New Voices, Ancient Kin: Welcoming Sam Lee & Kai Yan Cheung
Sometimes standing beside a species doesn’t look like a banner, a press release, or a legal case.Sometimes it’s a song in the night, sometimes a glimmer of silvery light in a leaf. We’re delighted to welcome two extraordinary early adopters to I Stand Beside: musician and folk revivalist Sam Lee, and artist-metalsmith Kai Yan Cheung. […]
Sometimes standing beside a species doesn’t look like a banner, a press release, or a legal case.
Sometimes it’s a song in the night, sometimes a glimmer of silvery light in a leaf.
We’re delighted to welcome two extraordinary early adopters to I Stand Beside: musician and folk revivalist Sam Lee, and artist-metalsmith Kai Yan Cheung. Both bring a reverence for the wild that’s intimate, embodied, and quietly powerful.
Sam Lee — Standing Beside the Nightingale
Sam has spent hundreds of nights in the woods, listening.
To one bird, in particular: the nightingale.
“They’ve become a guide for much of my artistic work and a teacher in the art of listening and connecting to nature.”
Nightingales are red-listed in the UK. Their numbers are plummeting. And yet each spring, their song returns—rich, improvisational, unforgettable. Sam honours that return by creating something rare in itself: Singing with Nightingales, a series of open-air concerts where musicians and audiences gather in the forest to improvise alongside these nocturnal virtuosos.
It’s not a gimmick. It’s a way of re-learning how to listen—with patience, presence, and joy.
Thousands have joined Sam in these moonlit gatherings. Many have never heard a nightingale before. Some are changed by it forever.
To stand beside the nightingale is to show up for the wild in real time, with a quiet heart and an open ear.
Explore Singing with Nightingales
Kai Yan Cheung — Standing Beside the Snow Lotus
The Snow Lotus grows high in the mountains of Tibet and western China.
It is rare, beautiful, and precarious—much like the love Kai brings to it.
Known botanically as Saussurea involucrata, the Snow Lotus is prized in Traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine. But admiration hasn’t meant protection. Revered for centuries, it’s now at risk of vanishing from the wild due to overharvesting, habitat pressure, and climate stress.
“Is it truly love if it doesn’t include care for the conditions that allow something to live?”
Kai’s response is quiet but potent. Through silverwork, she creates small, intricate sculptures inspired by the Snow Lotus. These pieces are designed to change with time—to oxidise, dull, and be slowly polished by hand. The care required becomes its own kind of ritual.
To stand beside the Snow Lotus, in Kai’s work, is to practise intimacy without possession. To hold beauty without hoarding it. To let impermanence teach us how to care.
Sam and Kai remind us that there are many ways to stand beside.
Through voice, through metal, through memory and attention.
We’re honoured to welcome them as early adopters of I Stand Beside—a growing community of people willing to show up for more-than-human kin with creativity, humility, and love.
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If there’s a being you already stand beside—quietly or boldly—we’d love you to join us.