Every year, the LFA curation panel plays a pivotal role in helping to shape the festival theme and overall programme. Formed of key figures from across the built environment, this panel is hand-selected to represent the range of voices that London houses, thus bringing different perspectives and experiences into the curation process of each festival’s cycle.
This group will work closely with the LFA team throughout the next year to help steer the ship of The Festival, ensuring it’s shaped into a creation that represents the whole of London.
We’re pleased that the following individuals will be joining the Curation Panel for LFA2026:
Rumi Bose (she/her)
Rumi is an urban designer and placeshaping consultant with 16 years of regeneration experience across London’s high streets and town centres. Rumi has prolific experience leading multi-disciplinary teams, working with communities and skilled partner organisations to build better places. Rumi approaches design intuitively. A passionate place-shaping expert, her high street and projects have won NLA, RIBA and Civic Trust awards. Leading by listening, Rumi brings people together to create insightful and creative projects, weaving social, cultural and environmental challenges into designs that speak of hope and community. Rumi is Chair of the NLA’s High Street Expert Panel, and board member of Future of London.
Thomas Bryans (he/him)
Thomas is co-founder of IF_DO and IF/ Design Labs, and a committee member of Architecture LGBT+. His work explores how architecture can strengthen communities and spark civic imagination. He has a longstanding connection to the LFA, including with projects such the first Dulwich Pavilion in 2017.
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- Website: www.ifdo.co / www.ifdesignlabs.org
Black Females in Architecture (Neba and Selasi)
BFA is a membership organisation and social enterprise. With over 500 members globally, BFA connects and supports black women within the architecture, design and construction industry. Through networking, advocacy, education, and projects, they serve their members, the industry, and wider society, ensuring the contributions of Black women to the built environment are recognised and valued. Their work includes a vibrant public programme of talks, food, music, and intergenerational exchange.
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- Neba Sere (she/her)- Neba is a spatial practitioner advocating for equity in the architecture profession. She is an associate professor and Director of Decolonising and Decarbonising at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Neba is also one of the Co-directors of Black Females in Architecture, who exhibited at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, and she co-leads decosm, a collective, which collaborated with Arup on the report ‘Racial Equity and the City’, and exhibited ‘Ancestral Plants: Anarchive’ at the Design Museum. Her previous roles include Senior Project Officer with the Greater London Authority’s Regeneration Team and leading youth projects at Build Up Foundation, where she is now a Trustee.
- Selasi Setufe MBE(she/her)- Selasi is a registered architect with an interest in exploring socially responsive approaches to design, architecture and placemaking with particular focus on cultural and environmental issues. She is a Public Practice Alumni and previously worked as a Senior Architect and Innovative Sites Manager at Be First where she championed high-quality design and project management across various projects. Selasi is currently a Principal Project Officer within the GLA’s Place Unit. Passionate about challenging the status quo and creating opportunities for the disenfranchised to thrive, Selasi has held positions as a Council Member at the RIBA, Chair of the NLA’s NextGen Sounding Board and as trustee of Street Space CIC. Selasi was awarded an MBE for her services to diversity in Architecture in the Queen’s 2022 Honour’s List.
- Website: https://www.blackfemarc.com/
Sarah Considine (she/her)
Sarah is Head of the Design Unit at the Greater London Authority, where she oversees quality and inclusion in the built environment through design research, design review and advocacy. She has a range of experience across regeneration, urban design and place-shaping. Sarah has a background in architecture, has worked in professional practice, undertaken community engagement work, taught in various schools of architecture, and undertaken design research and self-initiated community projects.
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- Website: https://www.london.gov.uk/
Tayshan Hayden-Smith (he/him)
Tayshan is a community leader, a creator of spaces, a champion for justice, and an advocate for the power of nature, art, and activism to transform lives. Born and raised in Ladbroke Grove, London, Tayshan’s identity was shaped by resilience, pride, and community. After spending his teenage years pursuing a career in academy and professional football, his path shifted in 2017 following the Grenfell Tower fire – a tragedy that struck the heart of his community. At just 21, Tayshan joined others in taking action, helping to cultivate a youth-led guerrilla gardening movement rooted in justice, hope, and the urgent call for change. A not-for-profit subsequently flowered: through Grow to Know, founded by Tayshan in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, he has continued to experiment – trying and testing different approaches that blend changemaking with placemaking to rebuild hope, reclaim identity, and inspire joy and justice. Uniquely positioned through deep community trust, cultural fluency, and youth-led momentum, Grow to Know is rooted in lived experience of inequality and resilience at the intersection of environment, culture, equity, and design.
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- Website: www.growtoknow.world
Tanisha Raffiuddin (she/her)
Tanisha is an award-winning Founder and Creative Director of Concept Culture, and a Brand & Creative Strategist based in London. Tanisha founded Concept Culture out of a desire to combine her passion for placemaking and storytelling and advises clients on strategic branding for place brands and corporate brands within the built environment. Tanisha is a trained architect with over 15 years of experience in the built environment sector. Her current storytelling practice sits at the intersection of architecture, sustainability, and communications, drawn from past experiences at AJ100 architectural firms working for clients like Blackstone and Legal & General, The Architects’ Journal, Wiley, the Sustainable Development Foundation, and the LDN Collective. Tanisha is the host of the engaging Talking Place podcast – the podcast bringing placemakers and storytellers together to talk about place. Tanisha has travelled to over 101 countries, and all 7 continents (including Antarctica) and taps into her experience interacting with people and places across the globe to enrich her storytelling practice. Tanisha is a vocal advocate of diverse women and women-led businesses in the built environment and has spent several years advocating as a steering committee member of Women in Architecture UK and National Association of Women in Construction. She is also a Creative Member of the LDN Collective; and an Executive Committee Member of the London chapter of the Lambda Alpha International (LAI) Land Economics Society.
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- Website: www.conceptculture.co
We’re incredibly proud to have such an esteemed and talented group of individuals involved in this year’s festival, and look forward to seeing what they bring to the London Festival of Architecture.
