There Will Be Dancing

People-Centred Solutions with Sharan Burrow AC

• Women's Environmental Leadership Australia • Season 1 • Episode 4

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What does it take to create real, lasting change, and who needs to be at the centre of it?

In this episode of There Will Be Dancing, Victoria, Odette and Sanaya sit down with special guest Sharan Burrow AC—global advocate, former General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, and one of the most influential voices in climate and labour justice.

Sharan has spent decades working at the intersection of workers’ rights, climate action, and global policy. Her approach is grounded in a simple but powerful idea: that the most effective solutions are those shaped by and for the people they impact most.

Together, they explore the critical role of community in driving change, how to stay hopeful in a world that can feel increasingly unstable, and why people-centred thinking is essential to building a more just and sustainable future.

Along the way, Sharan shares stories from her extraordinary career—including a very special dance partner… Nelson Mandela.

This episode also features a moving contribution from Chantelle Cortez Maglalang, a Western Sydney–based designer, artist and storyteller who shares a reflection informed by her lived experience of extreme heat and the realities of climate on the ground.

We hope this conversation leaves you feeling grounded, connected, and reminded that meaningful change begins, and endures, with people.

If you want to learn more about Sharan’s work with Women Leading on Climate: https://wela.org.au/influence/wloc/  

You can also follow Chantelle’s work at https://www.instagram.com/mellechant/ and https://www.schoolofzines.com.au/, and you can find out more about Sweltering Cities at https://swelteringcities.org/  

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Follow us on socials (@therewillbedancingpod):

Want to learn more about WELA? Visit wela.org.au and find us on Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook

This episode is proudly supported by Women’s Agenda, helping to amplify essential conversations at the intersection of environment, gender, and leadership.

SPEAKER_03

Welcome to Them Will Be Dancing, a podcast that amplifies the voices of women and gender-diverse changemakers protecting our environment and climate. I'm your host, Victoria Mackenzie McCard, and I'm joined by my co-hosts Odette Barry and Sanaya Kisty. An early 20th century political activist Emma Goldman once said, If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. And we use this to remind ourselves, and you, our dear listeners, that embracing joy amidst the turbulence of change making takes critical courage and commitment. So let's have fun. This podcast is by Women's Environmental Leadership Australia. And our thanks to Women's Agenda for supporting these essential conversations about the environment, gender, and leadership. For today's episode, we will be exploring the theme of people-centered solutions. And I'm pretty excited that we're going to be interviewing Sharon Barrow, who is not just a personal hero and now I'm happy to say a friend, but he's also joining us as our guest today. There's so much we can learn from Sharon's very long and illustrious career, and her knowledge and experience is extensive. I'm really excited to be sharing it with you all today and to be having this interview with my fantastic co-hosts, Odette Barry and Saniah Kisty. Hi. Hello. It's really great to be back. We're back in 2026 and into a new year. Happy New Year and hello. Like me.

SPEAKER_02

Like I'm curious to know, are you guys new year, new me goal setters or are you anti-New Year's vibes?

SPEAKER_03

Deep in the goal setting, but not new me. Evolution of me, I guess. Of course. But it involves like a deep reflection, notes, quiet meditation. I'm into it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I feel like all of January my mind is sort of preoccupied into so what's this year gonna be about? Like, what do I want? What do I want to do? And as yet, I've not put anything down on paper. So it's going really well.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, I mean, you've still got a few days left. I feel like I'm new to new year energy. I think I was a little bit anti-new year goal setting and just let it flow. But maybe for the last five or so years, I've developed quite a robust framework for how I think about goal setting, and it's aggressive, I would say, in terms of giving it a lot of my energy. So I have had five different brainstorm sessions with different friends. Like she wow. I had one eight-hour reflection day with a really good friend of mine, and we mapped out our moments of pride, our moments of joy, our moments of frustration across different pillars of our lives, and mapped that towards the direction that we want to head. And you do this every year. I've done that for the last few years, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

What was it that changed you from being an anti-Nu Yin Yu-Mi into someone who spends a minimum of eight hours with a friend doing this?

SPEAKER_02

I think it's like the influence of the people around me. I'm around a lot of people that are very reflective and clear on where they like to point their noses. And it's probably rubbed off on me. I think rubbed off is probably an understatement.

SPEAKER_04

The last five years, if you've been doing it, have you noticed a difference in the way that you move through the year?

SPEAKER_02

Totally. I've taken on things that I never would have probably a opened my horizon to, but also asked of myself things in moments when I probably would shy away from something, but I've given myself a task. And, you know, last year my word of the year was fun. And a lot of that came from feeling the heaviness of the world and the worries, and to ensure that I parked and anchored my decisions in fun. And like writing my list of the things that I did last year, it is off tap the amount of like hilariously wonderful things that I got to do, including this podcast. So I'm still in distillation, like you, January is like where I try and land everything, but I have some like core focuses that I feel I'm like 90% there on.

SPEAKER_04

I love that. Maybe we can do a debrief at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. Our guest today is Sharon Barrow. For those who are not familiar with Sharon's history, Sharon made her start as a teacher in schools in New South Wales. And it's pretty hard to cover everything that she has done in her illustrious career. But Sharon more recently served as the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation for 12 years, representing 190 million workers from across the world. Prior to that, she was the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, was involved in the trade union movement and representing teachers for many decades before that, is currently a board member of the European Climate Foundation and the incoming chair of Climate Works. Her work has been around labor standards, workforce rights, corporate accountability, climate action. She's a strong champion and is responsible for making sure that just transitions is centered in the Paris Agreement. And very happily for us, she is also now the co-chair and co-lead of the new Australian chapter of Women Leading on Climate, working alongside myself. Sharon, welcome to the pod today.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Victoria. I'm delighted to be talking to you.

SPEAKER_04

That's quite a CV. Yeah. Impressive feels like an understatement. I hate it.

SPEAKER_01

Vic knows that.

SPEAKER_04

Why? Why why do you have to?

SPEAKER_01

Well, because I mean I've had a very privileged career. There's no doubt about that. And um, and I appreciate the shoulders of the people on whom I've stood very, very much. But it almost just feels like, well, I got paid to do a job. I did it to the best of my ability. And yes, I hope I'm a generous soul and did a lot of other things to help people as well. But it just feels like a bit of hubris to continue to promote things you have done rather than what you should be doing now.

SPEAKER_03

Like she there's the work that you do now, but there's also the pathway that got you into this. And that's something I'm I'm pretty keen for us to explore and and to understand a bit about. So, Sharon, tell us then, how does a girl who grows up outside of Dubo in New South Wales go from being a local school teacher to negotiating international trade deals?

SPEAKER_01

I would say I'm an accidental leader. You know, I always think I was in the right place at the wrong time or other way around, wrong place at the right time. And I think, you know, if you have if you're open to opportunities and you really love working with people, which I happen to do, then anything's possible. And the rest is history. I really have been very lucky to meet the most extraordinary people, to see people who were in terrible conditions of conflict or exploitation, and to know that you could organise a group of people, workers, and civil society, to do something about that. And if you didn't do that, then who are you as a human being? So that's that's the sense of shared values that's always driven the things that I've done. And I've been lucky enough to be put in positions where I could exercise that power, if that's what you want to call it, to try and achieve things that would make a difference for the lives of people and of course for climate and nature.

SPEAKER_03

Like Sharon, you say, I mean, it's incredible work that you've done, and you say that you're sort of the accidental leader and these were opportunities, but at each point you said yes. So when those opportunities came your way, you stepped up, and they're big steps. They're not, you know, it's not just taking on the next little challenge. These are huge roles that you're stepping into. What made you take that leap or make that choice to step in at each time there was that opportunity? Because it's big risk as well as big responsibility. Big responsibility.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I do think you have to say when you're invited to take on a role, can I do it? Do I want to do it? Will it make a difference? So, all those questions that you could map out and sit down and think about that. Because I often think that there's a false equation in my head, it's not necessarily a false equation, but in my head, there's a false equation between a position and power to affect change. If you think about the fact that everybody can affect change, and that's the movement we're building now, Vic, with women leading on climate, everybody, from their household uh activities through to their community uh uh cooperatives and you know, banding together to repair or preserve environmental ecosystems that are vital, or fighting for renewables and uh, you know, and sustainability and affordable energy and all of those things. If you actually think that everybody has the power to make a difference, then the question becomes: have I got the capacity to actually engage and support and work alongside of those people who are in fact going to do the heavy lifting?

SPEAKER_02

I I love that idea that everyone has the capacity to affect change and that there is an opportunity for all of us. But as someone who definitely can carry the the little torch of imposter syndrome on behalf of all of us, I I'm curious if there's there's perhaps people you've mentored throughout your journey that you've seen that have had that challenge in maybe backing themselves in the same way you have, what how you've mentored or led them through stepping into that belief that they can be part of change?

SPEAKER_01

Like she like she Well, first of all, I think everybody, but particularly women, carry imposter syndrome with them, you know, because even today, you know, there is still that um sense of a gender divide and the roles that women take on, not necessarily by them or by their peers or communities, but by others who are actually threatened by them actually asserting their own rights, their um influence, their capacity to make that change. So I'm not gonna say to anyone, particularly um, you know, young women, that you suddenly grow up and you feel confident and assertive and you can just step in and do the role as if it's uh second nature. But you know, that's part of the struggle as well. Like think about what satisfaction you get out of having sat down and thought, well, I'm really not happy about this environment or I'm really upset about it, I'm even angry about it. So in the union movement, we used to talk about you know organizing as being about hope and action and therefore outcomes. But often, you know, we used to think through strategy as being, it's a terrible analogy for someone who hates guns and war, but you know, um, ready, aim, fire. We used to say, no, you've got it the wrong way around. You've got to be ready, you've got to fire, and then you've got to aim because you learn through the journey of action or strategic uh implementation of a plan or whatever it might be, that you have to shift or pivot your tactics, sometimes your outcomes. You know, talking to our uh sisters, Vicky, in the in the US, they've had to pivot the way they organize to talk about climate and diversity and women's uh rights and so on, in an environment where people are scared. They're actually scared. But you don't want to lose that value set or that community um support for each other and the capacity that brings to continue to make change, you just think about how to do that. Our whole lives are a journey, obviously, but so is activism, so is a determination to do something. And I think the worst thing we can do as leaders is think that you are the most important person. Because actually, if you have the capacity to provide space for those people on the front lines who are really suffering the consequences, whether it's climate, whether it's environmental degradation, or it's sheer exploitation or worse conflict, then it's their voices that matter. And sometimes you have to protect those voices, but it's still the authenticity of their voices that matter.

SPEAKER_02

Like she, like she. Let us collectively work on an alternative to that. But I I I love that concept of being open to the learning, being part of the process, and not having definitive answers. Because I think the biggest thing that I think about in any of this work is the lack of clarity in any one moment that there's always multiple avenues. And when you're protecting vulnerable populations, it's not like there's a clear roadmap.

SPEAKER_01

And if you think of the world at large, we're living with chaos, really. You know, at all levels. It's technological chaos because people are uncertain about everything from AI to social media to, you know, what communications, what technology they use in their daily lives. But more than that, our lives feel chaotic because it they're unpredictable in terms of, you know, the everything from the weather to the extreme fires that people have just uh faced, or the floods, or you know, whatever it might be. So the real skill, and we need people with lots of different skills, but the real skill is finding a team that can do everything from um mapping a strategy out of the chaos to actually get to the point of stability or an outcome that people seek collectively. But having the people then like yourself who can actually, you know, organize communications and ensure that people are talking about, talking and listening to each other, to those who actually can just sit and organize a diary, an events calendar, you know, without having to worry about why they're actually doing it. Understanding it, of course, we all should be included in understanding. But there are some people who can stand in chaos and can affect a strategic outcome, you know, with lots of discussion, obviously, and lots of thought. But there are others who can make that happen in a variety of ways. So there isn't just one brain or one approach or one person who can make a difference in this world. Everybody can take action, but knowing your skill set and finding the support teams in and around communities is essential.

SPEAKER_04

And picking up on that thread, Sharon, I'm really curious how have you seen the presence of climate change evolve over the course of your career?

SPEAKER_01

I come from the country. One of my first recollections is understanding that the town that I grew up in was actually increasingly dependent on big cotton farming. You know, it'd always been merino country and you know, broad-based cropping and so on. But and it we're in a dry environment, and the worst thing you could do was put crops like, you know, that used extensive amounts of water. Now, it was a good, sustainable economy for the community, but it really brought home for me as a teacher that we we learn about and we teach about the great forests of the world, the rivers, the you know, the wetlands, the um you you think of a natural ecosystem, they will be in the curriculum. So if I asked you to name the great seas of the world, you could, or the great oceans, or the great rivers, you know, you could do that. But even today, we don't adequately teach about how to preserve and repair them because they're integral to our own livelihoods, but also our own capacity to survive. So now you're seeing whole continents which are short of water, have unsustainable heat, uh depending on ever-increasing electricity demand, because the only way you can survive is in air-conditioned environments. And yet we're not moving fast enough to make all of that essentially both mitigation and adaptation at the same time.

SPEAKER_03

You've worked alongside giants of international diplomacy, people like Cristiana Figueras and and Laura Trubiana, who were architects of the Paris Agreement, um, Mary Robinson from Ireland. What have you learned about power in this time, work walking alongside people like this?

SPEAKER_01

I think what I've learned is about courage, really, you know, to speak the truth in a way that doesn't compromise the reality, but at the same time invites people into the way that you are thinking and gets them to think about what they think and what they want to and can do. You know, Paul Pollman will talk about values before he talks about business strategy. Or more accurately, he will talk about rights, values, and commitment to a business strategy that respects and enhances those fundamentals for all human beings. Paul is is a businessman with, you know, frankly, a genuine commitment to humanity that and to nature in all of its forms that actually, you know, is remarkable. All of these things come back per fact. Are people involved? Are they able to co-design their future?

SPEAKER_04

So you've you've talked a lot about how in that time all of those leaders were able to navigate a shared approach to the problem. They were able to find common ground. We're now living in a time where that is increasingly difficult. And as you said, the rules-based order has kind of it's crumbling before our eyes. How do you see us being able to do this work in that context?

SPEAKER_01

If you see opportunity out of that chaos, then I think, you know, again, go back to something concrete. 80 countries signed on to a commitment to a roadmap that set out how to move away from fossil fuels in Berlin before Christmas. That preserved the opportunity for not a universal multilateralism, but you know, the UN wasn't born out of universality. It was born out of those countries who were committed to shift the agenda globally on a peace, rights, and security basis so that we didn't go through another World War II. And so if you think that's 80 countries, and the people within those 80 countries can help shore up their political leadership.

SPEAKER_02

It also kind of brings me to the landscape that we are faced with from a position of activism and pushing against these circumstances. And we're seeing these tightenings of laws around protests and boycotts and you know penalties for collective action. What does that signify? To you in terms of the landscape we're operating in and what does it mean for democracy and workers' rights?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think that community is at the heart of that. Like I could answer with a union perspective that said, if indeed laws prevent you doing something that is um, you know, so important, so fundamental in terms of solidarity and rights, then you find other ways. And I won't make this into a union or civil society tactic discussion, but we used to just call them community forums. We also would be here for that as well. We used to just call them community forums when the unions were going to be fined out of existence for having, you know, uh what we used to call third-party boycotts, but basically solidarity protests. Go back to the, you know, any big dispute in Australia, but the MUA's fight on the docks comes to mind for me. We just they were community gatherings, they weren't protests. They were, you know, families and farmers and, you know, business people, but workers getting together to talk about the issues. You know, laws are important. Don't, don't, please don't misunderstand. I've spent my life fighting for just laws. But if you're talking about communities building their own future, co-creating their own future with each other or with business or with government, then that's about power. And that's about collective power and it's about hope. And ultimately it's about trust. Because the thing about just transitions, however you define that, whether it's jobs for workers, whether it's survival of communities with new industries, whether it's in fact recreating vital ecosystems that mean you can live in a place and not simply move on because you know it's become unlivable, then that's very different. And that's the the power at the heart of our future if we have the courage to take hold of it. And if we listen to each other about what is important, I strongly believe everybody has a whole lot that's more in common than divides us, but you have to be prepared to listen and to actually want to support people. I'm not pessimistic because I think out of chaos comes optimism if we've got the courage to think through what the power of people can be in this environment.

SPEAKER_03

Sharon, you talk about coming together. How do you get people talking to one another and working together and finding those common pathways forward?

SPEAKER_01

Dialogue. When democracy is in trouble and it is everywhere, then you go back to community. But what does going back to community and building communities mean? It means dialogue, it means talking to each other, it means listening to each other, means saying, well, we are able to, you know, absolutely influence our own future, but how do we do that in a way? And I wrote a piece um a couple of years ago around ex-Cyclone Alfred in Queensland. But I just watched how the community worked together and they prepared, they had people from all households, all walks of life out packing sandbags. They were clearing roads for emergency services. You saw stories of people using their EVs to plug into vulnerable households where there were babies or age people, you know, to allow for refrigerators to, you know, function and so on. That was a community, not saying we don't like this or we don't like that, or we're not going to have this, we're going to be no people. It was a community saying we have to support each other. And so if it comes down to dialogue and the dialogue was genuinely about what people face, what's the most important things to them, then I think you build that community of interest. And that's what Vic and I are trying to do with women leading on climate. We're not trying to, you know, structure it like a, you know, like a campaign that says everybody has to do this. Rather, every one of those women working in the climate space in any way, shape, or form is in fact vital to our future. And their networks and their communities are vital to our future. So, how do we support them and allow them to feel like they've got a community where they can reach out, get support, test ideas? When you build communities, you're building democracy, really.

SPEAKER_03

That has, of course, involved trade-off, though, as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01

How do you handle that? You have to be prepared to take a few uh and carry a few scars on your back. And you have to learn to not take them personally. If a trade-off has to be made, then, and it does in all of these things, then the first thing is what's an acceptable trade-off? What can we live with? And again, if you go back to the way, you know, workers have bargained forever, workers set out an amber claim. They know what they want, what's the, you know, what are their ambitions. But in the end, an agreement with an employer will always involve a settlement. So some things you will not achieve or not achieve to the extent that you want to. But if you lay the foundations, you come back next time. You know, people get more education, they've gained better wages, whatever it might be, and then you you work out what's still to be won. And so trade-offs, if you see them as, you know, a stepping stone rather than as uh, you know, oh, we've lost that forever, then it's much easier in my head.

SPEAKER_02

I feel like trade-offs, you can see the meaning and the the value of them in hindsight. But in the moment, how do you reconcile with trying to come like make sense of this is the trade-off I should be making right now? Is there any like scaffolding for how you make those understandings? Sanaya, I feel like you have thoughts.

SPEAKER_04

Well, no, to build on that question, you've talked a lot about how it's so important to listen to community. And in any of those positions of power, you're going to have to be managing different interests. How do you manage that negotiation and make those trade-offs in the interests of multiple communities?

SPEAKER_01

Emotions will run high. You're right. And and people will think they have won or lost in any environment because we all have our commitments, our ambitions, etc. But if you can lay out a picture that says we gain this, but we haven't yet gained that, doesn't mean we don't live to fight another day. Now I can I can see some contradictions to that. So please, you know, if you're actually destroying a habitat for an endangered species, then you probably don't have that luxury. But that just leads me to say to you, you have to work out what you will never trade off. And that has to be a common base. So that needs a lot of dialogue. But what is it that's so important that you will never trade it off? I wouldn't even say as a trade-off. What you don't achieve today, but you can continue to work on to achieve tomorrow. So our recent nature laws are absolutely in that camp. You know, you learn very quickly as a union um leader not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. So do you want to make progress or don't you? And those laws give us an extraordinary capacity to move forward. They actually establish, first of all, you know, an agency that's independent of government but and has the capacity to report publicly. So the transparency of environmental impact is there in a way it hasn't been previously, unless you use freedom of information tactics or other things. But it's part of the thing. It's like the climate change authority. It has to publicly set out the targets to meet our ambitions. And then it's up to government to decide. Well, then the political uh mechanations can kick in, you can campaign, you can, you know, argue with government, you can use uh, you know, your politicians who will set up Senate inquiries and then make submissions. There's all sorts of democratic processes you can use. But the first thing is transparency. The second thing is always working out what it is you cannot trade off, what's so fundamental in terms of rights, nature, you know, livability, security, whatever it is that you can't trade. But then where can you find compromise? That means you can continue to educate, you can continue to campaign, but you've made progress. And that's the best advice I can give. And I'm not pretending it's easy.

SPEAKER_03

Sharon, this has been an incredible discussion. Um, and I know we have just scratched the surface of what your experience and knowledge has to offer our movement. Thank you so much for sharing so generously with us. But before I release you to the wilds and to your other important work, a final question. Do you dance, Sharon?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yes, I love to dance.

SPEAKER_03

Who doesn't love to dance? Well, that is a good question, and one that should be directed at our good friend Odette Barry. However, can you share with us one of your best ever dancing experiences?

SPEAKER_01

Oh my goodness. Oh, I can. My greatest honor, privilege, I'm still humble, but was toy toying with Nelson Mandela.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Badly, badly, by the way. He had such rhythm. And, you know, I felt like I had those all those left feet. But he is, you know, people young, young children would come up and put their hand on his knee. I was privileged to sit next to him at a at an event, and um, and they just say, Matiba, and he just, it was like people felt included, they felt at peace, they felt incredible trust. But yes, dancing with him and seeing his joy in doing the toy toy, you know, that would break right up there. I have danced with other people, some celebrities, you know, Joan Jett, other people, but basically, that one would take the cake. Courage is never gained by not venturing out of your comfort zone.

SPEAKER_03

Sharon, thank you again for joining us today. And power to you for all the work um that you do and the support you offer to our movements. It's inspiring to get to work alongside you. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Sharon. It's been a wonderful conversation.

SPEAKER_03

What a powerhouse.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, I believe that should be a 10-part episode spin-off series featuring Sharon and Sharon alone. There's so many tangents of wisdom and experience and learnings that that could be chapter by chapter.

SPEAKER_04

Like so many stories that illustrate her point, but bring in these characters from history that you're kind of like, oh, yeah, and that person, and that person.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, she's the only person who I've ever sat with who said to me, So I got a message from my friend Jane. I was like, Oh, oh yeah, Jane. Um, and Jane Fonda. It's you know, babe.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but I I really like like she gives big teacher energy, like there's no two ways about it. Like the the steadfastness, the groundedness, and yet the just deep appreciation for those around her. But I quite I I feel like I took so much from this conversation, and maybe it was the planting the seeds of the goals and the focus areas for this year, but one of my primary focuses for this year is pride and confidence, and to let that like touch on all of the aspects of myself. But hearing in her these, you know, the the ready fire aim love that so useful for the murkiness and for the unknowing and and allowing that grace to to to figure it out together. But yeah, I just I I don't think I could have anticipated how small the big is, like or how big the small is, if that makes sense. That like you know, and and this comes back to the people, it comes back to community and it comes back to relationships that we seem to circle back to all the time, but so many delicious gifts in there.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. I I it was so interesting hearing her talk about those people who, you know, in our worlds are these characters that have done these incredible things for people around the world, and talk about them in a way where she was able to completely separate the achievements of the person and the context of the person and bring it back to just who they are as a person.

SPEAKER_02

I think when she was talking about those different character traits of individuals, it was also a nice demonstration of the importance of all kinds of thinkers and doers.

SPEAKER_03

Like the thing that always stands out for me, and it's the thing that I have so appreciated being able to be so lucky to work with Sharon over the last 12 months, is while, yes, she has all this experience and all of these contacts and these people that she's worked with, this commitment to it always comes back to community and to recognizing like that is where the power really sits. And that is, I mean, just an incredible recognition of what we are working with, and it's very real and grounded, it's never sort of warped by what um big hierarchical power could create. Um, but it's also empowering, like it recognizes what is sitting all around us, what is possible for us to be working with, and it's an incredible perspective that she's managed to hold through all of that. Because this is a community podcast, every episode has a contribution from our broader community. And today, that community member is Chantelle Cortez McLullung, a designer, artist, and storyteller living in Western Sydney. Chantel is reading a reflection about her own lived experience of heat and bushfires and her work with sweltering cities. It's a perfect fit for our episode focused on people-centered solutions and people-centered action. I hope you enjoy this piece from Chantelle.

SPEAKER_00

Hi, my name is Chantelle Cortez Maglalang, a designer and storyteller living and making on Daragland, proudly Western Sydney born and raised. I'm also a passionate researcher and academic on the side, working with the intricate threads of culture and history intersecting with design, justice, and daily life. I really treasure designing for good, especially through print, illustration, and community-based work. This is a reflection on heart, heat, people, and climate, but most importantly, the stories that weave all of these things together. If there's a thread that connects the tropical archipelago of the Philippines, my family's homelands, to the sweltering blaze of Western Sydney suburbia, I'd say it's the heat. We are under the same sun, after all. But the points of proximity to the equator produce idiosyncratic experiences, each to their own. That's resilience and leadership to me. My parents trading a tropical typhoon heavy heat for an arid, scorching one just to get a chance at a better life. In my Filipino upbringing and Roman Catholic schooling, I was always taught about the importance of being a steward to nature. Those seeds of care, culture, and stewardship that were sown in my childhood have come to bloom in my art and design practice. They keep me deeply rooted in everything I do, making themselves known in the ways I move about, caring for country and climate justice, fueling my sense of responsibility. My days are a much different picture this time around, although my passions for drawing and making things have only grown further. The sun blazes harshly, the humidity a formidable foe. It's much too hot and harder to do the things I used to do. My grandparents still live in the same weatherboard house with no proper AC, much older and more careful because of their respective health concerns. My younger siblings and I spend more days together inside, switching between our fans and the AC, splashing cold water on our faces. I worry for them even more these days when it's hot, because one has epilepsy and the other has a rare autoimmune disease, both of which are drastically heat sensitive. During my time in my undergrad at design school, I became more tuned to the disparities of climate change's impact across Sydney. How different living out a summer in the coastal northern beaches is to one in the scorching dark grey concrete of the urban heat islands in Marsden Park, where quite a number of my friends and family live. I had to live out those school years on and off during a global pandemic, hyper-aware of the ways poor urban planning, rising temperatures, and dwindling native plants and animals have become a norm. I look to art and design as a way to reflect on my anxieties and dreams, making comics about the new houses being built in what was once a lovely field at the front of my house, and protecting the fig trees the flying foxes roost in, and how year after year more of them disappear. In my third year, I got the chance to respond to a brief on climate justice, designing a letter writing workshop I'd lovingly called Plant Pals. This is inspired by the banana trees and writing a letter to plants to show how much you care and consider their perspective. I went on a guided indigenous plant tour with my class, led by Miragiri and Gadigo elder Uncle Jimmy Smith. During that walk, I admired how poetic our connections to flora and fauna are, and how much of that we've lost in the hustle and bustle of our lives, with much of it to be attributed to the ever-present effects of colonization and capitalism. It was also in my third year that I got a chance to work with Sweltering Cities, the only extreme heat-based organization in Australia. I was the only member in the design team who was from Western Sydney, and it felt really empowering to draw on my own experiences of extreme heat for our campaign design. It touched my heart to see an organization and its volunteers work tirelessly to advocate for the stories of everyday people, trying their best under the blazing, deadly heat. In the heat of it all, I stand in places still determined to use art and design as a vehicle to tell stories, rooting ourselves to who we fundamentally are as human beings, living, making, and playing on the same planet. And I don't do it alone. I think of my ancestors across the seas, the fears and determination that carries over across generations, right to Australia. It's through the telling and sharing of these stories in every shape, color, and form that we begin to remember who we really are and what we're meant to do. Care for each other and the world around us. I believe we carry this duty individually and collectively in this fight for climate justice. In this rapidly changing world, there's no better time than to make something, to mean something for our bodies, our loved ones, our homes, neighborhoods, and the courage to hope for the better.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, what a perfect addition into this focus to hear such a personal story that is fully anchored in lived experience, but also someone who's taken that lived experience and is channeling it into their work and finding those pathways forward. I loved the threads of how that held together.

SPEAKER_02

It was giving Robin Wolkimera energy in her poetic capacity to describe. The botany and the temperature and you know that language around scorched and arid and deadly and blazing was super delicious for one of her messages could be.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. It was so interesting that she picked up on the health threads that Sharon talked about as well. Like just hearing her describe that in that visceral way put you there. And it just reminded reminded you of the person.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's also the perspective that you can only get from lived experience. And that's why centering those lived experience voices matters so much. Um it's not commentating about, it's it's um sharing a personal perspective.

SPEAKER_02

Well, yeah, it's the blindness for want of a better description of the privilege of health, right? Like that to be able-bodied and you know, able to deal with extreme heat. Our older populations, those with complex health issues. I certainly see it with my in-laws and my parents watching them age and the concern that you feel as you come into the summer seasons and think about power outages and those highly dense communities of Western Sydney and you know, those not a space for a tree or a a plant to offer shade or you know, breeze between homes. It scares the shit out of me, you know, the town planning and and to I I love that the design and story are coming into that sweltering Suddy's work to help raise the attention of how we think about town planning.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and I think on the on the topic of it being about health privilege, it's also it's class, right? And that's something that is inescapable through the themes of this episode. And it's an interesting like Sharon's got such an interesting way of making you think about that. And this piece from Chantel really it ground you there, especially when she starts talking about the difference of you know, the summer experience on the northern beaches of Sydney, and you can see the iconic photos in your mind. And then it's yeah, a stark reminder of the choices that we make as a society and where people end up living and how class plays a role in what their experience is.

SPEAKER_03

I came across this fabulous um report out of the UK called the Tree Poverty Index, and basically looking at urban tree coverage. And, you know, as you would expect, beautiful, big, wealthy suburbs, great tree coverage, low socioeconomic suburbs, often full of migrant communities as well, like all these things layering up, no tree coverage. And when we're talking about urban heat island effect and the effects of extreme heat, the consequences of that are enormous. Not just the nature consequences and all the issues associated with that, but the actual lived heat experience. It's a fascinating project. So we are here. We have arrived at the end of another episode. And incredible, incredible interviews and stories to be sharing as we're thinking about what lies ahead. If you have enjoyed this podcast, then please join us again next week and thereafter. And subscribe and share and tell your friends. Uh the links are in the show notes, as are links to various campaigns that Sharon mentioned, so make sure you check those out and sign up. You can sign up to Women Leading on Climate or any of the other campaigns that were mentioned. Um, thank you again to my co-hosts, Zanaya and Odette, gorgeous working with you both as always. Huge thanks to Sharon Barrow and to Chantel Cortez McLalan. Thank you for your generosity and your sharing. Double Be Dancing is a podcast by Women's Environmental Leadership Australia. Produced by Matt Siegel from Green Thumb Media. Podcast themed by Alice Ivy. Until next time.