Making Design Circular Podcast – Season 4 – In Conversation with Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts, The Bio-Leadership Project
Welcome to season four of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden, in which we’re exploring what it takes to cultivate a creative practice in which you, your business and the planet ALL get to thrive. We’ll be diving deep into the nuances, complexities and mindset shifts that we need to embrace to bring about a just transition to a more circular economy.
In this episode, Katie talks to Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts from The Bio-Leadership Project. The Bio-Leadership Project’s mission is to change the story of leadership by working with nature. A movement of people and organisations, changing human systems to be more resilient, regenerative, and designed to protect our planet.
Bio-Leadership is about challenging an outdated story of progress, about building organisations and communities that protect and replenish our world. Most importantly, it is about reconnecting human progress back into our planet’s web of life. Working at this deep paradigm level, growing a culture of interconnection, is where we support the greatest change.
During this episode Katie, Ella & Andres discuss:
- How the Bio-Leadership Project can to existence
- The importance of nature connection
- How environmentalism isn’t about sacrifice and punishment and how we can actually be more helpful as environmentalists if we’re well resourced and taking care of ourselves
- The three circle model: Self, our community and our work
- The idea of ecosophy – deep experiences, deep questioning, deep commitment
You can connect with Ella & Andres here
https://www.bio-leadership.org/
Here are some highlights:
Collectively shifting what the story of human progress can be
“The Bio Leadership Project effectively says there are there are different stories of what human progress looks like, and they can work with nature, and they can be inspired by nature. And even more than that, they can place people or humans back into being part of nature. Its about validating as many different stories as possible and needed. What we’ve seen is that there are just hundreds, if not 1000s, of amazing, inspired, courageous people saying, Yeah, we can change the story, we’re going to do it. And it’s just that they’re all still swimming against the tide, you know, including ourselves, and nobody can do it alone. So the bio Leadership Project and the bio leadership fellowship are ways of helping these people and projects to connect, to share learning, hope and encouragement, and hopefully helping collectively to shift what the story of human progress can be, to care for life.
A change is needed in how we measure leadership
“We as individuals, but collectively, and then sort of as human society probably need a different set of qualities around how we navigate this moment in time and how we bring a positive change to the world. And you could argue that we’re all a little bit conditioned by a way of acting, a way of being, a way of behaving that’s about pushing, it’s about driving, it’s about achieving outcomes. And so if we were to just continuously repeat those behaviours, we might just end up with the same outcomes, even if the intention is to do good things in the world. What if, as humans, we had a different dashboard, what if we measure our progress in a different way? What qualities would that require? We need more resilience, we need more connection, we need more systemic awareness, the capacity to understand how things work as whole systems and flow as whole system. We need to be able to navigate and adapt better. What if leadership was measured by those things?
Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thích_Nhất_Hạnh
Ecology of Wisdom by Arne Naess
There is no point of no return by Arne Naess
Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman by Rebecca Tamas
Sky Above, Earth Below: Spiritual practice in nature buy John P Milton
The Spaceship Earth Podcast with Dan Burgess
Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world: Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.
Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.
Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!
Spread the Word:
Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world!
If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?
Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ – just click here.
And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_
About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years’ experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.
Below is a transcript of our conversation. Find the full episode available to listen on Spotify here.
INTRO
Welcome to season four of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden, in which we’re exploring what it takes to cultivate a creative practice in which you, your business and the planet ALL get to thrive. We’ll be diving deep into the nuances, complexities and mindset shifts that we need to embrace to bring about a just transition to a more circular economy.
PODCAST SNIPPET
You could argue that we’re all a little bit conditioned by a way of acting, a way of being, a way of behaving that’s about pushing, it’s about driving, it’s about achieving outcomes. And so if we were to just continuously repeat those behaviours, we might just end up with the same outcomes, even if the intention is to do good things in the world. What if, as humans, we had a different dashboard, what if we measure our progress in a different way? What qualities would that require? We need more resilience, we need more connection, we need more systemic awareness, the capacity to understand how things work as whole systems and flow as whole system. We need to be able to navigate and adapt better. What if leadership was measured by those things?
EPISODE INTRO
Hello and welcome to another episode of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden. I am so excited about this episode. I have been a member of something called the Bio-Leadership Fellowship for most of this year and I was about to say I’ve learned so much but actually, I’ve unlearned so much and what I realised very early into the program was that its a process of unlearning and a process of learning how to be rather then what to do. I’ve absorbed a lot of this sort of thinking already into Making Design Circular and one of the quotes which is from Thích Nhất Hạnh that I picked up in the Bio-Leadership Fellowship is “To take care of the environment take care of the environmentalist”. And this chimes so nicely with the nurture pillar of the Maing Design Circular methodology that I invited two key members of the Bio-Leadership team, Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts, to come and talk to us about just that. So enjoy the episode.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Katie Treggiden
Could you start by introducing yourselves and tell us a little bit about kind of your background and how you came to be involved in the bio leadership fellowship and also how the bio leadership fellowship came to sort of come into existence?
Andres Roberts
Yeah, I can start. I have been guiding for like, I’ve been guiding people into experiences where they can feel more of themselves for a long time. And in my 20s, I set up a little project that was about playfulness. So I would help people kind of experience play. And I couldn’t help but contrast that to so many work environments and work situations where I were, I did want to work for an organisation and I looked behind me and I saw someone who I was a friend and she just looked so asleep to the world, she looked so sad. And so I started to guide experiences, where people could feel a little bit more whole, more playful. But all of that time, sort of over 20 years, really, I’ve been interested in bigger systems change bigger sorts of movements that are that are good for people. And then about 12 years ago, I did a master’s programme that was about it was called responsible business practice. And I thought it was going to be a bit like a green MBA, I thought it was going to be about like different kinds of sorts of organisational structure. But from day one, it was the most breathtaking thing it was about how we have come to see the world from this place of detachment from nature, and how so many of our systems have come from that place. And by good fortune, someone who I was on that programme with was also a nature guide a Canyoning guide in the Pyrenees. And apparently he’s he’s a really dear friend of mine, to this day. And he said, Hey, you know, I do this thing where I take people into nature, and leave them alone for a while, would you like to collaborate with me and do more of that. And I did it for myself the first time. It changed my life. And we’ve hosted that experience for lots of other people. And we’ve seen that it really moves people’s lives. So that’s the first moment where I thought, boy, what would we need more stories, and we need to help more people reconnect with nature in that way, so that they change the systems around them. That’s the start of it, but maybe I can hand over to Ella so you can sort of say the rest of the, of the story.
Ella Wiles
I guess, I guess I mean, I can, I can kind of share a little bit of my story in terms of leading up to the moment whereby leadership was created as well. But maybe that maybe that is a good place to start. I mean, for me, I kind of I left Sussex University doing geography and development, and I started this kind of three years really working with human rights and people focused on displacement of land. But also kind of people were trying to navigate the asylum system in this country, and that, that experience really fired me up. I think it kind of gave me this inner charge in this in the question of where can I place myself and what can I do? And, and through there, I thought, right, I definitely want to develop myself into more of a leadership position and kind of have a little bit more sway a little bit more power with this. I felt a bit helpless with it all as well as being fired up. And I went to Sweden and did a MSC there and in a way, I had a bit of a contrasting experience to Andres in that he found his path through his MSC I found it was a lot of linearity, It was a lot of strategic thinking and a lot of kind of planning. And it was, you know, back costing analysis and circular thinking and product, lifestyle, you know, service systems, that kind of thing. But there was something in it that just felt very, very heady and very kind of linear, almost like the thinking of the past. And then from that point, I kind of really rebelled on that path. And went, I moved to London for about five, six years. I just had this realisation of things like feeling like I just want to start I’m just going to get going and I’m going to start in a small way. And from there I just, I moved into this beautiful community space where I became a community garden leader and kind of ran this garden, ran a programme of events around nature connection mainly for young people. And from there I really just kind of found the wind in my sails, you know, it was a very DIY existence for kind of about four or five years, setting up nature education programmes, setting up different gardens around London, creating partnerships with different gardens and different spaces and green corridors and just finding my feet with this feeling of right, who are the allies? You know, how can I affect this in a small way? So it was probably my point to kind of get, get to where I am now. So it was kind of those things of nature connection, but also the dynamic nature of being able to work in a small enough organisation that can make quite a big impact. And I think that’s kind of the position that I was in when certainly when I met Andres, and kind of he had the start of bio leadership and the ideas around that. Do you want to say a bit more about the leadership thing?
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, tell us a little bit about kind of what it is and how it came to be from those two paths meeting.
Andres Roberts
The bio leadership project as a whole, is based on a premise that the business as usual story of progress, like, leadership, in a way is just a hackneyed catch all term really, for, we think about it as how human systems move and how they grow. And, and so it’s a little bit tongue in cheek, how we use leadership. But the premise is dead serious, it’s like, right, there is a dominant, still dominant form of progress of human leadership, that’s based on a set of principles that no longer servers, in fact, more than that, they’re actually a root cause of so many of the things we’re trying to put right or better in the world. So, you know, it’s that story of continuous unchecked growth, strange kinds of competition, waste, the drive to grow consumption, but also beneath all of that length to some of what I said earlier, about how I got into all of this, a worldview of disconnection, you know, this, this idea that we’re disconnected, we’re separate, and that we should compete in strange ways. And the Bio Leadership Project effectively says, Actually, there are there are different stories of what human progress looks like. And they can work with nature, and they can be inspired by nature. And even more than that, they can place people or humans back into being part of nature. And then we sort of set up the bio Leadership Project, the first seeds of it really were earlier than six years ago, but it was formally sort of, you know, announced this, right, okay, we’re gonna do this. And when we did that, I found myself saying like, this is about validating different stories are possible and needed. And actually, since then, what we see is that there are just hundreds, if not 1000s, of amazing, inspired, you know, courageous, people saying, Yeah, we can change the story, we’re going to do it. And it’s just that they’re all still swimming against the tide, you know, including ourselves, and nobody can do it alone. So the bio Leadership Project and the bio leadership fellowship are ways of helping these people and projects to connect, to share learning, and hope and encouragement, and hopefully helping collectively to shift what the story of human progress can be, to care for life.
Katie Treggiden
Amazing. Ella, Andres has talked about this idea of working towards better forms of human progress by working with nature. And you talked a lot about this idea of nature connection just now. Why is it so important? How do we find those better forms of progress by being in connection with nature?
Ella Wiles
Such a juicy question, Katie. I mean, it’s, I mean, it comes down to this feeling, I think, for me, of being part of a bigger system. You know, it’s that is it at its core, it removes this kind of fallacy of separation that we’ve got, you know, we’ve talked about it in the past on the programme, and in the work, we do this, we’re used to a very mechanised mindset and view of the world of, you know, the world is something that can be controlled, or maximised or pushed beyond its kind of resource limits, you know, that there’s we’ve got this very, you know, extractive way of being in the world. And I don’t, you know, I think you can even look at a process like lockdown and the pandemic of feeling this sense of separation, but how that’s also being contested that, you know, the one things that that really links us is this kind of belonging to the natural world, we are of this place, you know, the, the economy is something that has been created by us, and it’s the process of going out into nature, I think, in a very, very small way positions ourselves as a kind of equal to each other and to the world around us. And so it Yeah, in a larger kind of more abstract way, it shows that the kind of forms of progress that we used to aren’t really serving us, and we need a different way. But I think there’s also a sense of, certainly from my own experience of going off into nature for weeks, days, you know, and having that sense of reflection of connection with where I am of feeling part of that bigger system. For me, it’s kind of helped me develop ways of being and capacities that I don’t think there were, there certainly weren’t spaces where I could develop those in the education system that I grew up in, or in the workplaces that I’ve been a part of. It feels like a different form of learning and a different form of skill that has been cultivated from having that practice of going out into nature. And it you know, this is both from being camping, running, just being able to have wild swimming, you know, those processes of being able to go out. But yeah, I think fundamentally it helps reposition, for me, this sense of I, We and us and all being part of it. And it removes some of the kind of screens that we can and lenses that we can see the world through. So I think, bringing in that form of knowledge, you know, bio leadership, we talk about multiple forms of knowledge of thinking, being only part of it, but their sense of being and capacity cultivation being the second part. The third part being community collaboration, working together. So being able to kind of get out of our heads, you know, being able to kind of be led by our hearts and develop those capacities and doing that together is such a powerful, powerful way of doing things, whether you’re in a community garden in central London, or whether you’re, you know, in the most beautiful wild mountains in the world, there’s, they can all be settings for developing capacities like that.
Katie Treggiden
So interesting, you should say that, because we’ve all been on a nature retreat together. And it was really interesting how quickly we were humbled by the, by the weather, there was a lot of water. And I think I arrived on that retreat very much with the idea of I have to build a capacity to do this on my own. And almost immediately, I was like, No I don’t, I have to build the capacity to learn how to ask for help, which is this almost immediate switch of I can’t do this on my own. There’s lots of people around me who are very kind and know what they’re doing and so it would make sense to accept the help that’s being offered and that was a really humbling experience for me. Andres one of the things you said to us on that retreat, as a phrase, which has lived with me, ever since, which is to take care of the environment to take care of the environmentalist. And one of the sort of pillars of making design circular, which is the membership group that I run, is about this idea of nurture, about this idea of doing exactly that, to take care of the environment take care of the environmentalist. So could you speak a little bit to that idea, because I think a lot of people think environmentalism is about sacrifice, it’s about going without, and in fact, a lot of activism I think people think is about this idea of almost sort of punishment, rather than this idea that actually we can be more helpful in this movement if we’re well resourced, and taken care of.
Andres Roberts
Yeah, definitely. And this frame that it’s a fight, you know, that it’s a, it’s a constant fight against something, or, also, I feel like there’s something around them from a place of activism, or environmentalism, making oneself smaller, and, you know, taking it to the man, you know, which is needed in a way, but also, sometimes it can be exhausting. So for me that where some of this so that the quote actually comes from a really beautiful passage written by Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Zen Buddhist monk, who’s has written many amazing things about caring for the environment, and the way that I translate it, or how I make sense of it, and the way we speak about it with the bio Leadership Project is that we as individuals, but collectively, and then sort of as human society probably need a different set of qualities around how we navigate this moment in time and how we bring a positive change to the world. And, and you could argue that we’re all a little bit conditioned by a way of acting a way of being a way of, you know, behaving, that’s about pushing, it’s about driving, it’s about achieving outcomes. And, you know, in to use the sort of Daoist terms or Chinese that you know, it’s very yang. It’s very sort of constant, go, go, go, go go. And so if we were to just continuously repeat those behaviours, we might just end up with the same outcomes, even if the intention is to do good things in the world. And we’re really interested by the fact that Okay, what if, what if, as humans, we had a different dashboard, what if we measure our progress in a different way? What qualities would that require? And I and I speak a lot about, for example, or we write a lot about, we need more resilience, we need more connection, we need more systemic awareness, you know, the capacity to understand how things work as whole systems and flow as whole system. We need to be able to navigate and adapt better. So you know, adaptability is important. And I think love, you know, we need to be able to go about our lives with a great deal of care and loving, you know, what if leadership was measured by those things. And so, I don’t think we can learn those things, by reading a textbook or drafting a really incredible strategy, like we cultivate those qualities with by understanding them within ourselves, that they’re embodied practices. And that’s at the heart of that, that statement for me that, how on earth are we able to care for something else, if we haven’t understood what, what it means to care for ourselves.
Katie Treggiden
To both give and receive that love, right, within the same, you know, to offer it to ourselves, and to receive it from ourselves is teaching us how then to turn that outward?
Andres Roberts
Exactly, you know, and all of those nuances around how to care for something. And then, of course, you know, there’s just the sort of, it’s almost maths isn’t it? If we don’t look after ourselves, we can’t keep going to do it. And the whole thing of resilience and looking after ourselves, for the long term becomes an important point.
Katie Treggiden
And I think that’s the bit I’d understood is we sort of have to fill our own cup, you know, put your own gas mask on first, before we put anybody else’s on sort. But again, that sort of plays into that sort of linear productivity, you know, I’m only looking after myself so that I can, rather than just inherently I’m worthy of being loved and looked after. And I think that’s what you just explained, that idea of kind of learning how to give and receive love to yourself is a deeper understanding of that. And on that same retreat, you drew three circles on the floor with a stick. I’m now going to ask you, if you can explain that model without even the stick or the circles on the ground. The three circles model isn’t that sort of dives into this stuff a little bit more deeply. And I would love to hear you talk about that a little bit just to build on what you’ve just said.
Andres Roberts
Yeah, and it was when I saw this presented to me, it was an unforgettable moment in my life. And this was also Thích Nhất Hạnh, who, you know, people, if you listeners don’t know, he was a Buddhist monk, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. for going out and helping people. He really believed in what, then we can’t, you know, this practice of engaged Buddhism, developed from a lot of what Thích Nhất Hạnh sort of spoken wrote about, but his idea was, if there are people suffering, then let’s go out and help them, let’s not stay behind closed doors. And then he shared, he would share this model, this illustration of three circles, one small, one medium, one large, and he would speak about the fact that the small circle represents the self, the medium circle represents our loved ones, our inner circle, our close community, and then the large circle represents our work. And, and he would say that, what we tend to do in life is give all of ourselves, we give so much of the small circle to the big circle, you know, to work with, quite often a capital W probably like, that’s my work, and that’s who I am. And that’s what defines me. And of course, through that, we give so much energy, so much of our identity, so much of our sense of self away. And he would say, you know, maybe that’s not the best approach. And maybe the best approach is, and he would draw an arrow from the edge of the smallest circle back into the centre of the small circle, and say, maybe before we can do anything well, we have to bring ourselves home. And that’s the language he would use. And he would do this really lovely motion of cradling a baby. And he would say, can you bring yourself home, like a mother would hold the baby, which I take to mean, you know, hold it with the great deal of care with a great deal of compassion, whatever it is, that is happening in your life, whatever it is that is emerging in a given moment, or in a given phase of life. What would it be like to meet it within yourself as if it was the most precious thing as if it’s something that couldn’t look after itself, you know, like a little baby. And then he said, when we do that, well, then we’re in a place to go to well, our inner circle and look after those closest to us. And when we do that well, then we can go to our work and do that better.
Katie Treggiden
And that work being defined as our purpose perhaps rather than our job.
Andres Roberts
Yes, exactly. And then I suppose the best parts of our work are when we bring those qualities into it, regardless of task or job. As you’re saying, I hope I did it. All right, without a stick.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, that was lovely. And as I spent this weekend with the newest member of our family who is 12 weeks old. And so that, that that sort of rocking the baby thing didn’t really resonate with me the last time you explained it, but this time, I’ve got a very recent memory of holding of very tiny babies. So yeah, that was really beautiful, beautiful.
AD BREAK
I want to use this opportunity of a little sort of mini ad break of sorts to tell you about three things that I think you might be interested in. The first is my latest book Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world, which came out in May 2023, with Ludion the publisher of my last four books, and I’m so excited about it. Jay blades was kind enough to write the foreword, and it explores the role of mending and repair in a world where we don’t really need to mend anymore. So I’m looking at the social and cultural roles that mending is playing. And those include mending as restoration of function, which you might sort of immediately think of when you think of repair, but also repair a storytelling repair as activism, repair as healing, and even the regeneration of natural systems as a form of repair. It profiles 28, amazing menders, fixers, hackers, remakers, curators and artists. And it is the book I’m the most proud of so far. And I know I always say that, but I really am, it came out of my research at Oxford and I think it makes an important and new contribution to the field of writing on repair. So if you want to get your hands on a copy, the link is in the show notes.
I would also love to tell you about a free resource I have created called cultivating hope in the face of the environmental crisis. And the reason I have made this freely available is because I think it’s so important. If we don’t believe that change is possible and if we don’t believe we have some agency in bringing about that change, we won’t act. So cultivating hope is a three part mini course that’s all delivered direct to your inbox. And it helps you to move through feelings of despair and hopelessness. It helps you to reconnect with nature and that sort of brilliant effect that we know natural spaces have on our wellbeing. And it helps you to start taking aligned action. So if the relentless news cycle has got you feeling, kind of feeling all the doom and gloom, then check that out. Again, the link is in the show notes.
And finally, I want to tell you about making design circular the membership. So if you are a designer, a maker, an artist or a crafts person, and you feel drawn to sustainability, regeneration, environmentalism, whatever you want to call it, this is for you. It is an online membership community of brilliant, gorgeous, imperfect souls who have come together to try to make progress in this area. And it’s all built around the idea that you can pour into yourself and take care of yourself and pour into your creative practice and your expression and exploration of creativity and pour into your business and turn all of this or keep all this as a profitable business and benefit the planet. And we want all of those things in alignment so that pouring into any one of them benefits the others and that’s what the membership is built around. The strapline is rewild your creative practice so that you your business and the planets can thrive. So if that sounds like something that you need in your life, again, the link is in the show notes. All right, well, I will hand you back over to this fabulous conversation. Thank you.
MAIN PODCAST
Ella, one of the things I said to you kind of fairly shortly after joining the fellowship was that I’m increasingly sensing that this work is about how to be as much as it is about what to do or how to do it. And I think I sort of arrived thinking, I would learn what to do and how to do it. And I’m increasingly realising it’s about unlearning a lot of stuff I thought I knew about what to do and how to do it and actually learning more about how to be. Would you say that was a sort of fair reflection of the work of the fellowship?
Ella Wiles
Well, Katie, I loved it. I hope we haven’t let you down. Yeah I mean I think that’s a beautiful reflection of the fellowship. And it’s, it’s definitely true. You know, there’s, in a way, it brings me great comfort that in this work, and this work being how do we work towards, you know, much more life centred world or regenerative world or whatever term you want to use. In this work, everyone, you know, we come across some amazing speakers and contributors, organisations, individuals who are giving it a good old go, and are really trying to get there and not, you know, each one of them has got their challenges, and they’re not quite nailing it. But there’s so many examples of brilliant practice, brilliant questions, and being in it in a brilliant way. So I think that that’s the first point for me that the fellowship the bio leadership does in many ways, which is, you know, not one single person or organisation has the answers for this. So there’s so much of it comes down to, you know, the three circles analogy that that example is we need to know ourselves, we need to know our community, we need to be held in that space. We need to be able to ask really good questions, we need to be able to have good shared inquiries that are really rich, and having spaces which I hope the fellowship is one, to practice together in sharing what comes up, in looking at good stories, in being inspired by good stories. And I think, you know, doing that work well, along with nature has been this amazing guide of self knowing of connection of commitment, you know, I think is such a kind of powerful, powerful space. And then in that it’s the how to be is all about how we can develop those capacities of being, you know, to really strengthen ourselves to care for the environmentalist, but also to support other people’s inquiries and work more as a kind of as a we rather than an I in that space.
Katie Treggiden
I can remember one of the first breakout groups I was put in, I’m in the third cohort, is that right? Yeah. So there was some people from the first cohort who I refer to as elders. And I landed in this group, and there was me and three people from the first cohort, and I can immediately tell that they were from the first cohort, and we sort of chatted for a bit. And then after a little while, they said, Oh, we should probably let you know, we all know each other from the first cohort. And I was like, Yeah, I can tell. And I, sort of they asked me what my inquiry was, because we all sort of come to the fellowship with it with a question with an inquiry, and I said, I don’t know yet. And there was just this moment of silence. And they all broke into huge smiles and just sort of put their hearts on their chests and it was just this lovely scent. And then they all sort of clapped and made the sort of silent clapping symbol to say, well done. You don’t know. Yeah, that’s good. And, you know, there are many groups, and perhaps not so much now. But even a couple of years ago, there’s no way I would have admitted to a bunch of people two years ahead of me, I didn’t know what I was doing, I would have blagged it. And I’m good at blagging it. And it was so interesting that in that space, firstly, I felt comfortable to say I don’t know. And it was so beautifully received. And there was just sort of this sense of holding space for that uncertainty and that sort of feeling my way and it was just it was a lovely example of sort of how to be and how to hold space for someone who doesn’t know yet and rather than offering advice or suggestions, it was just like, that’s brilliant. You don’t know Yeah, well done. It was is a really magical, magical moment.
Andres I have a post it note up on my pinboard from another one of our calls, which has in the middle the word ecosophy. I hope I’m pronouncing that right. And then around the edge, it has three phrases with arrows in a circle, we’re having to do a lot of describing for this audio only experience. It has deep experiences, and then a little arrow which leads to deep questioning, and then a little arrow which leads to deep commitment, which then leads back to deep experiences. And then in the middle, as I said, there’s this word ecosophy, which is something that I noted down on another one of our fellowship calls. And I would love to explore with you a little bit about what this means, what this little diagram represents, and also how it relates to some of the work we’ve been talking about in terms of sort of nature connection and showing up and holding space in ways where perhaps not used to.
Andres Roberts
I’d love to see your pin board, but it’s full of cracking things. So that it’s almost like an equation, isn’t it, but I’m using that word deliberately because it was Arne Naess was a Norwegian philosopher, and a very, very brilliant mind and person. And so he developed this field really, which he framed as deep ecology. And he described it as, it almost it doesn’t sound quite right to compare it to the word shallow but it was the notion that, and I think it probably isn’t unfair to say that we live such busy lives. And we have so much to think about all of the time, that maybe we don’t give ourselves space to go beyond the quick thinking and the shallow reflection, you know, and so he would say, actually, when it comes to being in relationship with the living world, like of looking after it, of experiencing it fully, what is it to start with great intention to ask big questions of our lives and what is possible, and then to create deep experiences where we get to feel in different ways. And from there, we start to see, you know, a different level of deeper, deeper understanding and deeper commitment. And I suppose we see it in loads of different ways. You know, I wouldn’t say it’s only about the way that you know, we’ve come to do it through the bio leadership project, I think, you know, growing food and art and singing and, you know, time with loved ones, these are all moments where when we ask the question of how we might want to live life or do good things in life and use those spaces as places that where we love living, but also where we get to live about what it is, or learn sorry about what we want to bring to the world. It just increases the quality. And I definitely, there’s something that you know, I find myself saying all of the time is when we take the time to listen to nature in a deeper way, a different kind of knowledge emerges. And I’ve seen it I’ve seen people take the time to it might sound crazy amounts might sometimes be inaccessible, but sometimes even just an hour, sometimes, you know, maybe a few hours, we run programmes where people will be alone for a few days, of course, but I see people come back and go like, now I understand that differently. Now I get it in a different way. And it seems to be really helpful knowledge.
Katie Treggiden
And I think like the commitment part is where I am as you know, I’ve had a couple of false starts on my first solo camp, the most recent one, I got two hours sleep and twisted my ankle so that’s the latest false start that I haven’t updated you on yet. But it’s that thing of the sort of, I think the questioning is really important, because it’s like, what am I actually trying to get out of this? Why am I here? You know, what is it? I’ve got a dream to walk the whole of the Cornish coastal path. And I thought I had to wild camping at all. And it’s do I or is that just actually an extra barrier that I’m putting in my way of spending this time on the coastal path and circumnavigating the county that I grew up in, which is what I really want to do is to reconnect with Cornwall. And so it’s that sense of maybe I’m not a camper, and maybe that’s okay. Or maybe the first time I do it, I don’t wild camp but the third time I do it, maybe I will. And so I think it’s so interesting to have that sort of continued exploration, the commitment to doing something but you know, having that questioning of what is it that you’re trying to do as a result of some of those deep experiences, so I find it quite such an interesting model to just kind of keep going round and round.
Andres Roberts
I mean, I love that. And what, two thoughts two quick thoughts come to mind one is, so there’s a gentleman called John P. Milton, who I learned a lot from and still do, who helped me grow in my work guiding people in, in what we call nature quests. And I was once with him, you know, doing a very sort of preparing for a very deep, long solo, and he just said to me, there’s no need to suffer. Like, it’s not, it’s not about it’s not, it’s not about conquering nature, or, you know, fighting back or an endurance of any kind, it’s, it’s about making a different quality of seeing and sensing the world. So that we can learn in a different way. And there’s many ways of doing that. Really, really. And then also, you know, obviously, there are many indigenous communities in Earth-centred cultures around the world that have worked with sorts of practices of going into nature alone. But the fascinating thing is that, through a western mindset, we think it’s about being alone, when actually, the end to end experience is far from it, your community help you prepare. In some traditions, you take prayer pouches or messages, when you go out into the wilderness, and the community will be singing songs for you, whilst you’re out there. And then when you come back, you share your story, and people will say, Thanks for bringing this story back to us this is also how we can use that story. So we do it for ourselves, but we do it for the good of everybody else as well.
Katie Treggiden
And there’s also that sense of you’re, if you’re paying attention, you’re never alone, right? There’s always birds and insects and creatures and weather. And there’s so much going on isn’t there and when you actually you can sort of see it as this barren, empty wilderness to be conquered, or actually, this thing that’s teeming with life, it just happens mostly not to be human life. So yeah, I find that really interesting as well. Right? Before we move on to the quickfire round, I would love to ask each of you for a piece of advice for my listeners, they’re mostly designers, makers, artists and crafts people, most of them are running solo creative practices, that might be as a side hustle or they might have maybe one team member, certainly not businesses that are much bigger than that, or creative practices that are much bigger than that. Often, they’ve got a day job, caring responsibilities, kind of very full lives. What one piece of advice would you give them on how to kind of nurture themselves to take care of the environmentalist to kind of pour into that first circle, and nurture themselves as a sort of first step towards some of the stuff we’ve been talking about?
Ella Wiles
Great question. I mean, it sounds like you’ve got, you know, folks in silos trying to trying to make a buck and trying to make some beautiful art and speak to what’s important in the world. And I mean, my first thought is just find each other, you know, the amount of people that come to us and they say, Well I’m holding these questions, but I’m in a silo and I’m just being connected with other people in finance, or other storytellers or other, you know, people have the same and this is such beauty that happens when people find each other and sit around questions and, you know, resourcing the environmentalist, if that can be done in nature with a swim and a walk and a time together, like what and bought a magical experience. So that would be my one piece.
Katie Treggiden
It’s so interesting, I ran a session a couple of weeks ago that 200 odd people came to, and I had to have them answer various questions, thinking it would be useful to see all the different answers, but actually the amount of people who were just like so many people here and they all feel just like I do about this and there was almost like value had been offered before I started speaking just by all these other people signed up for this to, this sense that there’s so many people out there battling with the same ,let’s not use the word battling, gently exploring the same questions and challenges within their creative practices. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s really important. Andres?
Andres Roberts
A few things come to mind. But one would be, the words, do it your way came to mind as you said it Katie, you know, even of all of the things we’ve just said, I love when you said, I just want to get to meet Cornwall and hang out with Cornwall, and establish that relationship without you know being, so it’s not for me, there’s something around this isn’t a topic. It’s not a scene. It’s not a fix. It’s not a meme. It’s more about being that place being in that place that we feel where we feel most at home, we can be most ourselves. And, you know, I keep saying this at the moment, but um, I have a four year old daughter, what I’ve come to learn through working with nature is that when we, there’s a way of being with nature, where we’re, all of a sudden, we feel like we’re at home, and like we belong, like, we all belong to life and to nature. And there’s a lot of life that takes us away from that, you know, there’s a lot of life and human conditioning that takes us away from, you know, feeling like we have to be better or doing it right or doing it this way, or that, and so on, and so on. And for me, there’s just something around, find a place you love, go and take some time to be there. Do it your way, whether it’s writing or singing, or, you know, laying rainfall on you, and so on and so on. Just be in love with it, just, you know, enjoy it from the heart, and there’s no right or wrong way of doing it, just do what makes your heart sing is what came to mind.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think it’s so important, isn’t it because even when we go and do these things, I’m just thinking back to that sense of you haven’t got to be uncomfortable as well. Because that idea of I have this little rucksack that I keep by my front door that’s got like a sketchbook and it’s got something to sit on. And it’s kind of if I’m gonna go and spend a bit of time in nature, I grab that and take it with me. And that came out of a programme I did with Agnes Becker called We are Stardust and she called it your adventure rucksack. And two of the things on the list of things to pack are a flask of tea and a flapjack. Like, I love that you’ve thought about all the practical things, but also just that real sense of, I want a cup of tea and a flapjack while I’m out in nature. It just, it was just such a lovely way of yeah, this hasn’t got to be uncomfortable or hasn’t got to look a certain way. It hasn’t got to be you know, I do. I do yoga on the beach with an amazing teacher called Alessia Ray and she’s been doing it for years and years and has built up quite an Instagram following. And it means that some people come down in the summer and they very much want the photo off the beach yoga rather than the experience of doing the beach yoga. And it’s that sort of thing of, Im usually at the back of the front doing it all wrong and mucking up the photos and but yeah, it’s absolutely about kind of getting out of it what you need to get out of it in that moment, isn’t it rather than getting that kind of Instagram worthy look at me connecting with nature moment. So yeah, cool. Awesome. Good advice, right. quick fire round. I’m gonna go Ella then Andres with each question. First one is the best book you have read or listened to lately, and it can be related to the stuff we’ve been talking about or completely unrelated.
Ella Wiles
A book I’ve been telling every, this is a book I read about four months ago, so it’s a little bit older, but it’s absolutely genius, Rebecca Tamas Strangers. It’s essays about how we relate to nature and she writes in the most exquisite way, Rebecca Tamas, she’s look her up.
Andres Roberts
Mine is Patti Smith, Just Kids just read it and absolutely loved it.
Katie Treggiden
Nice, I’m writing these down because I’m going to put them on my list too. Favourite podcast?
Ella Wiles
I feel like I want to I want to say this because it’s a dear friend of our,s and I’ve just heard a brilliant one with the lawyer Paul Powlesland, is our friend Dan Burgess Spaceship Earth podcast and really recommend the Paul Powlesland and one about caring for a river with both macro activism and micro activism and how they can kind of meet in the middle.
Katie Treggiden
Nice.
Andres Roberts
I’m not great at podcasts, I’m going to practice a bit more but what I what mine is, Radio three have got a programme called Unclassified, which as the name suggests, is music that they find hard to classify into whatever genre and I love listening to that, because it takes me to that place both of peaceful and inspired and open to new experience. So, I’m gonna say unclassified.
Katie Treggiden
Nice, I love that. I don’t know that one either. Ella, finish the sentence circularity is
Ella Wiles
Working with change, or yeah, working with both the life and death cycle and being aware of what that means to you and how to bring that into life and work.
Andres Roberts
Circularity is continuous.
Katie Treggiden
Love these, this is my favourite question, it always elicits the best answers. Ella, one thing you wish that sustainable designer makers and craft people knew.
Ella Wiles
Just that they’re not alone. The questions they’re holding, others are probably holding in their own way. There’s so many people out there that you know we can connect across the silos so yeah, they’re not alone.
Andres Roberts
Mine is going to be very similar. And we’ve said not alone, a number of times through the conversation, haven’t we. I think, what popped into my mind a couple of minutes ago was our strengths are also our weaknesses, I’ve really come to sort of see that more in myself and in others and the way that I sometimes with our work we help others. That the thing that makes us brilliant also can become the thing that we most overuse when we’re under pressure or rely on, or it becomes the cross that we kind of bare because we’re so good at it. So there’s something about when things feel tough, or when we want to catch up with something, and just skillfully going, Yeah, I want to use my superpower. But I also can over rely on my superpower or my talents or gifts.
Katie Treggiden
And I think the opposite is true, right? Our greatest weaknesses are also often our greatest strengths. I think Brene Brene very many years ago, ran a course before she was quite as super famous as she is now which I was lucky enough to get on and take. And she talked about this idea of every one of your traits, having a kind of bright side and a shadow side. And understanding that everything that you’re good at and you rely on also has a risk and everything that makes you vulnerable also has a power. And I think it’s such an incredible way to forgive yourself. It’s kind of understanding that the things that are hardest to accept about yourself are also the things that make you brilliant, and the things that make you brilliant also, like you know, could be your downfall. It’s such a fascinating way of understanding other parts of yourself. Brilliant. Last one, Ella best or worst life or business advice you’ve ever been given.
Ella Wiles
Alright, so I’ve answered this from a business perspective, best advice, I would say is don’t look at competition make up your own rules, principles. Worst advice I’ve ever been given is, it was something along the lines of you should always follow the business plan. It was really rubbish.
Andres Roberts
Mine, worst thing I’ve ever done is listen to myself is, I thought I knew how to do it, back onto the thing of no one can do it by themselves. But I spent a lot of my 20s really arrogantly assuming that I could work it all out and I could do it a better, better way. And I really wish I would have not listened to myself then. And or believe so much in that voice. And then it’s a bit cheesy, but there is there’s a book called from good to great, which is a little bit sort of an old school text, you know, management textbook, but there’s something in there where they said that, you know, one of the best things to do is get the right people on the bus. That’s really brilliant. That’s, I mean, I’ll be honest, when I wrote this down, I was like, well, one of the best things someone suggested I do is speak to this particular person called Ella. Well, you know, and when, when Ella and I met, we, Ella joked that we were like two aliens from different planets. But we really found amazing ways to work together. And I’m so like, happy doesn’t do it. Just this really, the fact that we’ve met and the fact that we work together on this project. Mean I don’t you know, you don’t have to know where you’re going. You just have the right people on the bus, they have to help us get there.
Ella Wiles
That’s really sweet. I think it is also testament to and I’m I mean, we’re on a zoom call right now. And I’m putting hearts on the screen that for all the listeners.
Katie Treggiden
I know, the amount of hearts popping up on the screen that our listeners can’t see.
Ella Wiles
It’s also testament to finding folks with a different, you know, a different way of seeing the world or certainly explaining the world. And I think that’s that some of the magical moments and conversations that I think we’ve had, me and Andres have had and the rest of the team have come out from really trying to understand how someone’s perceiving what’s important and explaining the principles that are important to them. And a lot of magic comes from comes from that dialogue and that patience, patience being a big thing, a big characteristic as well.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah. And I think it’s something we don’t do so much anymore, right? People have become very siloed. And genuinely trying to understand somebody else’s point of view is a rare and special thing I think. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for a beautiful conversation and some wonderful insights. I can’t wait for my listeners to hear it.
Ella Wiles
Katie, thank you for sitting and chatting to us. It’s been really fun. Yeah. Thanks, Katie. Amazing
OUTRO
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden. It is so lovely to know that there are people out there tuning into these conversations. If you found that interesting, I would love to connect with you on Instagram, I am on @katietreggiden.1. And if you’re a designer, maker, artist or crafts person who’s interested in sustainability and environmentalism, then please also follow @making_design_circular_ and both of those are in the shownotes. You can also follow my email newsletter there. I would be super grateful if you’re listening to this on an iPhone or iPad or other Apple device if you could leave us a review on Apple podcasts. I think that’s the only podcast platform that takes reviews, but it’s incredibly helpful to help people find us and make sure that more and more people are finding this message. So if you could take a couple of moments just to leave a review there that would be amazing. And I would also like to say a quick thank you to the incredible Kirsty Spain, who produces and edits this podcast and keeps me on track so that these episodes actually make it into your ears. So thank you very much, Kirsty.
All copy is reproduced here as it was supplied by Katie Treggiden to the client or publication.
Recent Posts
Advertisement