Clare Farrell

“Uncertainty is freedom.”

In this episode of Endless Vital Activity, David Johnston meets with Clare Farrell, co-founder of global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion.

Johnson and Farrell discuss the broken system our current democracy upholds, the parallels between COVID-19 and global warming, and how to inspire people into radical action.

Transcript

Clare Design has the possibility to change people's behaviours and affect the way people think so much more than most other professions, like people who work in design and creative professions, have a tremendous responsibility to have a long, hard look at themselves and their work and their industry and decide what they want to do about it.

David That was Clare Farrell, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, an International movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse. Welcome back to Endless Vital Activity, conversations to inspire radical action. I'm David Johnston, founder of Accept & Proceed, and I'm honoured to be speaking with Clare today. She is a lifelong activist who has devoted her creativity, her energy and her personal liberty to fight against climate collapse. As one of the founders, she's at the heart of a movement that has been successful in shifting public discourse and inspiring the possibility of transformation. The decentralised organisational structure of Extinction Rebellion is truly radical, and the way that it works means that you might not agree with everything you hear them say or that they do. But I, for one, am so thankful they exist. And here Clare shares some fascinating insights into their learnings from over the years, from how to inspire action, and the role that design and business plays in this crisis.

David 20/20 has become a year of opportunity for radical action in that many of us are thinking about our future in very different ways. Different groups are experiencing this moment in different ways, of course. Some communities have been dramatically affected and others less so. But what unites us all in this moment is it is just that that we're all experiencing it together. And personally, I truly hope we're not ever going back to the way it was. In the past, barriers that have been put in place in terms of actions which could radically slow climate change, such as halting industry, have obviously been pushed against. But during the pandemic, we've seen this become a reality. I guess I'd love to start by talking about what kind of world we want to live in going forward. And how is the year reframing your ideas about what's possible in terms of change? 

Clare OK. That's quite a big question. I think, well the world I want to live in has a real democracy, has a real sense of democratic organising at the at the highest political level, because at the moment, you know, we don't we have a representative democracy which is organised by voting people in with really strange rules. We don't have proportional representation in this country even. And so in sort of ancient times, that was a that was the aristocratic way of organising a democracy, which is basically means like you can choose between these people from the aristocracy. Not everyone has equal access and because of the way that this is set up in our country, we don't have the majority of people, I think, in the UK live with an MP they didn't vote for. So that's pretty weird, isn't it, when you think about what you think democracy means, it means like, you know, by vote. And so, I think the citizens assembly for us is like the jewel in the crown of extinction rebellion. And I think it's the least understood part of our demands, which is, you know, to get a randomly selected group of people to sit and deliberate in a held, well held space with the most up to date and brilliant expertise sort of brought to them and have everything explained to them. And then they can make decisions about where we go next. And the UK Citizens Assembly, which has been run, by the way, which has just happened. So, you know, there's an admission from lots of people in politics that this is actually a really fucking good idea because they've just run one. But that's the results going to come in July. And that assembly, I can predict. I've felt certain that the people who are going to come out of that process are going to say, oh, my God, what are we doing? This is an OK. Everything has to change. And they've done an assembly similar in France. And the citizens in that assembly came out and said, we need a radically different way to organise our economy and our entire society. That's just a bunch of ordinary, randomly selected people who got exposed to a lot of expertise in a short space of time. So, you know, ordinary people are the future for me, not politicians. So, I think the world I want to live in is governed very, very differently. And it's a much more intelligent way, I think, to get people to sit together and make decisions based on real life, real life needs and real-life experiences. And then your other question about what? What's changed this year and what's radically changed? Well, it's you know, it's interesting because the impossible has become the inevitable, as they say, with shutting things down. But we you know, we're not in a good place in this country. I mean, there's some enough reasons to be embarrassed about being a citizen in the UK before the pandemic, quite frankly. But right now, you know, the way that the government has handled this has been that delay for a week means tens of thousands more deaths. To me, what's interesting about that is that you can see the opportunity in it. You can also see the actual dire reality of our political establishment, because it's kind of like climate change, right? Like, you can see it coming. We saw China, we saw Italy. It was coming towards us. We knew what was going to happen. Boris Johnson went out with this kind of Etonian English exceptionalism, arrogance and nonsense saying, well, maybe we'll just take it on the chin and maybe we'll talk about trade deals first, then delayed shutting the economy down and putting people on lockdown. And the devastation is like, you know, massive damage to our health service and thousands and thousands of people who've unnecessarily died, directly, due to his personal negligence and his team. And climate change isn't is the same. But over decades, instead of like weeks, we didn't. We're not watching what's coming over weeks. We watch it coming over like 30, 40 years. But the refusal to act and the ignorance is to me is the same. And it's mostly because it's gonna disrupt the economy and they and they want to put that off and put it off and put it off. 

David [00:05:33] Yeah. Thinking about the parallels behind, like, the way that we've dealt with the pandemic and the much longer-term effects of climate change is something I hadn't really considered. But you're right, if we trust the government, then obviously not seeming to make the right decisions on our behalf. And what's been interesting to me is how the pandemic has really dismantled the idea that humans can solve any problem through technical prowess and innovation, as if we're all powerful. You know, the Covid crisis really puts our ego in cheque. And for me, much of this is about how we can create a functioning economy that can support the planet rather than do harm. So, you know, ecological collapse comes with economic collapse. Right. 

Clare [00:06:15] Yeah, it's guaranteed. And that's the kind of. I don't know if hubris is the word, but that's the you know, that's the situation that we're sort of swimming in right now, that the economy is the only thing that people prioritise when they're making political decisions. And it is a structural system that will, like, take us down. You know, the design of it will take us down. Interesting to sort of listen to people who study complex system theory and looking at the fact that a lot of our all of our systems that we organise ourselves within socially pretty much seem to be like a sort of win lose game theory basis. And I think that's ultimately a massive problem. And that's why I think a citizens assembly is such a genius idea, because there's nothing win lose about it. You eliminate the concept of winners and you eliminate the concept of losers. You don't hold you don't hold the election the same way. You just randomly select people and they get support through some work. So it gets rid of that. And I would say that's sort of philosophically that's a fundamental point that we should be considering. 

David [00:07:36] Let's talk about extinction, rebellion. You've achieved so much in the last few years. I mean, how long ha extinction rebellion actually existed. It's just a couple of years, right? 

Clare [00:07:46] Yeah, we launched and with a declaration of rebellion on the 18th, and then it goes to October 2013. And I guess we were probably working up to that from about May or June or something like that year. 

David [00:08:01] One of the ways you've really been so successful is through language, by creating a language around action that is clear and direct. You've talked before about how many of these conversations were happening behind closed doors, but now you believe it's critical to have this dialogue with the public, as you've just described. Can you talk a little more about this? 

Clare [00:08:21] Yeah, well, I'm one of our sections that we did was occupying Greenpeace in London, and I think we actually did that before we made our declaration, I can't quite remember. But we showed up with some loads of white flowers and vegan cakes and and we and we wrote this kind of love letter to them, which was like a sort of knowing you go and talk to one of your mates and you you put your hand on the shoulder and you're like, I really love you, but like, you've done something that's shit and I need to talk to you about it. And so it was meant to come with that with that sort of loving spirit. And of course, I get occupied and stuff like that by growing up. I can handle it totally, but it was also something that was like at the time, a lot of people, because we didn't really exist yet, said, like, if you do that, nobody will ever, ever join your group because that's outrageous. And like, who the fuck do you think you are? But actually, that was like part of a series of engagements that myself and others had with lots of people in the campaign space and in the third sector and really trying to say to people, you know, the civil disobedience works, has worked in the past, it's worth a go. And like we all know, the game's up. So, like, what are you gonna do? Let's do it. This is what we think we should do. Come and do it with us. And everywhere I've been, I've spoken to experts in that kind of space and that it's always been like an admission that like here we're just losing. We're just losing. And it's very, very likely that we're gonna totally news on climate. And that's it- don't know what else to do. Similarly, you know, with the government I know when we were, we did a previous campaign in London, which was involved, a bunch of us went on hunger strike at the Labour Party to try and get them to vote against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. And at that time. Somebody was given a telephone number of a Labour MP- a very well-known one, and they said to him, that's it. And, you know- But you do understand the science and you do know the Arctic's going to go and you do know that that means that things are going to spiral out of control and we have no idea how awful it's going to be. But it's like civilizational collapse time. And they just said, yeah, I know. So it just was like everywhere we went, everywhere I went and spoke to people about it with this kind of urgency. People were like, you know. You know, it's that bad. But like, what you want me to do is that she nothing we can do. You know, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to convince anybody else of that fact. And, you know, it's gone from head in the sand to probably a different type of head in the sand where you where you want to be is like-processing it, accepting it. And yes, so that's been part of the work, I guess it's been like trying to make sure that we use appropriate language in order to get people to, like, go into a place where they can get their heads around it. And, you know, one of our early actions was this. I made this massive banner that said climate change, we're fucked. And it was like 50 metres long. We dropped it off Westminster Bridge. And again, that was like just came from a conversation about let's do an experiment with language. Like, nobody actually says this to me, but you should say it if it's true, in my opinion,. 

David [00:12:05] For me, what Extinction Rebellion has done an incredible job on, is building a team and a community around this mission, uniting it in so many different types of people that would not ordinarily connect at all. Can you talk about that a little bit, how this community emerged and how it's affected the Rebellion? 

Clare [00:12:24] Yeah, sure, well, I've done as I said, I started working with Roger Harlem and some of the friends who've been around since the start of XR. So kind of, about a year and a half before we launched or something. And that was working on a variety of different civil disobedience campaigns and so I think there's a network that already exists, before XR was born kind of thing, which I think possibly a lot of people don't really realise that there's a lot of organising and a lot of campaigning. And I guess that you call them sort of like mini campaigns. But there was a sort of decentralised network of activists that was already built up before extinction rebellion, and XR was really born out of that. And and so there was already a network that was already a bit of a community. There was already a base camp, digital organising space. There were already lots of documents draughted up and thinking through policies and thinking about processes and thinking about how things might operate. So there was quite a big amount of groundwork and quite a decent, solid community to start it off. And then that tour, when before the declaration of rebellion, several people took the talk that we do 'Heading for extinction and what to do about it' on a sort of tour of the UK and went to various different communities to mobilise people. And I guess, begin to get local groups set up then. So we had quite a bit of groundwork done. And I guess one of the things that was very. Lucky, I think. And I don't quite know how we all kind of came together, but was the breadth of the different kind of skill sets and discipline kind of expertise that was in that space, because when we launched, we had, you know, postdoc scientists working with sociological PHD researchers working with artists, designers like my team, who I really sort of founded the art department. And we built up the look and feel. And we were kind of friends who'd already been working together a little bit on various other kind of projects, which were also kind of always aiming to better the world in different ways. And so we were very well established as the creative team that we could sort of get our heads down. And my background's in fashion so I was I've worked in fashion production and design and product development and so I'm perfectly capable of running production for an art department so that was very easy. You know we'd get the artworks and make eight hundred flags in someone's kitchen. Boom, boom, boom. So it was serendipitous basically, the people who came together with different areas of interest and different expertise and then more and more, those kind of different people seemed to sort of come into the movement and say, hey, I'm an investigative journalist. Can I help? Or, Hey, I'm a lawyer. Can I help? Well, hey, I'm a filmmaker. I wanna make films. And very, very quickly like, you know, a flood of, like, awesome people came into the came into the movement very, very quickly. And yes, I think that's something of the magic of it at the beginning was really about it was really about like a very, very multifaceted group of people coming together with a whole range of different skill sets and that kind of sense of immediate radical collaboration that went on between people with all different kinds of disciplines and in the background. 

David [00:16:21] I think a realisation I suppose I've had working in the industry is I do the creative industry, as with many of the world's ills, the first step is to admitting that we're part of the problem and we all have a job to do. How do you encourage people to think about the urgency of this crisis? Well, thinking about how they can make the greatest impact, but through a positive lens as opposed to anger and fear?

Clare [00:16:47] So I've been teaching for quite a long time on the topic of sustainability and ethics and fashion. And I've never really sort of held back on the reality of the creative industries, in particular the fashion. And I've actually found the. I mean, I wouldn't say that I present things with with a great dose of anger and fear, but I do I do present information in a, you know, with really a great deal of honesty. And recognizing, I think for a long time, the reality of like growth based economic logic being utterly incompatible with a healthy world. I've actually I've had a really good rate of success, I guess, with students who have taken my courses and then, you know, afterwards send me some in email saying, like, oh, decided to do something incredible because, you know, I've really sort of had a I've really, really had an experience, you know, reflecting on what we what we worked on on the course. And I just can't continue working the way that I was. You know, I can't continue working for the people that I was working for- I don't want to profit from those companies or those business practices. And so I've decided to go and do something in order to try and change the world or change myself or whatever and so I think it's possible for people to reach a decision that they're going to transform themselves. Just through being sort of held to look at the reality of what their work is doing to the world. You don't have the free licence anymore to be able to pretend that that's not your problem. Is that is the general kind of message. And if you do good design work, that makes the world a better place. Yet in this economic system, you're very unlikely to make any money, that's true, that's a problem. But, you know, as design has the possibility to change people's behaviours and affect the way people think. So much more than most other professions, like people who work in design and creative professions, have a tremendous responsibility to like have a long, hard look at themselves and their work and their industry and decide what they want to do about it. I think most creative people do feel compromised. They do feel like they work for arseholes, they do feel like they make rich people richer making products that they don't approve of and they do do work that makes them feel like. Well, I personally feel like my career in fashion. I just felt like I was constantly contort myself in order to be able to, like, exist and do the work for those companies and for those products and make those things. I didn't like for people I didn't like in ways that I didn't approve of. Out of materials I didn't like and I didn't approve of. Like, you know, I did that work as well but I just don't want to do it anymore. And especially if it's, you know, if we're reaching this point where it really it really could be sort of like the end of the end of people having like an easy, an easy way of life where we've got all of this sort of like I've grown up with so much excess and so much so much spare stuff everywhere, you know? And like, if we're really reaching like. A time when people's lives are going to change really, really dramatically then. I'm certainly not interested in being clinging on to. Those things, until they get out of business, feel like, you know, dead soil and water shortages in disaster vacation. 

David [00:20:48] It's an interesting point, isn't it? And I think that, you know, even though you said since 2018, obviously that mindset has changed around climate change. I do still feel there is some cynicism, but extinction rebellion has really engaged people in exciting ways. What have you learnt about how best to inspire radical action and how can we use our position to reshape and reimagine our future? 

Clare [00:21:11] Good question. Well, I think one of the things I've learnt about getting people to be inspired into radical action is that you need to do it in real life and you know... In real life, I could I guess... I could stretch that to say, like talking on the phone and talking on Zoom. But you certainly don't mobilise people to do properly radical stuff by doing it through Facebook or doing it through Twitter, that's how you sort of show what you're doing and maybe get people capture people who are interested but if you want people to commit to do really intense things like go out and get arrested, then that's not digital mobilisation strategy, in my opinion. That's like face to face talk to people, it's that connection, it’s about human connection, and it's about people building up teams where they trust each other enough to go, okay, we'll go out and break the law together. Because most people don't want to break the law, basically, and they don't want to do disruptive action because it's actually like quite unpleasant to like, you know, ruin people's day. So, you know, there's something. Yeah. There's something that I've definitely had, like, proven to me over the last couple of years that, like, this is about human connection, people working together. I also think that there's a huge amount of work to be done on furthering the sort of our own education and the education of people who come into the movement about non-violence, strategies of non-violence. And what that really means and how proactive non-violence is about how kind of how much courage it takes to do non-violence. Because you basically put yourself at big risk and sort of tell everybody that you're not going to you're not gonna do anything to prevent that risk, you're just going to put yourself in harm's way and suffer the consequences, be that arrest, be that through hunger strike or be that putting yourself in a in a dangerous position. People who climb buildings, people who do all those kinds of things. There's plenty of kind of there's plenty of stuff there that's like actually quite frightening to do,  it's very powerful to show the force of non-violence and I think the you know, when in October when we had maybe it was April, but we had like hundreds and hundreds of arrests. I remember the police made a statement that said, you know, we've never arrested this many people consecutively in London before and had no officer injuries to align with it. So, they had days and days and days of like clogged police stations, probably over 600 arrests at that point. And none of them, none of their officers had been her. And I think that. You know, that shows that the sort of non-violent discipline in a way which I think is quite powerful in terms of kind of getting to speak to people in a in a very embodied and physical way about. About the nature of non-violence and about striving for that which is really not always easy all the time. So in terms of what people can do and especially what people and businesses can do, I mean, I would say that like. Quit your job and join the rebellion. But and of course, everyone can't do that and businesses can't bend themselves to do all the things that I would say people should demand of themselves, like, you know, to talk about not growing, to talk to shareholders or whoever's needs to be addressed about like doing not growth. Like if a company works and it sustains a certain number of employees and people are generally happy with that and it works. Okay. Just decide not to grow. Stop it. Stop the growth paradigm and just have a sustainable business that runs at a certain size. 

David [00:25:54] Yeah. Great advice, Clare. I am heartened by some of it because we did give everyone the day off for both of the uprisings last year. And I've been quite affected by some of the work that B- Corporation do in terms of, you know, really making businesses hold a mirror up to themselves and understand how they operate. Well, some of your words actually reminded me of another quote I heard from Colin Mayer at a B-Corp event, he's a professor of economics at the University of Oxford. And he said, we have the wrong model, the rules of business must change, businesses are trustees of the people and the communities they serve and the rules of business about ownership must change to reflect this responsibility. And in fact, he went further in his talk saying that it had to be a legal requirement rather than the perpetual growth of all businesses, it really is, are you serving the communities that you're there to that you exist for? You know, it feels like with so many of the world's problems that we've been given to solve, it requires us to be more comfortable with uncertainty and somehow integrating creativity with uncertainty to inform our actions and agency in this moment. It could also help us to create some resilience of the future. If we're prepared to really kind of welcome that uncertainty. So how do you manage uncertainty in the work that you're doing? 

[00:27:11] It's interesting you say about uncertainty, because something in one of our talks would describe it like uncertainty is freedom. And how the  market wants guarantees and it wants certainty. So it's always going to seek to operate in that way. That's really that's really interesting. I mean, I think that the thing that we've worked with around looking at uncertainty in our work is partly the recognition that we're in really a very huge amount of risk. And if you're in high risk, you take high risk decisions and sometimes you make a decision because you're making high risk decisions and you just have to call them sometimes. So, you know. As an example, I'd use this like home. Before the April rebellion, we were trying to talk about whether we should go out and take two sites one day, get them set up, and then two days later. So two more, OR whether we should go out and do like four, well, five, actually, all on the same day. That was a really difficult decision, partly because we have very little data about like who was going to show up. We didn't really we didn't really have a handle on our own capacity. And so but we knew we had to sort of make the biggest possible impact. And in the end, we decided to just like, fuck it, let's do five at one, go and see what happens. And even if you take five and you lose three, you've still made a massive impact. And then everyone can file over to the two that we do have. I mean, I honestly didn't think that April was gonna work the way that it did...when we set up the plans. So I was completely in awe of what of what occurred at that time. And I think we're stronger in a proactive place than we are in a reactive place. And I guess that's also somewhat of a difference between extinction rebellion and quite a lot of other protests because we've been able to to pick this up and say, let's do this now. And work towards a date that we set a night, quite a lot of other political kind of protests that occur at a certain point, often because of a trigger event, which means like that, you don't have a big lead up to planet and things have to come together extremely quickly. So it's a great but it's a great sort of like advantage to have if you can sort of set a date and build to it. 

David [00:30:00] I'm just curious, where does your life force come from? What drives you? 

Clare [00:30:06] Well, I don't. It's a really good question. I don't I don't really know. I think I think some people believe that a lot of activists are quite traumatised people. And then and, you know, personally, I did have quite a sort of difficult younger life and. I do recognise how that's sort of like gave me something when you're suffering great sort of loss and trauma as a child, this is kind of. I don't know. I felt like to me, like it's always done me quite a lot of good. Like I can see the good it did me. It's heartbreaking but like...and I guess. that's one thing that I think is makes me relatively able to be emotionally resilient to, like, stare this shit in the face and not and not feel sort of defeated by it. But I know about the rest of it, really, I mean, it feels to me like cutting myself loose from, as I described, that sort of like feeling contorted within trying to like fit into the industry or into the market and use my creative work in order to sort of further the aims of a system that I didn't agree with. I guess there's something about being cut loose from that. And, you know, I recently sort of left my studio that I used to have so I I don't have a space where I can go and make anything anymore and that's really sad and I've cried a lot about that. But at the same time, you know, it's a it's being liberated as well. And so I guess I feel like I'm sort of following my my heart in my work in that way, and I've been I've been very lucky that, like, I'm able to do some teaching on the side and you know, I'm not I'm not particularly sort of like wealthy or privileged person, but I am able to teach in a university and that pays OK. And I live cheap in a shared house, I've made my life simple and cheap as much as I can so that I have need for as little money as possible. And all of that stuff makes me sort of feel quite light, I guess, in general. And also there's something about doing this work, which is like the most interesting thing that I could be doing. And I've learnt more in the last sort of, you know, three years or so, and then I think I ever have any other point in my life. And so this is definitely and I've sort of gone digging deep, trying to work out why I actually did decide to do all this crazy stuff, which I did feel crazy beginning when I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go and break the law four times in a week and break my bail terms and probably get put on remand. And we're just going to do that as an experiment. And this five of us people were like, what the fuck are you doing? And it's and it was really scary. But it was also like just so interesting and and and seeing lik this, you know, I feel like I've got nothing to lose. Really? You know, because we all can lose everything at this point the way we're headed. So there's nothing to lose, is there, in sort of going out and seeing how things work and seeing if you do this over here, does it change things if you poke the system over there? What happens to go and do that this way? What happens then? So there's something about the sort of iterative and experimental nature of where this project came from which which has just been like and, you know, it's been a real joy and a real privilege to be part of that experience as a person, I think because we've been so slightly addicted to learning things in a way. 

David [00:34:29] Your path and your you your words are very inspiring. I must say, Claire, I'm kind of in awe of your journey. And it is inspiring and energising, I think, to hear you talk. I just wanted to touch on the rebellion logo as this is the extinction logo and it doesn't belong to you. It's protected for non-commercial use only as we found out when we've done things like, you know, putting on the rebel art auction that we've run here and and kind of tried to raise funds through the Hackney half for extinction rebellion. And this idea that it's not owned by you, it's been a guiding principle for the work you're doing in terms of how you think about value, trust and exchange rate. 

Clare [00:35:08] Yeah. Yeah, it's been a really interesting and quite great problem to have. When we first set out a lot, people obviously would go, let's make let's make T-shirts. And because we had such a strong kind of like identity and set of design assets, it seemed like to some people it seemed like a no brainer. And to me, it seemed like a no brainer that like the point at which you tried to sell a T-shirt to save the planet, like your your'e fucking up like it doesn't work. It's not a good idea. There's enough shit in the world already. We cannot make T-shirts in order to try and do this work. It’s stupid. So I really sort of like dug my heels in and at the beginning when we were small that felt quite mean, basically. So I was sort of saying, no, you can't do that. And then we we managed to expand the block printing that the art department do into using like C.A.C. and using 3D printers and all different kinds of methods to make wooden and other material kind of printing blocks that then can make up packs that go out and people make their own merchandise on things that they already own and actually sit us not owning the symbol, which is the most desirable thing that you want to print on a T-shirt, if you want to print it on a bit of merch or whatever has been a great thing for me to be able to be backed up by another artist who says, no, you can't do that. So and I also quite like the fact that it's you know, it's a it's a design. That symbol is a design that, like predates us and also has to outlive us as well. And we have to like it will never not be associated with XR. But, you know, Extinction Rebellion isn't really designed to be Friends of the Earth or any of the other sort of like Green NGOs that turn into an institution that lasts a long time, it's like it's an experiment. And if it's successful, it won't last very long at all. And I would hope that that could potentially be the case. 

David [00:37:32] Many of our listeners who are in the design community and you've spoken before about how vital design is in terms of its impact on the world and its ability to shape minds and behaviours. What would your rallying cry to the design community be in this moment? 

Clare [00:37:53] My rallying cry would be to find people that are trying to make change in the world and support them with good design for free. Offer your services to the youth movements, to Black Lives Matter, to anybody who's campaigning on like injustice, social inequality, climate change. You know. Just offer to help people communicate. If you're a visual, if you're a graphic designer or communicator, help people communicate things that need communicating. And be like tough on yourself in your own industry. Ask people really shitty questions about why you're doing the work you're doing and why and why things look the way they are. And what could be done to to open up those conversations in a way which helps people to have them in a healthy way about how to how to change the direction that we're going, but like, yeah. Most importantly, join movements and support them. And if you were able to get out on the streets. 

David [00:39:07] Thank you, Clare. Thank you so much for all or you're doing. And that's been a fascinating conversation. Really appreciate it. 

Clare Thanks for having me. 

David The issues around climate crisis and our environment can be daunting. So much so that we often look away. But on the first Extinction Rebellion uprising that I attended in April 2019 here in London, an event that I will never forget: On that Monday morning, climbing the stairs from the underground in Oxford Circus with my five year old son John, to find hundreds of people dancing to tribal drumbeats around a massive pink boat, the area reclaimed and completely locked down. Well, that was the first moment in my life that with regard to climate change, I felt, come on, humans, we've got this. Thanks for listening to our conversation today. I truly hope that you found this episode as powerful as I do. I now join my voice to Extinction Rebellions and asked that we don't look away, but that we act now. Endless Vital Activity is brought to you by Accept & Proceed. Remember, creativity can reimagine.