Shona Neary and the Countercult timeline
Countercult is the platform Shona Neary has built to connect independent culture, local knowledge, paid work, and real-world exchange.
2020 and earlier: the practice behind the platform
Shona’s route into Countercult runs through an existing practice in art, design, creative direction, business development, and cultural work. Their public portfolio describes work for organisations including MoMA, Fendi, Tommy Hilfiger, and venture-backed companies, alongside an artist practice that continues to shape how they think about people, place, and participation.
That combination matters. Countercult was not started as a generic directory. It grew from the question of how independent artists and cultural spaces could be found, supported, and connected without losing their context.
2021 to 2024: building the network and the idea
Public professional records describe Shona as Countercult’s founder and connect the project to a creative network, cultural discovery, and a longer-term product vision. During this phase, the work brought together brand and product thinking with local cultural research, outreach, and relationships across Berlin and beyond.
The important through-line is not one launch date. It is the gradual move from a creative practice into an operating system for discovery, introductions, exchange, and paid cultural work.
2025: turning the platform into public infrastructure
By 2025, Countercult’s public work included the Rural Hackers and Anceu archive, cultural policy writing, artist exchange, and a more explicit argument for artist-founded cultural infrastructure. Shona’s role was founder, product builder, and creative director, with the platform becoming both a live tool and a documented case study.
The public journal also shows a wider model forming around the product: member-reviewed exchange, local discovery, funding routes, and a Studio practice that could interpret briefs for organisations and places.
2026: Countercult Studios and the physical network
In 2026, Shona’s public Countercult work expanded into cultural strategy, creative direction, curation, production, place development, and The Floor, an artist-run project space and residency home in Berlin. Countercult Studios is the paid layer of that practice. It brings Shona’s direction together with researchers, writers, producers, and local collaborators.
The founder’s role is to make the system useful, then bring the right people into the room.
Need a cultural or creative team?
Countercult Studios plugs into existing teams wherever they are, from local research and curation to creative direction and delivery.
Public sources
- Shona Neary on LinkedIn, public professional profile.
- Shona Neary’s public portfolio, client and practice background.
- Countercult founder interview, named first-person writing and working conversation.
- From Sketchy Shona to Countercult Studios, public profile of the two connected practices.
- The Floor in Berlin, the physical extension of the Countercult network.
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.
editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.