Lauren Hammersley & Jim Kakes

Lauren Hammersley is a 24-year-old animator and artist from a small town in Suffolk, currently based in London. She graduated from the University for the Creative Arts in 2021 with a first in animation where her film ‘TWITCH’ was made. ‘TWITCH’ has now been featured in many festivals around the world including the Brighton International Animation Festival and recently nominated for best super short film at the Student World Impact Film Festival. As well as talking about her film on stage at Brighton, she’s recently been invited to be interviewed for a podcast discussing her filmmaking process. After graduating from the UCA, she completed her first out-of-university project, ‘A Beautiful Morning’, which has also been selected for a variety of festivals as well as being awarded best animation in seven festivals. Lauren loves to experiment and play with different materials and techniques as well as her more simpler 2D animation approach to create her films.

Jim Kakes (a.k.a. Dimitrios Kakes), born and raised in Athens, Greece is a musician, songwriter, composer and versatile producer. Currently residing in London, he regularly releases new music, either as a solo artist/producer or through collaboration with other artists. With a strong academic background, his training includes a BA in Classical Harmony and an MA in Songwriting, the latter completed at the University of East London. His earlier research focuses on topics such as “Composing music in the box”, “The impact of contrasting genres and cross-cultural musical styles in songwriting” and “Inspiration and Evolution: Rap Into Ethnic Music”. He has written over a staggering 100 songs, and performed more than 100 shows across Europe including 10 cities and 30 countries.