Bridget Nicholls

Bridget Nicholls is Founder and CEO of Pestival, an international festival dedicated to ‘Insects at the heart of human life'.

The first festival at the Southbank Centre, London attracted over 200,000 people and a global audience of 10 million. Pestival won the Observer Ethical Award for Conservation 2010. She is currently creating a touring Pestival experience funded by the Wellcome Trust for realization in 2017.

She is an authority on cultural entomology. A naturalist with a sense of humour, she has worked with top comedians such as Alistair McGowan, Sally Phillips, Russell Brand and Simon Munnery. She has written for the Hedonists Guide to the Art World alongside Rankin and Will Smith.

She conceived Who’s the Pest? with the Wellcome Collection and NOMA’s research lab. She created, directed and produced the Axolotl Odyssey musical for the Cultural Olympiad 2012. Her blueprint for the Selfridges Projects Oceans Festival combined entertainment and luxury goods for conservation education.

Bridget held the first International Zoo Art Fellowship of the Zoological Society of London. She was a Woman to Watch – Cultural Leadership Programme 2010, has spoken at TED Salon London and was named CRZ Cultural Engineer by Honda (for outstanding sustainable and ecological entrepreneurship).

She has worked for BBC2, The Discovery Channel, The Ecologist and BBC World Service and appeared regularly on BBC Radio live debates with the likes of David Attenborough.

As an MC Bridget recently curated three live science/art debates during Frieze Art Fair and spoke at the Dutch Design Festival about bats and sustainable cities.

Born on an animal sanctuary, Bridget enjoyed feeding Bengal eagle owls, finding peacocks in her bed and untangling frog-mating pile-ups. She is a descendant of Captain Kidd. The comedian Stewart Lee described her as “My old friend Bridget Nicholls, the eco-activist with pirate blood”.