Taking on Big Tobacco, multispecies collaboration and transforming overwhelm
A monthly digest of inspiring projects, useful resources and opportunities to create systemic change.
Hello! For anyone new here, this is my monthly digest. Each month I look out for interesting things to share with you from my travels and conversations with clients and collaborators. We’re talking culture-shifting campaigns, breakthrough technologies, impactful learning resources, funding opportunities, exciting jobs…
These digests provide you with a monthly dose of inspiration and support for all the brilliant work you do. They’ll also encourage you to look after yourself and everything you need to thrive whilst you do it. I hope you find something here to challenge your thinking, lift your soul or nudge you into action.
A couple of weeks ago I took myself on an artist date, à la Julia Cameron, to The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. In the bookshop, I spotted Let’s Become Fungal! by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, a beautiful book which takes its inspiration from the world of art and mycology and shares innovative practices from Latin America and the Caribbean that are rooted in multispecies collaboration, symbiosis, alliances, non-monetary resource exchange, decentralisation, bottom-up methods and mutual dependency—all in line with the behavior of the mycelium. Find out more about the project, which shares a methodology and a way of thinking not just through the book but in workshops and reading groups too, here.
Steffi Bednarek is a trained and accredited trauma therapist, Gestalt therapist and IFS therapist. She applies her training to the collective culture and guides change makers to include psychologically informed perspectives into their approaches. She is the editor of the recently published book ‘Climate, Psychology & Change’ and Founder of the Centre for Climate, Psychology & Change. Join me for her six-part online workshop ‘Internal Family Systems for Social Transformation’ where Steffi will teach us how to use the IFS model to make invisible systemic dynamics visible, and explore hidden conflicts between the drivers of our plans for change.
Led By Donkeys has been called an ‘accountability project’ and a ‘satirical artists’ collective’. Their Instagram profile simply reads: ‘art, activism and accountability’. Taking on everything from the PPE scandal in the UK, to the death of children in Gaza, to former British PM Liz Truss’ pro-Trump speaking tour (a personal favourite), their creative stunts never fail to cut through media noise. Their recent stunt ‘How Musk broke Twitter and helped elect Trump’, a film projected onto Tesla European HQ in Amsterdam, opens with the line “this is the story of how the world’s richest person, the owner of Tesla and X bought the global town square, then corrupted it before using his immense wealth to help elect a convicted felon.” All of their work is publicly funded. You can find out more and make a donation here.
FrameWorks partners with advocates, researchers, storytellers, and coalitions to reframe social issues. Through rigorous research on culture, cognition, and communications, they help build framing and narrative strategies that deepen understanding of complex problems and catalyse action to make the world more just. For the last four years, they’ve been tracking how American thinking is changing in light of the social, economic and political turmoil of 2020 and beyond. In their latest update they provide an overview of seven key findings about the state of American culture in 2024.
ICYMI, after the US election I wrote ‘Don’t abandon the part of you that cares’. In the piece I share some common ways in which we abandon our fear, sadness and love for the world, and I explain why staying connected to this part of ourselves is the most essential thing we can do for our well-being and the impact of our change-making work. When we reconnect with the part of us that cares, we create a powerful bridge between our inner world and the change we seek in the world around us. Instead of pushing through, burying or projecting our pain, we can transform it. When we engage with our caring part compassionately, our pain becomes a source of growth, inspiration, creativity and action. The piece finishes with an exercise you can use to support this deeper processing.
New Zealand’s parliament was brought to a standstill by MPs performing a Maori haka in response to a bill aiming to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with Maori people. Led by Opposition party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the haka coincided with a a hīkoi, a peaceful protest march, involving thousands of people. Videos of the haka went viral, bringing global attention to indigenous rights. Watch and learn more about the bill here.
Native American ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote bestselling ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, a beautiful book on indigenous wisdom, plants and our relationship with the living world. She has addressed the United Nations and been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She also founded the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, where she continues to educate people of all ages about different ways to see and live in the world. In her next book, The Serviceberry, she takes on capitalism and uses the serviceberry, a wild berry also known as a juneberry or sugarplum, to explore the idea of the gift economy, one structured around interconnectedness and reciprocity, as an alternative to the market economy. Find out more in this interview with the author.
Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and journalist and leadership coach Jo Confino work together at Plum Village, a global community of mindfulness practice centres offering retreats and teachings on engaged Buddhism and the art of mindful living, founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. They host a wonderful podcast called ‘The Way Out Is In’ which aims to help us transcend our fear and anger so that we can be more engaged in the world in a way that develops love and compassion. Last month they launched their new book, ‘Being With Busyness, Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout’ which provides guidance on how to navigate burnout, relieve stress and reconnect with your inner joy with mindfulness and compassion.
The School for Moral Ambition is on a mission to help as many people as possible take the step towards a job with a positive impact. They believe in the power of small groups of driven individuals to bring about big changes in the world. With their fellowships, they bring together talented, ambitious people to tackle the most urgent problems of our time. I loved reading this story about their fellow Joachim Verheyen taking on Big Tobacco in Moldova, just two months after leaving his corporate job and mere weeks into his Tobacco Control Fellowship at The School. Watch a video of Joachim’s powerful testimony in a public hearing in front of the Moldovan parliament here.
The New Happy was founded in 2018 by Stephanie Harrison with the mission of sharing a new, science-backed philosophy of happiness. Based on hundreds of academic studies and original research, their philosophy aims to help us understand why happiness has remained out of reach. Their artwork, newsletter, videos, podcast, and resources reach millions of people around the world every month. Stephanie’s book, ‘New Happy’, was released by Penguin Random House this year and was an instant international bestseller. I read their newsletter nearly every day and loved this recent one on ‘How to cope with difficult feelings’.
Larger Us is a community of change-makers who share the aim of bridging divides rather than deepening them, who want to transform relationships rather than defeat enemies, and who recognise that achieving these things is about psychology as much as politics. Founder and Executive Director
writes , “about how we can survive and thrive during the liminal times we’re living through, and unlock a breakthrough rather than breakdown future.” I found his piece ‘What do we do now?’ on the US election really helpful.Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U, and co-author of Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economies, is an action researcher who co-creates innovations in learning and leadership that he delivers through classes and programs at MIT, MITx u-lab, the Presencing Institute, the u-school for Transformation, and through interventions with institutions in business, government and civil society around the world. His piece ‘An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech’ shares seven observations on 2024 and, from a viewpoint of awareness-based systems change, encourages us to examine not only social systems above ground, but also the deeper conditions of “social soil” to develop the profound changes that our current polycrisis is calling for.
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