Welcoming Three New Early Adopters Standing Beside the Wild
We’re delighted to announce and celebrate three remarkable new early adopters of I Stand Beside: artist-activists and environmentalists, Kim Kaos, Neville Rigby, and Lady Wye. Each brings fierce love, creative courage, and deep-rooted advocacy for the beings they’ve chosen to stand beside—polar bear, Loch Ness, and the River Wye. 🐾 Kim Kaos — Standing Beside […]
We’re delighted to announce and celebrate three remarkable new early adopters of I Stand Beside: artist-activists and environmentalists, Kim Kaos, Neville Rigby, and Lady Wye. Each brings fierce love, creative courage, and deep-rooted advocacy for the beings they’ve chosen to stand beside—polar bear, Loch Ness, and the River Wye.
🐾 Kim Kaos — Standing Beside the Polar Bear
Performer, puppeteer, and nature rights advocate Kim Kaos brings the majestic presence of the polar bear into places it could never go—festivals, ceremonies, airports, council chambers and classrooms.
To Kim, polar bears are not just icons of climate collapse; they are complex, intelligent, awe-inspiring marine mammals surviving in one of Earth’s harshest landscapes. Through life-sized puppetry and arresting performance, Kim invites people into connection, not through despair, but wonder.
“Admitting you love something is powerful. Love leads to protection. Protection to responsibility. That’s stronger than guilt.”
By standing beside the polar bear, Kim holds up a mirror: to their fragility, strength, and our own capacity for transformation.
Learn more about Kim’s work.
🌊 Neville Rigby — Standing Beside Loch Ness and Her Waters
Writer and environmental campaigner Neville Rigby speaks for the lochs, the bogs, and the quiet beings of the deep.
For Neville, Loch Ness is no mythic symbol. It’s a living system—home to salmon, eels, trout, insects, birds, and the invisible life of peatlands. And it is under threat. Massive pumped storage hydro schemes could soon turn this ancient glacial loch into a daily-manipulated reservoir, endangering its biodiversity and wildness.
“Loch Ness is an entity, but also a being—host to myriad other beings. I stand beside them all.”
By standing beside Loch Ness, Neville honours the whole hydrological web, seen and unseen, that makes life in the Highlands possible.
Learn more about the campaign to save Loch Ness
💧 Lady Wye — Standing Beside the River Wye
Born of deep love and fierce protection, Lady Wye is the living embodiment of a river in trouble—and a people rising to defend it.
During lockdown, artist and activist Vey (aka Lady Wye) watched her beloved river degrade before her eyes: Water Crowfoot gone, riverbed slimed with algae, and phosphate pollution rising from intensive chicken farming in the catchment.
Through street theatre, puppet processions, ritual, protest, and humour, Lady Wye channels the river’s voice with clarity and grace.
“She is family. 70% of what makes-up my body is what flows down her valley.”
Alongside the 12-foot Goddess of the Wye, Lady Wye honours water protectors, confronts polluters, and invites the public into intimate relationship with their river.
Follow Lady Wye on Instagram
These early adopters remind us that standing beside a species or ecosystem isn’t about representation alone—it’s about relationship, accountability, and love. Through story, action, and art, they are helping to shape the future of I Stand Beside.
Would you like to stand beside a species too?
We’re inviting artists, activists, educators, scientists, poets, performers—and anyone with a deep love for the living world—to join us as early adopters. Whether you channel your species through creative work, quiet advocacy, or public presence, you are welcome here.
Together, we’re building a movement rooted in connection, imagination, and fierce care.
Welcome, Kim, Neville, and Lady Wye. We’re honoured to walk beside you.