Heat! Camera! Action!
The planet’s losing.
We’re in a hole. Climate, nature and social inequality crises. Story with a swerve gets us out. It’s the shape of all our lives. Up-down, down-up. And this shape of slantwise story, it creates hope and agency.
In this podcast, we hear from culture leaders and wanderers, the crossers of boundaries, the story-tellers. They share their ideas on how we get out of holes. Good story is not just a hiding place. It’s a finding place.
The podcast vibe is the warm-dark daguerreotype photograph, invented at the start of the industrialised era, before human-induced carbon pollution of the atmosphere.
My guests are writers and poets, artists and scientists, environmental and business leaders, farmers and landowners, local and national activists, festival directors, therapists, religious leaders. All are storytellers too.
The music clips at the start and end of episodes were recorded at public dances in Punakha and Thimphu (Bhutan).
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027. It is called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."
Heat! Camera! Action!
19 Hattie Phillips on being a young activist and the power of arts and community
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I’m sitting with Hattie Phillips in the OWLS community garden in Maldon during one of the summer heatwaves. She was one of the first WWF Youth Ambassadors, and is currently studying at Black Mountains College in Wales. She is a very fine communicator, and already has great experience of speaking in public, performing in theatre, engaging with community action and national climate events. She says, “We can’t solve the climate crisis without nature,” and notes that “Everyone can make a difference, but not everyone has a voice.” She also says, engagement with activism was so exciting: “I went from being one person to being a community.”
Hattie was at COP26, speaking early one morning to a group of CEOs who ate their croissants and drank their coffee and completely ignored the two young people ready to talk. “We said,” says Hattie, “We don’t care how much money you have. If you have children or grandchildren, they will be exposed to the effects of your actions for decades.”
She wrote and performed a one-person play in 2026 called “Letters of Land and Loss.”
Her heroes are the activists making so many sacrifices.
Her book recommendation is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “The Service Berry.”
Her recommendation: “Go outside, connect with the land.”
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."
Here we are in Malden, Hattie, in the community garden in the middle middle of Malden.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we're at Owls, which stands for Our Wild Local Space. A gorgeous, like lovely community garden set by set up by Molden Haybridge Climate Action Partnership.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. Well, here I am with Hattie Phillips. So Hattie, welcome to the show. Thank you. What a pleasure to have you on. You're at college in the Black Mountains in Wales. So you're it's a break, a summer break now for that. And you've been active in environmental and climate matters for quite a long time. So you're going to tell us a little bit about how it all looks from your perspective.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure, yeah. Big changes.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, exactly. So tell us a little bit then how um uh how you became involved in uh the the interest in and the action in and around nature and climate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What was at the start of all of that?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Um so I grew up very much in a family and community that loved going outside. Nature has always been a big part of our lives. From when I was younger, I was, you know, going to festivals, going to different camping trips, and like being given that freedom to play outside and to experience the natural world in everything that it brings. Um so yeah, that that really started it for me of that experience of nature. Um, and then you know, the more you know about something, and then you see that it's in decline and you see the biodiversity rates going down and you feel the summer's getting warmer, that set something in me that I was like, I want to help support this, and I want to make this you know accessible for future generations and for all young people so that everyone can get the opportunity to experience the beauty and the power and the peacefulness that the land can bring.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that that kind of moment that turns the the thought about the harms that we see and the the kind of almost relentless move towards you know getting worse. And you and you move into thinking I want to do something about it. That's how did how does that make you feel when you start doing things a little bit more like oh I'm in control of it a little bit because I'm doing something? Or maybe you find out more and it's worse.
SPEAKER_02Me when I was 13 was like, oh yeah, I'm in control now, but you know.
SPEAKER_00But that's good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was it was really good, and you know, I I started doing stuff along the same time as the school strikes for climate change, and when lots of young people were mobilising and going to the streets, same time as the Extinction Rebellion Rising, and the big one in London in 2019 with XR and the Pink Bow, and like just it was so exciting. That period of time was so unbelievably exciting at how much was going on, and you know, you felt like you were at the start of something amazing.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it wasn't the start, people have been doing this since you know 70s and beyond, but it was like it came into your life at the moment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it really did, and you know, I'm hoping to talk more about it, but action, non- non-direct, non-violent direct protest, and um community go hand in hand, and that's something that I've really really realised growing up, and I think that was what was so incredible about that moment in time was the fact that I went from being one person in a state school of thousands of people who was sitting there banging on about climate change and the climate crisis here in Molden, yeah, just down the road at the school, um, and feeling like I was banging on the door, and you know, okay, the school supported in some ways, but you know, it's hard when you're one person to then being part of a community of thousands and thousands of other young people that are also all fighting for the exact same thing. It it was so empowering. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that opened up lots of possibilities. So remember, some of those things. I mean, that's it. Strikes me as a kind of wonderful thing that you can go from from thinking we have, you know, I want to do something to having things you can do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I mean, there uh it's a different matter as to what impact they will have, but the immediate impact is on the people who are engaged in them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, for sure. And like all of this campaigning and um nature facilitation and connection has and all of the opportunities that I've had have been such ripple effects of one another. Um the thing that really, really started everything was I was in year I want to say eight, and um so that's kind of 12-13-ish.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's what I've just translated to those of us who are thinking in the old money.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, and I set up a public meeting called Climate Change the Last Straw, and um I was fortunate enough to have an incredible group of panellists and speakers, and I was helped so much by um so many people, and um and yeah, and I met Gareth Redmond King, who was the head of climate science at the WWF UK, um, and it kind of all went from there to be honest. I mean, like the shape of campaigning and where I am now has changed so much from when I was younger, but yeah, it you know that was the opportunity that got me involved with the WWF and the NGO and them, and how like all of the opportunities and the realisations and the learnings that came from being a youth ambassador for them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so tell us a bit about that that um that role. So um WWF a fabulous organisation with across the world and with a kind of six or seven big kind of uh national groups, um but you know a long record of distinguished kind of thinking and action and science and a whole range of policy stuff, and they also have as you say these US ambassadors. So, what what were you asked to do when they said, Would you like to be one of these?
SPEAKER_02So my role in that came about from okay, so from meeting Gareth, I was invited to the Time Is Now Mass Lobby in London, um, which was amazing, and I had no idea that I was being basically interviewed by the WWF. Me, who's just like going along um having a great time. I'd done loads of lobbying with our local MP here, so it was like the perfect opportunity to go. Um and yeah, I was I was their first youth ambassador, um, and the organisation has changed so much in that time. Um I've stepped down from that role now and to focus on other that's good. I think these things are often time limited, because other ideas develop and people learn and they change and they realise that you know their focus needs to be somewhere else, and you know, and for that moment in time that organisation was incredible and gave me like I I wouldn't be like in the position that I am now, whether that's academically, environmentally, activist-wise, campaigning without some of the networks and communications that that they gave. Um, we did lots and lots of public-facing stuff with them. Um it was a lot of like going to different events and speaking and being that like first port of call for young people for an organization, um, which was really amazing. Like I said, like the networks that that created were like nothing. Like I went like mum and I used to joke about it, but like I went from being, like I said, that one kid at a school beating the drum as loud as I possibly could, staying up till 11 o'clock doing email or something. Yeah, and then something like that happens, and you know, the privilege that comes with that is like you know, it it really was such a privileged position to be in.
SPEAKER_00Um so that's kind of interesting, is that for a while and overlapping in that period, I was a board member of WWF. So sitting in the kind of board, just WK, obviously. Um just trying to kind of make sure that the organisation is kind of moving in the right direction. Do you feel as though your um uh your young person's voice, if we can kind of load on you, was that was that being heard by the organisation and by others? And I'm not trying to kind of pin something, but I'm just saying the ambassador role is going to be outward looking on behalf of the organisation, but you're also gonna be saying to the organisation, well, look, this is how we see the world, this is you know what we're concerned about. Um, what do you what can you do differently to help? A bit of both?
SPEAKER_02A bit of both, yeah. It's a tricky one. Um because uh so the youth engagement programme undertook quite a lot of changes in the time that I was there. Um and be bearing witness to that was quite an extraordinary experience to be able to see how the organisation has changed strategies and changed things, and there were moments that I found really difficult in that and um yeah, tricky conversations that were had, um, but that's like any big organisation. Sure is.
SPEAKER_01Um there's room for learning.
SPEAKER_02I think there is still room for learning, yeah. Um as in everything.
SPEAKER_00Um but it's a kind of it's a kind of performance as well, it's a practice, isn't it? You know, that these are these are ways to practice forms of language, forms of story. Yeah, and if they don't work, you can think, oh I wonder what I'll do next time in this. And you know, yeah if doing it in a sort of relatively safe space with an organization you know.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, and that's like the the whole thing with like stories at the start of the the um youth engagement programme was that um Liz, who headed all of the um youth ambassadors, was like one of the most amazing women I've met. She was she was so good and she knew us all so individually and knew what we were good at and knew what stories we were good at telling, and knew what environments we liked to be in, and that really really helped with mobilising the youth engagement because they knew that like me and this other guy, Olly, were really good at like networking and meeting people and doing speaking, and then we had um some people that were really really amazing at marine biology and science. Sally, she was great at that, and like and you know, they knew what rooms to put us in, and they knew what rooms that we would thrive in and empower us to then continue doing it, and I think that for me that that was so what was so incredible about the early days of the youth engagement of the WWF. Um it is more national level now, so I think a lot more people know about the WWF Youth Ambassadors, and and like it's taken um like there are more opportunities for more young people to be involved, which is excellent.
SPEAKER_00Um nice to be a pioneer, but yeah, it was really lovely. But something you leave behind, you'd love to create something.
SPEAKER_02It feels like a really good, um, yeah, a really important part of my life that will always be a part of my life, um, but now taking on a different role. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, that organisation and the things that they have taught me will never leave, it's just the direction that I'm now taking it in might be in a different route. But I'll always be grateful to those opportunities and networks that that gave me.
SPEAKER_00Fabulous. Tell us a bit then about uh action locally. So you mentioned the the Climate Action Group and um across the county of Essex there are all sorts of groups doing their bits, as indeed there are across the whole of the UK. Yeah. So that was working with a large um NGO charity. Um but then when you get very tight and local, including in the in the wild space that we're sitting here in the middle of Malden, um you've got other challenges and you're super local to all sorts of different views, yeah. Um and one's trying to kind of move them all along in a certain way. How have you found that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I said at the start about how like a lot of the actions that I did in the beginning were very like quite like national level and trying to mobilise big businesses and um and global global change. And I think the trajectory that I'm now taking is definitely more local, and I think that's because I'm realising and understanding how important community is in this, and you know, we are we are already facing there are communities of people across the world who are not like who are not the ones that are causing climate crisis that are being the most affected by it. And you know, we can sit in this you know chamber for as long as we want that it's not gonna affect us, but it already is, and I think that community and the people that you surround yourself are with are going to be the ones that help you and the ones that save you ultimately. Um so Habridge and Molden Climate Action Partnership are incredible, they do so many different things that cover such a broad spectrum of um climate action, and you know, everything from they have Gaia conversations which are um about having those conversations and having communication around the things that people are worried about within the climate crisis. So the opportunity to sit down with people and talk about the biodiversity loss, or to talk about food shortages, or you know, we're on along the Blackwater estuary and the impact that that's going to have to the water, and it's done in um the style of Joanna Macy's the work that reconnects, um, which is done via a spiral, and you get to share your grief and your pain and the loss for that specific um area that you're talking about, and then go on to talk about like your hopes and what you want to see change, and and I think it's stuff like that that is is really important because you're gonna need that village to support you when when you know things get tougher, which you know they already are. Um it's different, local action comes with its own challenges compared to uh national. Um but yeah, it's interesting for me, like I'm split over two homes really. I am originally from Maldon in Essex and now I live in the Bracker Beacons, um, going to Black Mountains College. And it was so scary to leave that community and to like to step away from that, but the community that I have at college now is incredible. Like, you know, I thought it was empowering back in 2019, 2018, finding thousands and thousands of people that are supporting you, but when you find those people and you're so tight-knit, that is like yeah, it it it's one of the most special and empowering things.
SPEAKER_00Um everybody on the on the courses are on a similar journey. Yeah. Are they? Oh yeah, yeah, they're kind of they've started with a set of ideas. I mean you everybody has when when they first go to college, um, but because you've got a certain kind of ethic with the place, yeah, then you're meeting people who are also thinking, well, this would be nice if we could do this together.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there are people from so many different backgrounds and from so many different journeys, but uh coming together with similar but also differing views as well, and being able to learn from those and to to bring those together to do community action and organising is great. Like yeah, it it's it's it's so good to have uh have found that and to have collected loads of yeah, loads of people along the way.
SPEAKER_00And loads of examples of the conversations, the stories, the interactions with different sorts of people, yeah, because they then inform us when we're on our next thing. You know, every talk informs tells us about what we feel are important things that we're talking about because they emerge from the particular place quite often. You think, oh, we're gonna talk about this, and then this happens, and you think, oh that's interesting, and someone says this helpful thing, and someone says this really unhelpful thing. But that's all a kind of testing ground, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So when you when you just just just tell us a little bit about this these expectations when you start a thing called tertiary education, third level, um, college education, university, whatever. You you start off with a certain set of ideas, but you're two years into it and now thinking about what may follow, but lots of things would have popped up that you didn't know were going to pop up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and that strikes me as one of the great things of education is you have an idea, you're on the path, and then suddenly around this corner something excites you.
SPEAKER_02Honestly, honestly, so tell us a bit about the couple of things. So, um yeah, the background of the college is so Blackmaster's College or BMC is a radical alternative environmental college in the heart of the Brecken Beacons. And our campus, no, it's a is yeah, the the Water College is up a I mean a rather steep hill, but we get used to that or nearly have two years later. But um, yeah, our campus is a farm on the side of the Welsh Hills, and we also have some and and we call it the new old school because it's the old school that was in uh Talgarth, which is where the college is, um, and they've recently redone it, and uh a workshop for compassing courses. Um and I went very much into this course really believing that I wanted to go into politics, and that was like where my heart was set. I was like, that is that is the way to make change.
SPEAKER_00Leave it things, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um and so I'm on a course called Sustainable Futures, Arts, Ecology, and Systems Change, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it is like incredible.
SPEAKER_00Um keywords in there, yeah. Community, system change, all necessary.
SPEAKER_02Systems change, system change and art are the two things that I have realized that are actually so so powerful and impactful for everyone, really. Um, and through that, and through the course, I've learned about different ways of engaging people through like all forms of communication, um, which I think has been one of the biggest learnings that I've had from the course is how can we change systems in alternative ways that include everybody and that don't leave people behind and do it in a way that is community-centred and is what people want to see and what people want to happen. Um and so in second year you can choose between three three pathways, uh, which is agroecology, creative practice three. So we already do two creative practices at the start in the first year, um, or socio-technological futures. Um and I went into it being like I want to do socio tech. I love learning about people, and I love learning about like what we can do to the world to enable more people to experience all of the different things that are so important for understanding about environmental and social justice. Um and I was like, but I also love creative practice, like I've always loved theatre and art and performing and music. But agroecology was the one that I was like, I don't really know whether that is my thing. And I went through the whole first year being like, which one do I do? Creative practice or sociotech? And I got to the second year and I was like. I'm gonna do agroecology, which is completely the opposite one that I thought I was gonna do. But I spent so much time last summer up on our market garden um helping our incredible hair grower Katie, who is like the most amazing grower I've ever met in my life. Her vegetables are like honestly no food I've ever tasted. She knows how like if anyone knows how to grow, it is that woman. Um, and like so much that I learned from her actually outside of the course on agroecology and learning to grow with the land and with people. And yeah, I have a a lot to thank for her for for that. And so I chose agroecology and it's been really really amazing, and the course has the whole course in general has shifted my perception on where I see myself situated in the future.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes when we've got a decision to make, it's best just to wait a while until it becomes obvious. But sometimes people say, Oh, I must decide about this. And so just wait a bit. Yeah. And then then when you've tasted it for a week or two weeks or a month or two months, and then suddenly one day you'll go, oh I know exactly what I'm gonna do. It's just needed a while to brew. You know, it's could taken a while to for those ingredients to become the thing that you want in the oven. Yeah. So that's that's lovely. Um tell us a bit then about can we go back a little bit to young people who are 15, 16, um, so it's before you're heading towards uh you know end of school period.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and how people are seeing the state of nature, climate, and so forth. And um uh a popular view is that all young people are anxious about these things. Well, actually, I think the evidence says we're all anxious. Yeah. Not equally. Old people are just as anxious, but they may actually end up having less agency because they sort of feel as though it's no longer their place to be active. I mean, everyone uses excuses for that, but but I'm I'm kind of interested in when you've got those thoughts and then turning that into agency and what young people are thinking at the moment. I mean, there is a there's a policy statement from government saying that that voting will be made available to 16-year-olds. I mean, nothing's happened for a couple of years, but it's supposed to be happening. Strikes me that would be a good place to start because you have a kind of formal thing that says we think you're important enough to be voting. I mean you can vote in Wales and Scotland in certain elections at 16, so why not the rest of the country?
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00But that that period of of kind of anxiety and then and then the action that you mentioned already, how how speaking for young people, which is a bit of an unfair request. But speaking in that kind of way, how do you see those things at the moment? The anxiety, the concern. Um I've had people say to me, Oh, um, well, if we've stuffed it up, then the young people will come along and sort it out, and you think, well, that's quite a big weight to put on people's shoulders, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02And they might be right, but I mean it all for me it all comes back down to community. Yeah. And just circling back around to that. Um but I don't really see I think I've taken a different form with the anxiety around climate and nature loss. And I think, you know, when I started, I was quite young, so I didn't necessarily have that immediate anxiety. I think that's come later on. So for me, the mobilization to to do something didn't come from a place of anxiety, it came from a place of love for the land and um connection to it and want to protect it. And I think that in a root of a lot of these anxieties is also down to a disconnection and is down to a lack of experience of nature.
SPEAKER_01Oh that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Um and being far removed from it.
SPEAKER_00Um and disconnected from community perhaps as well. I mean maybe there's a link to to loneliness, individualism as well, that when you're connected up to place and to people, yeah, it doesn't the world seems a more happy and content place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I don't know, I think that I think there's a lot to be said for everybody becoming more connected to nature and experiencing nature. And I I um yeah, I wrote, I did an I did a piece for my course back in January about um time and about our relationship to time under the capitalist system um and how capitalism is forcing a growth trajectory. Um there's an incredible book called Less Is More and that that says about how like we we live in a system where growth is like the top pedestal. But there is growth in nature, it's just different, and I think that you know we we don't want to be removing that anxiety because sometimes it's these emotions that propel us to do more, but we can't just have anxiety alone. Um, and I think that's where we have a lot to learn from nature, and going into the natural world and living with the seasons and observing how the land works and how things grow in nature, not from a capitalist system, could be really beneficial for people to understand how to bring about change and how to bring about change with what nature needs.
SPEAKER_00Um so if you take this the owls here, the the location that we're sitting, or or the the the the garden that you mentioned that um at that with the college, you know, with the genius gardener.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um you're engaged. So here, what's a typical Saturdays at every month? People come and do some first set Saturday. So the kinds of things that people are doing, some of them are kind of hard, scraggy work, like cutting the stinging nettles back and putting stuff in piles and wood chipping, wood chipping, but then also planting and watching the butterflies. Lovely, and things are meanwhile growing. And some of those are well, a lot of them are happening by intent. You have this idea that you want something. And a lot of it is wild, a lot of it's wild, so that's also letting nature have its way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and letting accidental stuff happen, which is often when it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But you also, the group is coming here and doing stuff with intent. They say we want to do this, this, this. And that maybe is playing into what you're thinking about as a different way of seeing the world. Is that that actually if you do this and this and this, this thing will grow. That's pretty nice to know that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, yeah, it's lovely, and and also it it's it's the duality of everything, and it's the you know, yes, we can plant this, and the likelihood of it happening is very high, but then there's also the unpredictability of like up at the market garden, we um we were planting out our leeks, and there's rows and rows of no-dig bed leeks, and we did that two weeks, and then we came back, and there were hundreds of sunflowers that had self-seeded in those beds, and we we had to we had to unfortunately pull them out and then repot them somewhere else so that they could still grow, but yeah, there's something to say about having intention, but also the ripple effects that that intention will bring as well, and the other things that will grow from that. And I think spending time in nature and experiencing actually how the land works naturally without people could be really really impactful for helping people to understand how to solve the climate crisis because we can't we can't do it like we can't do it without nature.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Actually, I think nature is the driver.
SPEAKER_00It's the thing that changed it, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It is, and so often it's like we are feeling, you know, the emphasis is so much put on people and not on the non-human that it becomes very individualistic rather than like looking towards the land for what it needs, not what we need.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, lovely, beautifully put. There's something about uh I mean nature has intent as well. If we kind of if if you if you leave the space for it to do its thing, yeah, then its thing will happen. And some of those will be surprises, but they'll also be instructive things for us when we we will see the world differently. So that that action of being on the land, you're thinking about how that comes back to us as a as a kind of a story, a lesson, a learning, which we can then use in other fields. It might be in politics, it might be in kind of community, it might be in a in an essay, it might be in a future job, or whatever, or or or music or theatre or art or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I am at the start of the year thinking on that on that line of storytelling and and learning from the land and from people as well. I I I've always loved theatre. Growing up, I I used to do amateur dramatics and like shows, and every February I used to do a show, and it was always like one of my favourite times of the year. Um but that was always it was always like activism, campaigning, environmental work, and theatre, and they were on two parallels. And through uni and through the course we're doing, it's allowed those two to me.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's great.
SPEAKER_02Um, and I wrote a play and performed performed it in January called Letters of Land and Loss. Um one person play? One person well kind of, kind of, one person there, um, but there were four characters within it. So it was basically it was talking from 2050 um about what people have lost due to climate collapse. Um, and the four characters were the activist, which I um wrote a monologue for. We had the farmer, who I spoke to an incredible, incredible Welsh sheep farmer who's sadly passed away this lambing season. Um but what an incredible opportunity it was to have those conversations with him and to have a recording of him talking about what it's like sheep farming in Midwales. Uh we had the migrant, the climate migrant, um, which was from a dear friend that I sat on a panel with um at the start of last January, and and then it was the billionaire.
SPEAKER_00Um and it's a nice choice, an interesting choice, I think. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um and to hear what each of those characters had lost throughout this. Um and the activists, the the the story was based on um my experiences um doing climate activism growing up and the stories that that bought, um, especially around COP26 when I went to COP in 2021. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02Um and the people that I met, and a lot of a lot of it came to I had one interaction at COP26, which I will never forget. Um I was asked to speak at a breakfast board meeting with on behalf of the WWF with um another another youth ambassador, and we got there and this room was full of like really top CEOs, lots of men in suits and you know, eating their croissants and drinking the best coffee that they could find. And we stood there and nobody spoke to us. Like nobody, nobody came up to us and spoke to us, and we were sitting aside. Little did they know that we were actually opening the meeting. Um and we everyone sat down and we were asked to open, and we stood at the front of there, and it was one of the most amazing opportunities I've ever had, and I'd oh god, I'd love to do it now again, like with more years on my back. Um, but we stood there and we said to these people, we were like, we actually don't care how much money you have, or what position of power you are in, or how high up the pyramid you are, if you have children and a family and friends, which I can pretty much guarantee everyone on that room will have, they are going to be the ones that experience the actions that you are taking now. And if that is that your child may not get to live as long as you want them to, you have to think about the actions that are being taken at the top of business. And um did make manage to make a few of them cry, which is always a bit of a word.
SPEAKER_01A bit of a word.
SPEAKER_00Um that's a hard gig, first one in the morning when everyone's feeling a bit kind of sharp and brusque and what have you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And the last character in the story was from the CEO, the billionaire that I was talking to's perspective, and it was him speaking in 50 years about how what he lost and some of the family members that he lost to climate collapse, and it was the activist that then was interacting with it to be like he was basically like, I wish we listened, and not just me, I I wish so many other people listened. Um, and all of those, all of those stories were taken inspiration from nature and from different communications.
SPEAKER_00So brilliant. Uh that strikes me as a wonderful way of showing how kind of art in this case theatre actually is braided into those other things that we were talking about there. Yeah, they might start to run on separate tracks, but but lovely opportunity to be creative, to create something, yeah, but also to perform as well. That's kind of that there's yeah, there's often nothing much better than standing in front of an audience and having an effect. You can't affect everybody, but you you know, if you can affect 80% of people, that's pretty good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so much of this work is performance-based. I have a lot to thank the theatre for activism and campaigning and knowing how to organise because it's all a performance.
SPEAKER_00Um we're in we're in this deep hole, the climate hole, the nature hole, and we you know, it looks it looks a long way up to the sky, right up to the side of the hole and it's blooming hot in here. Um and we don't know how to get out, and we've got to kind of map ways to do that, creative, courageous ways that also, as you've been saying, involve togetherness from kind of being with other people. Uh, but these examples it strikes me uh uh mapping out different sorts of paths that that say actually uh that's not only important to do, it's not as hard as you think it is, yeah. Perhaps that's that's where we might be thinking about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um say something a bit about your your recommendations. So I think you've spoken quite a lot about things that you're proud of achieving, but would you point towards something uh proud that you're proud of against the odds sometimes? It's hard to can be a troubling word, but make it something that makes you feel good, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think my understanding of what an achievement is has significantly changed in the last few years. Um, and if you if I was to answer this question five years ago, four years ago even, it would be going to COP26 and standing in front of those people and having those conversations and you know leading the nature and biodiversity section of the COP March on that Friday that rained all day. Um but now, and do you know what? Those are still achievements that I am think of with fond memories, but I think my biggest achievement now is actually the people that I get to surround myself with doing this work, and I have an incredible crew of people at college who we organise together. And we recently ran a community event over a weekend, and I did the cooking for it, which is not something that I would normally, you know, it was quite a lot, um, but you know, it it wasn't a like I got to do the cooking for this, it was like being able to share that experience with other people and the conversations that came out from that, and to spend time with a group of people that I'd never met before, but to be able to you know, you know, share food that we'd grown on our on the land and to have had conversations with um whilst making the food, and I don't know, I'm not sure if this is m if this is translating in the way that I want it to, but achievements for me are are now communal and like the biggest achievement are the the lessons and stuff that I have collected from various people growing up.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant. Sometimes when we were talking about the art and the theatre, and just as you've described there, the the cooking together, we can have conversations without having to look people in the eye.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You can have the thing is happening here, you know, if we were drawing something on a piece of paper, a systems map or something like that, or agro-ecological interactions, we might be looking down and talking to each other like this, uh, which is a different form of conversation than very often political ones, which are much more direct and people feel defensive more easily and go back to their existing positions, and and it then becomes quite hard to move things along. So if you've got something that you can be doing together, sharing food, cooking food together, um uh uh writing something together, um that that opens up a different sort of conversation, I think, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does. And I think using my uh my system thinking, um this is such a complex system to try and unpack that it's not a like one size fits all kind of thing that we're gonna go through. It's uh there are so many different cogs in this, like in this way that's working that need to be looked at individually and also in how they interact with others and not just from a human perspective, from a how is this cog relating to the land, how is this relating to so many different communities that we have to think of alternative ways of communicate communicating, like you said, and so often in the activist sector I was so guilty of using this when I was younger, but being like every person has a voice, everyone has a voice in this, everyone can make a difference, and everyone can make a difference, but not everyone has a voice, and that is what is so great about other ways of looking at the issue is through art, is through music, is through cooking, you know, is through knowing how to knowing how to grow. Like the roots of agroecology were not from the West. Like, you know, that is something that people have learned and and have listened to different stories from different communities, and yeah, everyone, you know, people can make a difference, but it isn't all through verbal communication.
SPEAKER_00And you also said earlier on, which was very wise, leave no one behind. I mean that's uh it's gotta be the big challenge, yeah. And that requires another level of work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Rather than just doing the easy bit, you've got to think a little bit differently. Um a hero or a heroine in all of this. This is always such a tricky, hard your friends on the same path.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean there are there are so many different people that I could say. Uh I have immense, immense amount of respect and inspiration from um activists that are being arrested for this work. And not it's not even work, that was the wrong word, it's it's this this fight that people are are taking and how much people are sacrificing for what they know is needed. Um and the instant. Disciplinary nature of that, and um you know, climate justice and social justice look at the Palestine Action Um group that are being arrested under a terrorism act for holding a sign for wanting to protect the people and the planet. Like it's it's all it's all inter interconnected and interwoven and it's so complex. So I have huge, huge amounts of inspiration to those people. Um and also this year I've spent a lot more, I think more time than ever outside and on the land, and actually the inspiration from different non-human communities and the way that they interact with each other, and actually how we can learn a lot from that. Like like mycelium networks are and the way that they communicate and the the the threads we were talking about, like um the different cogs and the different workings in it, and I mean that is just a prime example of how they trees communicate.
SPEAKER_00Trees are not individuals, no, they're all connected up with each other.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, finding the mother tree.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly, exactly. Susan Simard, yeah. Um, and that's changed the way that people think. I mean, just knowing those that that's a a knowledge set that people largely didn't know at all about 20 years ago, a little bit 10, um, but now is taken to be a common way of seeing the world. But we see the world differently when you think that the all the plants in this location here, especially the big ones that have been here for longer, they're all connected up with each other, sharing um uh moisture, sharing nutrients, sharing signals about pests, warnings about pests coming and all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_02Community.
SPEAKER_00See it differently, community, very good, exactly. Um uh a book recommendation um one that's been important to you.
SPEAKER_02I read I love Robin Wulkimera. She is an incredible woman.
SPEAKER_00Um Braiding Sweetgrass was her first.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um I've just started gathering moss, but the one that I absolutely loved, and I think I read it in like two days over Christmas was The Service Berry. Yeah. Um and that is a really really beautiful book for thinking about alternative ways of um reciprocity, and for and it made me think a lot about economic systems as well, um, and how everything in our society is based on monetary, um monetary reciprocity, and again it's looking to the land for alternative ways, and the the the ideas and the lessons of that gave to me about mutual aid and about supporting other people and not necessarily you know doing it to get something back, doing it to support other people. Yeah, really, really good book. Okay, it's very accessible and easy to read.
SPEAKER_00Well, any form of gift. I mean, a gift that is, especially if it's not something that's been bought, but maybe it's something that's been made or created, um, is a way of dodging the capitalist system because it says it says I was thinking of you and I gave you this thing. Yeah. Um and that's a that's something that slips away.
SPEAKER_02It's such a radical, doesn't it? Yeah, it's it's yeah.
SPEAKER_00Give people something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um a recommendation. All of the viewers and listeners, if you were saying one thing that you could do, you've talked about listening to the world. We had a couple of crows just calling us. You were talking about connections to the to the to the nature around us, which was rather nice. They were speaking their voice. Um a recommendation then?
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's it's such a classic, but go outside. And I think go outside, connect with the land, and that is not something that is accessible to everyone. Um so if that is accessible for you, support other people who may not be able to in being able to go outside, um and and growing, um, growing food and flowers. I love growing flowers. Um yeah, it it's such a good way to like slow down. I one of my favourite quotes of all time is growing a garden is a beautiful and radical act, and it really, really is because it teaches you so much more. It teaches you about everything that we've spoken about today in one place. It teaches about community, mutual aid services, reciprocity, communication, everything like you know this the space that we're in is just such a prime example of that. Um, so growing and going outside and supporting those who can't easily access that.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant. Well, fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Lovely to chat to you here in the in the owls garden in Malden at the top end of the Blackwater estuary. Um a real pleasure, thank you so much. It's been a really lot of pleasure to be here.