We Are Resilience with Sophie Kirtley

When science meets storytelling, something magical happens.

Climate science can often feel abstract, complex, or inaccessible. But when those same ideas are translated through stories and art, they become personal and relatable. From a picture book to a film, creative storytelling evokes emotion — a universal language that connects people of all ages and backgrounds.

In this episode, Phil sits down with award-winning children’s author and poet Sophie Kirtley to discuss her recent collaboration with JBA and how creativity and the arts can be a powerful tool for engaging people with climate resilience.

Thank you for listening to this episode. 

For any comments, questions or insights please contact phil.emonson@jbaconsulting.com.

Visit our website jbaconsulting.com
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JBA Consulting. I'm Phil Eminson, and in this podcast series, we unpick some of the complexities, the challenges, and the opportunities on the topic of climate resilience with some inspirational thought leaders. Now, as many of you will know, at JBA we're working hard to bring clarity to the term resilience and to make our work more relatable across society. At JBA, we use science to explain things, to design assets and to calculate risks. And we rely on rational arguments and seek to point to scientific truths. But we know that facts and models and data alone don't always connect. And whilst our science speaks to reason, we understand that art can speak to feeling. Artists communicate through emotion, response, and feeling, helping to make those complex issues more relatable. So that's why we're working with artists, curious, innovative voices who, like us, search for truth. Their storytelling helps ripple our message outwards, creating new ways for people to see themselves in the climate conversation. We've worked now with a number of artists. It's a different approach, but we are different. As they say, you have to throw a stone to get the pool to ripple. And so I'm delighted to say that my guest today is poet and children's author Sophie Kirby, who's worked with us to create a poem, a piece that articulates our visions and ambitions. Sophie, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on. And perhaps you could start by introducing yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Thank you so much for having me, Phil. It's great to be part of it. So, as you said, I am a children's author and a poet. I've always been a writer, and the kinds of things that I write about are very much the kinds of things that JBA's interested in too: the natural world, us as humans, and how we work together within the natural world. So my writing, I've written novels. I've got three children's books and soon to be four, all published with Bloomsbury. So that involved quite a lot of thinking about how our world used to be versus how it is now. So all of the themes and issues in my writing very much resonate with the things that JBA are interested in, which is why I was so excited to do this poem.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah, well, it's a it's been a really super and fascinating collaboration from us, and I think we'll we've got lots to unpick. Um, but I think I'd like to start first by playing uh an audio of the poem itself. It's called We Are Resilience.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

We Are Resilience, written and read by Sophie Kurtley. We are the trees on the windswept hill, branches bent back but standing still. This is our place. We are our weather. Lean into this storm, for we're stronger together. We are the salmon leaping upstream, flinging ourselves at impossible dreams. We adapt, we respond to the waves, to the waters. Tomorrow will always be calling us onwards. We are the swifts and we'll find our way. Through sun and rain, through night and day. We'll fly as a flock, relentless returning, determined and restless and endlessly learning. We are the villages high on the cliffs, bracing ourselves for a thousand what-ifs. Together we'll stand, resourceful and brave, and we'll learn to absorb the force of these waves. We are the shops at the foot of the hill. We face the full river's overspill, but we'll not be defeated, although we are scared. We'll ready ourselves and we'll be prepared. We are the bridges, sluices and pumps. We are the river walls, lock gates and sumps. We're built to withstand, to channel the flow, and even to change where our future may go. We are the flood and we are the drought. We're made of hope and we are made of doubt. We are the wonder and we are discovery. We are what's broken and we are recovery.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Ah, that's that's beautiful. That's that's absolutely super. And thank you, Sophie, for creating such a lovely Peace Force. There's there's there's so much now to to discuss um and unpick. Um, but I think the place I'd like to start then, Sophie, is with the process because you're not from the climate resilience world, uh a consultancy, you you didn't really know a lot about JBA, I would imagine, before um this collaboration, this partnership started. So, how did you go from knowing really very little about our approach to climate resilience to creating the poem?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

It was such an interesting process. I always love a challenge in my writing, and I quite like a framework as well. It's quite interesting creatively just to have a form of limitation to sort of channel things along. So for me, the research was um the very first sort of point of call, I guess, in in the process of writing the poem. Um, so steered by yourself and um other colleagues at JBA, I was able to really sort of do a bit of a deep dive into what JBA was, what you stood for, what climate resilience was within your context and more broadly. I read about different projects and I just got myself a bit more embedded in what was actually going on and started to question not only what was needed within this poem and what its remit was, but the whole sort of broader climate resilience context. And I learnt a lot. I love learning and um I like being in new, unfamiliar territory. And once I felt that I was sort of solid enough with the material, then I began to play with words on the page. And um I think that my own interests were very helpful because I was able to think about how landscapes and how places um really feed into and inform the whole climate resilience frame. And um that I found that really interesting as well. So the two sort of got wedded together, I guess, how I write, and then how you guys work.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's that's really interesting. And and and then um as you say, uh that that research phase was I think quite um quite important for you. Um I I know we sort of provided you with a number of ingredients, I think we called them at the time, just to help with that that sort of initial framing. Um the imagery is is quite strong through each verse, um, as we've heard. Um how did you um how did you identify and select that imagery, but also the the focus of each verse, the first one being trees on the on the hill, the second one is sort of the salmon, the fish in the in the in in the waves. Uh we one of them is about villages high on a cliff. Um, we've got the shops at the foot of the hill. So, how did you identify and select from the whole plethora of different projects and and themes that you were researching with us? How did you then um sort of settle on on particular uh images and themes?

SPEAKER_01 8:42

I guess I sort of played around with just that central notion of resilience. And the first image that popped into my head was just those amazing trees that you see in isolated spots. And I'm always I always marvel at trees and how much older than us they are, and um, I know that there was a tree of the year that was crowned recently in Glasgow and has outlived its its humans by so many, many years. Um, and so for me, the tree as a symbol of resilience just immediately sprung to mind, and particularly those ones that are all um sort of leaning because they've been blown that way. I'm leaning myself as I'm speaking, as they've been blown that way um for so so long. Um, but the fact I love things that can grow in infertile or unexpected places, I find that really fascinating and powerful. So that image came very naturally. There are things that I've marvelled at, Phil. You know, the things that I've always marvelled at. You know, we grew up near a salmon leap. Um, that was the name of the spot where we used to go for walks and we used to watch the salmon leaping up the river. So a lot of these images are things that I've known and seen since always, but they were almost sort of called to the front of my mind through the task, I guess, of writing the poem. So I was thinking, resilience, right? Oh, yeah. Well, I immediately those salmon from like my own childhood like popped into my head because that again, it's about strength, it's about persistence, it's almost about going against the grain in a sense. So all of the different images um came from my own mind, but at the same time, I was quite sort of concretely seeking images that allied themselves with the principles of JBA and with the themes that you, through your own processes within JBA, have come up with to kind of guide your own work. So I took those and then sort of stepped forward with them to guide mine, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

And I think that for me, that's part of the beauty of the piece is that actually um irrespective of your your involvement in climate resilience consultancy, um, actually the images are things that everybody can relate to. We've all seen those isolated trees on the tops of hills. You know, we can all picture um, you know, swifts in the in in in the summer breeze. Um we can all picture you know villages and and and houses on the top of cliffs, you know, vulnerable to the elements. Um talk to me about the title, Sophie. Uh We Are Resilience. Um how did you settle on that?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, well, it just sort of came to me I was particularly interested in finding a way to make the piece not feel um, I don't know, like a propaganda piece in a way. You know, I I wanted it very much to be um tackling the themes and the ideas rather than, you know, it's not it's not advertising or you know, that kind of thing. And um so I just tried to think as well about the relationship between the the writer and the reader and the relationship between the communities that um you JBA are working within and then your organization itself. And it just struck me that to use the pronoun we was just a really simple way to kind of bring all of that together because it brings the reader alongside the writer and it brings the community alongside the organization, it's just a very embracing kind of pronoun. So I liked the fact that it makes everybody who's involved in the poem as active as one another, so you're active in reading it, you're a participant, it's we are resilience, and it also gives the idea that resilience isn't something outside of um human control, whether that be a single solitary human or humanity as a group. So I just I liked the enormity and the smallness of it as a title.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

And and and again, that sings um to the approach that we take to climate resilience in JBA, which is that you know, if we are to achieve a whole society resilience, then we need to have active communities, we need participation, it needs to be inclusive, we need social equity. Um, so I think it's a fantastic title that you settled on. Um now in the in the the sort of conversations that we've had along the way, Sophie, you you're telling me that your your pieces don't always have a natural rhyme but but or or or a rhythm. But there there is there is that in in this piece. Um was that deliberate this time?

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, I mean I think I I very much write with my ears as well as with my pen or my laptop or my eyes. I very much hear, even if I'm writing prose, I'll hear how something sounds out loud when I'm writing it. I've got a real fondness for words, just the sounds of language as well. So um I'm always thinking subconsciously about rhythm and rhyme, but just not necessarily conscious of it. And as I was writing this poem, it the first stanza came very naturally and the rhyme within it just sort of fell out. It just happened, and I thought, oh, this has to be a poem that rhymes in a very sort of end rhyme sense, and it has a rhythm in a very um sort of it gives it momentum. And I think that it's because I guess it's a you know, it's not a it's not a sort of poem to be tucked away in a little journal for poets. Um you know, it's very much a sort of public poem that I want to be, and that we want to be, that you want to be accessible and um inclusive was the word you used a moment ago. And I think that that fits into the choice for it to to rhyme as well and to have a very much uh a sort of a momentum-building rhythm, um, because that's sort of the purpose of the piece. It's about kind of gathering and galvanizing people together, and I think rhyme does that, it's why we remember things that rhyme and we remember rhymes that we've learned even in our childhood. It's something that sticks and that um can yeah, can galvanize and be inclusive too and accessible.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Yeah, yeah. Um let's let's take that thought then and and and sort of extend the conversation on a little bit. I'm I'm interested in in form. So as the last in the last couple of years, um as as I mentioned in the preamble, we've we've worked with a number of artists in JBA. We worked with a dramatist and a performer, we commissioned a documentary photographer, and uh also worked with an an illustrator, an artist as well. So in terms of poetry and and written form then, um what is it in particular about that medium that's helpful, Sophie, when it comes to climate communication, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Well, it's interesting because there's so many different written forms, I guess. And and as an aside, I love the the work that you've done with the other artists and the other collaborations, which I looked at when I was researching JPA as well, and all the different ways of interpreting what it is that you're doing. I think each one gives a different dimension, but thinking specifically about writing and even more specifically about poetry as a form, I think poetry is something that we turn to in the sort of big moments of life. Like, you know, people will have a poem read at their wedding, and the same people might never go to a bookshop and pick up a book of poetry, but you want one at your wedding, or you hope to have a really good one at your funeral. You know, these are the things that, you know, that's when people want poems, but they also want them in the sort of small idle moments of their lives, like um the poems on the underground in London, or you know, just sometimes even within advertising and stuff, you might see a poem being used, or perhaps even in songs, you know, there's not a great difference between song lyrics and lyrics, lyrical poetry. So I think with the written word, it's got a it's got a position already within our hearts and minds. We know that we need words and stories and poems. They're so sort of intrinsic and embedded anyway. And so I just think it's a great way with a poem or with any form of writing, the message is perhaps more clear than with some other pieces that might require more interpretation. I'm saying that hesitantly because I don't even know if I believe what I just said. Um, but I think maybe it's they're more the meaning of the written word is perhaps more obvious or less open to interpretation than some other art forms. But at the same time, I still think there's so much space within that for it to be taken in lots of different ways and to be taken upon by different readers in different ways as well. So yeah, I I just um it's it's my it's my form, so I love it. But um, but why it's uh why it's used as a humongous um or useful as a humongous thing to think about.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, yeah. Well one one of the um sort of objectives for us when we set out on this on this project was you know, we wanted something that would be relatable, and one of the advantages for us of working with you as a children's author, we knew that you already and previously inherently with your work, um make your pieces relatable.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

And so we knew that that would be a real strength that would come through. And I I think that's something that we can see in um you know, in the poem. And I've I've I've got um a seven-year-old boy, I've not shown him the poem yet, but but we will. And but but I know that he will have his own interpretation of it, you know. And I think that is actually the beauty of it. And and we we have spoken, haven't we, about um some of the the opportunities now to um to promote the poem, to share the poem, to distribute it. And um, you know, what what what are the some of the the sort of opportunities do you think that that that are there now in terms of um uh extending that communication piece with with the with the poem um and and taking that to different audiences?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Well it's interesting just going back to what you said about writing for children, because that is will always be what I do, and um because I think children are the most important and also the most uh the most insightful and just sensitive readers in terms of what they the the way they deal with material and the way they do with texts, and that almost links through to your second um part of what you were saying and your question about sort of what next, because I I feel like you know, I would hope that um the poem will have a chance to speak to other people, and um, as a writer, once something is written and in inverted commas finished, because it's hard to know when anything is ever finished, but it's at that point where it no longer feels like it's mine, it no longer belongs to the writer. At that point, it belongs to the reader, and I think that um that the reader then has a chance to engage with the material in their own way. If I'm writing, it's coming from inside my imagination for me, my my mind, my heart, my memory, whatever. And through the writing process, it's then delivered into something which is on the page or on the screen or in uh in audio, and then that's taken and that can go into whoever absorbs it by reading it, and then but reading itself is a creative process because by reading, something then happens, some sort of strange alchemy where that those words go into your mind and they trigger, you know, the tree that you saw, which wasn't the tree that I saw, the fish that you saw, the village on the hilltop that you saw, and it becomes part of your own life experience that then goes on to get referred to elsewhere. So that I hope that by disseminating that poem in no matter what shape or form, that it's a an ongoing conversation really about really important themes and ideas. And that's what any art or literature whatever hopes to achieve at the end of the day, is just to take an idea and to sort of stretch it and expand it um for all it's worth, really.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

And I was I was I was just thinking. When you were talking there, that uh you know, in in certainly in younger generations there are a number of climate anxieties, but but actually, when we go back to the conversation you and I were having around we are resilience as a title and those themes around inclusivity and and community and being active, you know, these are some of the sort of societal behaviours and traits that actually can can help um manage some of those climate anxieties. Um I think I think it's I think there's some some lovely opportunity here to further um you know share and distribute, but allow people to experience it in their own way and reflect on it in their own way. Um as we come, Sophie, to the sort of final part of our of our conversation. Obviously, it's been a it's been a great experience for JBA, and we're really um delighted and grateful for your your time and your your your thought and the process you went through. But I'm conscious it's also been a new experience for you working with an organization um you know like JBA. So what are your reflections on on working with a consultancy? And and has that in any way, I don't know, reshaped or reframed future work or or the way that you approach work in future?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

It's that's really interesting. I've really enjoyed the process of um working on this project, really enjoyed writing the poem. I've enjoyed it on many levels, one being the new and investigating something that I don't yet know. Most of my writing has at least got a grain or a seed of it begins in the real world in some way or other. So it's been wonderful being able to explore climate resilience and um and the work that you do. Um working within an organization with a specific commission again is an exciting thing because you're trying to make what you do fit with what somebody else wants in a way, but you've there's never been a point where I've like JBA's been at all prescriptive and where you've said, right, Sophie, we want it to be this, this, this, go spin your words, you know, not at all. It's been a really very liberating process, which I've really, really loved. And I'm very proud of the outcome, actually. I'm really proud of the the poem, and um, and I'm also very much trusting JBA to do really interesting things with it. I think you've got a great way of looking at um bringing together science and art. And um the thing as you were talking a moment ago, I was suddenly I began to think, gosh, I think the thing that there is in common with writing for children and which in turn brings uh almost a childlike perspective to the world, with that versus the the the sort of the problematic thoughts around um climate change and then moving on to climate resilience. The one word that I sort of can picture overarching the whole thing is hope. And I think hope is embedded in all children's literature, hope's embedded in childhood and in children, and I think that hope's embedded in climate resilience and the work that you do as well. And I hope that it's embedded within um the poem as well, sort of powerful, determined hope.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

Hope. What a what a what a lovely way to finish this conversation on. Um Sophie, again, thank you for um working with us. I've really enjoyed it, we've really enjoyed it, and it sounds like it's been a you know, it's been a um a good process for you as as well. I think the out the outcome, the output is is wonderful, and and you know, we're we're really delighted with it. So thank you again and thanks for your time this morning and coming on the podcast as well. It's been it's been a great conversation. Um, but we have reached the end of our time today. So if you have uh enjoyed listening, then please hit the subscribe button so that you're ready for our next episode in a month's time. Till then, thanks for joining us. I'm Phil Emerson, and you've been listening to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JPA Consulting.