authentic, unfiltered representation truly looks like.

Together, they discuss:
 ✨ Life with osteosarcoma and facial difference
 ✨ The emotional journey toward self-acceptance and confidence
 ✨ Why representation in media still has a long way to go
 ✨ The work of Changing Faces UK and the power of visibility
 ✨ How performance can shift narratives and challenge bias
 ✨ What it means to embrace your identity on your own terms

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🔗 Crystal's Instagram

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Host: Łucja Hawking

Music: Yago Cardalda 

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In this episode of The Human Frame, Łucja sits down with Martina Avogadri, actor, teacher, and founder of The Truthful Actor acting course, for a deep dive into the philosophy and emotional rigour behind her work in I XXXX My Sex Doll, one of the most provocative and psychologically roles.

Martina opens up about the process of becoming a sex doll on screen: the physical stillness, the psychological demands, and the philosophical questions surrounding embodiment, objectification, and the blurred line between humanity and artifice. Together, they explore how her grounding in Meisner technique and beyond shapes truthful acting, what it means to strip performance down to its raw essentials, and how acting can reveal deeper truths about desire, identity, and the self.

This conversation explores:
 ✨ The philosophical questions behind playing an “inhuman” role
 ✨ How Meisner technique informed her physical and emotional work
 ✨ The challenges and breakthroughs of I XXXX My Sex Doll
✨ The performer’s body as object, subject, and site of meaning
✨ Her acting course The Truthful Actor, teaching at the Beck Academy of Dramatic Arts (BADA), her production company Aberrant Gene Films, and the courage to work with vulnerability
✨ Why truth, presence, and attention matter more than ever in contemporary acting

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🔗 Martina's Instagram

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Host: Łucja Hawking

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