In this episode, Katie talks to Elle Bower Johnston. Elle (she/they) is a body witch. Their work is the alchemisation of breathwork, somatic, and rest practices with witchcraft and folk magic. She works with creatives, witches, queers, change-makers, weirdos - folks who might not necessarily feel like they belong in ‘wellness’ or ‘spiritual’ spaces - to help them get into deeper their relationship with their body and connect with their magic.

Her work is queer- and trans-centred, trauma-conscious, and rooted in unravelling colonialism and capitalism from the ways we relate to our bodies. They believe that our personal practices can be microcosms of liberation that spiral out and create a better world.

During this Katie & Elle discuss:

• The societal pressure to stay "busy" and how it often undermines our well-being
• How moving through space—whether walking, driving, or traveling by train—enhances mental clarity and creativity. 
• Understanding different types of rest and exploring rest from various perspectives—physical, mental, spiritual, and social.
• The liberating power of saying "no" and how starting from a place of refusal can help reclaim energy and create space for true rest.
• The paradox of needing to slow down in an urgent world

You can connect with Elle here

Website: ellebowerjohnston.com

Instagram: @ellebowerjohnston

Free Notion dashboard of rest practices for rebels - Radical Rest Portal

Here are some highlights:

The Pressure of Productivity 

"Nobody comes up to me and says, ‘You seem inspired at the moment or happy or well-rested.’ It’s always, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so busy,’ as if productivity is the only measure of success. But what about asking if my work is bringing me joy?”

Embracing the Chaos of Rest 

"Rest isn’t just about napping or yoga Nidra. It’s anything that connects your mind and body, bringing you back to a sense of wholeness. It’s about exploring different layers of self and finding coherence, whether it’s through traditional practices or something as simple as revisiting childhood movies."

The Power of Saying No

"Starting from a place of refusal is a form of reclaiming energy. We often move with this sense of ‘I have to, I have to,’ but by saying no, we allow ourselves to drop back, be present, and reclaim rest as an act of self-care."

The Importance of Listening to the Body

"Listening to your body is key. It’s not just about what your mind wants but also what your body needs. Sometimes, rest is about allowing your body to guide you, trusting its signals, and respecting the need to pause, breathe, and reset."

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi

The BBC’s Witch podcast

Emergent Strategy by Adriene Marie Brown

Making Design Circular Conference – 2024

LEARN HOW TO TALK ABOUT YOUR ECO-EFFORTS WITH CONFIDENCE so you can connect with values-aligned clients and customers without the fear of getting called out.

10 am–5 PM BST Thursday 05 September 2024

A 1-day virtual conference for purpose-driven founders making imperfect progress towards genuine environmental sustainability.

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 purpose-driven founders of making-based businesses 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.

In this episode, Katie talks to Rosie Murphy. Rosie is a consummate communicator and connector.

She is just one of a broad ecosystem of architectural workers uniting for greater social justice and environmental consciousness in all aspects of the built environment. She is an advocate for networks such as Black Females in Architecture, HomeGrown Plus and Architects Climate Action Network. 

Rosie's work is centred on youth engagement, creating creative opportunities and experiences for children and young people to be empowered, informed and activated citizens of the future. Rosie works collaboratively across boundaries of design, education and activism in the UK and her new community in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

During this Katie & Rosie discuss:

• The importance of a non-linear approach to design thinking
• Collaboration as an expression of hope 
• How true collaboration requires honesty about power imbalances and a commitment to sharing power where possible, even when it’s challenging.
• The idea that collaboration can be deeply informed by observing and learning from nature
• Challenges in collaboration
• The importance of integrating cultural identity into design work

You can connect with Rosie here

Website:  https://rosiemurphyme.wixsite.com/onlineportfolio

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/rosiemurphy.me

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/contact-rosiemurphy/ 

Here are some highlights:

Embracing Non-Linear Design Thinking

"So this non-linear cycle includes points like ideation, reflection, prototyping and testing, so a lot of aspects of the design process that we're very familiar with, but I feel with a greater sensitivity to community, to ancestry and history, and to a great sensitivity to nature and resources, and yeah, in the way that it's laid out in this koru, this spiral which itself is taken from nature."

Understanding Power Dynamics in Collaboration

"…power is absolutely the most important and most essential aspect of collaboration... collaboration is not equal, there are many different forms of collaboration from community engagement to citizen participation, all the way up to citizen empowerment."

Learning from Nature’s Wisdom

"I just wanted to share a quite beautiful Maori proverb or saying that I was just introduced to recently, which is erere kau, mai te awa nui, mai te kahui, maunga ki tangaroa, pō au te awa, pō te awa, pō au. And that means the river flows from the mountain to the sea, I am the river, the river is me. And for me, that is truly understanding the fact that we are not separate to nature, we are not separate to the natural world, that the way that we operate is part of this global environmental system."

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Drunk Women Solving Crime Podcast with hosts Hannah George and Taylor Glenn

Making Design Circular Conference – 2024

LEARN HOW TO TALK ABOUT YOUR ECO-EFFORTS WITH CONFIDENCE so you can connect with values-aligned clients and customers without the fear of getting called out.

10 am–5 PM BST Thursday 05 September 2024

A 1-day virtual conference for purpose-driven founders making imperfect progress towards genuine environmental sustainability.

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 purpose-driven founders of making-based businesses 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.

**This episode was originally an Instagram Live, so at the point of going live on the podcast, the rest challenge we talk about has already happened – however, the Making Design Circular Conference is happening on Thursday 05 September 2024 – find out more get your ticket for that HERE >>> **

In this episode, Katie talks to Jo Casey. Jo Casey is an Autistic and ADHD speaker and business coach who helps fellow quirky-brained entrepreneurs align their business strategies with their unique mental wiring. With over 20 years of coaching experience and 15 years of successfully wrangling her own neurodivergent business, Jo has mastered the art of turning cognitive curveballs into powerful business assets.

Their innovative approach enables established entrepreneurs to work smarter, often achieving twice the results in half the time - without having to start from scratch or pretend to be neurotypical. At a time when neurodiversity is finally getting its moment in the spotlight, Jo's work is redefining success in the business world, proving that neurodivergent traits can be entrepreneurial superpowers in disguise.

Jo's expertise has sparked meaningful conversations about neurodiversity in business, challenging traditional norms and paving the way for a more inclusive (and interesting!) approach to entrepreneurship. They’ve been featured in the Huffington Post, Kind Over Matter, and Tiny Buddha, among others.

When not kicking the business world up the butt, Jo can be found curating the perfect playlist for her latest textile crafting session or passionately explaining to puzzled friends why Jesus Christ Superstar is, without a doubt, the greatest musical ever written.

During this Katie & Jo discuss:

• The difference between physical tiredness and sensory overload 
• How to spot the signs of sensory overload
• How to prevent sensory overload and take care of yourself when it happens
• How neurodivergent folk sometimes need sensory rest, but sometimes sensory stimulation
• Why physical and sensory rest is so important for purpose-driven founders of making based businesses making imperfect progress towards genuine sustainability 

You can connect with Jo here:

Website: https://www.jocasey.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jocaseyb/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoCaseyB/

…and Jo has an amazing energy mapping tool, which will help with some of the stuff we discussed, which you can access here: https://www.jocasey.com/nd-energy-kit/

Here are some highlights:

Depletion versus Nourishing

“One of the concepts we talk about is the things that deplete you and things that nourish you – and I really like that concept because I could be doing something that is really calm, but I’m finding it really quite depleting, or I could be doing something that is really energetic, but you’re finding it really nourishing. I really like this idea of what is depleting and what is nourishing.” 

How to know when you’re experiencing sensory overload

“Treat yourself like a glorious experiment... tune into to what’s going on in your body.”

On rest as disruption 

“These are my needs – and it’s perfectly fine, in fact it’s admirable, to meet my needs. Exploitative capitalism teaches us to exploit resources to the point of depletion and we are our own primary resource.”

Being the change we want to see

“There is something about being the change that we want to see in the world – and having emotionally grounded, rested, healthy people, we ‘re much more likely to be able to inspire that in others… one of the things we know from neuroscience is that when we’re running on adrenaline and cortisol, the creative activity in our brain is really limited… so our ability to solve problems drops down and if there was a time when we needed people to come up with solutions to really complex, thorny problems, it’s now.”

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

Emergent Strategy by Adriene Marie Brown

Maintenance Phase podcast with Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes

Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr Devon Price

How To Discover Your Environmental Superpower – Making Design Circular short course

Making Design Circular Conference – 2024

LEARN HOW TO TALK ABOUT YOUR ECO-EFFORTS WITH CONFIDENCE so you can connect with values-aligned clients and customers without the fear of getting called out.

10 am–5 PM BST Thursday 05 September 2024

A 1-day virtual conference for purpose-driven founders making imperfect progress towards genuine environmental sustainability.

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 purpose-driven founders of making-based businesses 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.

In this episode, Katie continues last week’s conversation with Tamu Thomas a renowned transformational life coach, dedicated to guiding women towards achieving work-life harmony by embracing holistic well-being practices that align with their nervous system. 

Katie & Tamu explore:

• The term ‘high-functioning freeze’
• Defiant hope & rage 
• Activism v Martyrdom 
• And of course, the final quick fire round of season 4!

You can connect with Tamu here

Website: https://www.livethreesixty.com/ and https://www.womenwhoworktoomuch.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamu.thomas/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livethreesixty/

Learn more about Tamu’s membership here: https://live-three-sixty.mykajabi.com/membership

Here are some highlights:

I learned that it was unsafe for me to express rage 

“Rage is part of the human experience, rage, emotion, energy in motion, rage is energy in motion that says you've got to make a change, whether it's externally or internally, but instead, we hold on to it, and have a lot of like, bitterness and resentment inside. And we get sidetracked with that. So we avoid the real issue. And we make it all about the anger or the rage.”

Empowerment to build momentum

"My life is mine, square with a life of service means that your life has to be of service to you too. Because if your life is not a service to you too, if you are giving away all of your lifeforce energy, you're not actually doing activism, you're doing martyrdom. Our planet doesn't need any more martyrs. Social justice causes for human beings, animals around the world doesn't need any more martyrs what they need, or what these things we believe in need, is for us to be and this word, sometimes it gets on my nerves, but it is for us to be empowered. Because when we are empowered, rather than doing things in fits and spurts, we can actually build momentum and have a compounding effect. And I say this to my clients. And I say to myself all the time. Social justice is not just if it's not just for you too, we don't need any more martyrs. "

Books & Podcasts mentioned:

10x Is Easier Than 2x, Benjamin Hardy

Upstream Podcast

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.

In this episode, Katie talks to Tamu Thomas a renowned transformational life coach and the author of "Women Who Work Too Much: Break Free from Toxic Productivity and Find Your Joy." She is dedicated to guiding women towards achieving work-life harmony by embracing holistic well-being practices that align with their nervous system. 

Tamu's groundbreaking book sheds light on the systemic pressures that force women into a cycle of over-functioning, often leading to significant workplace stress and an imbalanced share of emotional and domestic responsibilities. Drawing on her extensive background in social work, she has a profound understanding of the systemic roots of these issues, particularly the disproportionate impact they have on women. 

Tamu's unique coaching methodology is deeply influenced by somatic practices and Polyvagal theory, focusing on helping women rebuild a connection with their core selves, establish healthy boundaries, and forming a strong sense of self-trust. She is especially attuned to the nuanced challenges faced by Black women and women of the global majority, navigating what she terms ‘the trinity of oppression’: patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. 

In her own words, Tamu asserts, "We don’t need more self-improvement; we need systemic change.” Her approach is not just about personal transformation but about sparking wider societal shifts. Her insights and guidance are invaluable for those seeking a life filled with fulfillment, deep connections, and genuine joy, amidst the demands of our fast-paced world.

Linked with the “nurture” pillar of the Making Design Circular framework, Katie & Tamu discuss:

• The new book Women Who Work Too Much – Break Free from Toxic Productivity and Find Your Joy!
• Toxic Productivity
• Our connection with nature and why it’s so
• Why it’s so important that we reconnect mind and body
• Simple ways we should be honouring our basic needs
• Why we shouldn’t be adopting a belief that we’re broken

You can connect with Tamu here:

Website: https://www.livethreesixty.com/ and https://www.womenwhoworktoomuch.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamu.thomas/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livethreesixty/

Learn more about Tamu’s membership here: https://live-three-sixty.mykajabi.com/membership

Here are some episode highlights:

Recognise we’re not designed to go it alone

“The beauty is as human beings we're not designed to go it alone. So it can feel really daunting when we feel like oh my goodness, the system is rigged, for most of us to be at fault, for most of us to fail, when we recognise that we can start to embody the genius of our species, which is connection, and compassion, and all of that stuff. And we can start to work together to create systems and structures that care for us and our planet.”

The Idea of Toxic Productivity

“We don't just breathe in, we need to breathe in, we need to exhale. And in fact, something I say all the time is, the rest is quite often more important than the race. The rest is what sets us up. And we often talk about being part of nature. Actually, no, we are nature. We are all children of this earth. Whilst we were born of our mother's wombs, we are all children of this earth, there is nothing on this earth that is productive, that is producing all the time. Even our evergreen trees have times of rest and dormancy. We're not supposed to be doing that all the time. It is unnatural. So as we stepped into the industrial revolution, we started making all of these machines to make our life easier. But once we identified that we could create mass, and people could consume more. And that mass would result into profit it was profit and growth above everything else. So it shifted how we experience ourselves. And generally speaking, we started to compare ourselves to the machines we created to make our lives easier. And that's when we started talking more about consistency.”

Capitalist Conditioning

“let's be real, there are many times in life where we do have to go beyond our bandwidth sometimes. But it's about recognising the difference, so that we can make choices and we can do that for finite periods of time. We have a sympathetic nervous system for a reason, we go into states of fight or flight for a reason, they're not all bad, but it's a finite period of time. What happens in our culture is that the rules of capitalism say, actually, you should always be beyond your capacity, that's a good work ethic, that's being efficient, that is being somebody who is reliable. And it just conditions us, if you think of us like a piece of elastic, it conditions us to always be overstressed over stretched elastic. And so we have situations where people use anxiety as a motivational tool. None of this stuff will happen overnight, but over time, we can start being motivated by what feels good, what's in service of our long term good, as opposed to constantly being motivated by anxiety, which is our body's warning signal for terror.”

Books & Podcasts mentioned:

10x Is Easier Than 2x, Benjamin Hardy

Upstream Podcast

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.

In this episode, Katie talks to Lucy Hawthorne. Lucy is a campaigner at heart and Founder of Climate Play. Through play-based training and facilitation for adults, she helps make it safe, light and fun for people to face climate change. 

Combining a lot of LEGO with climate psychology, she creates conversation on the topic that teams actually want to have, rather than only feel like they should. Her serious play approach helps people to engage more honestly, deeply and creatively, identifying ways to build alignment and shared action within their organisations, whether they are getting started or have gotten stuck on their sustainability journey. 

Climate Play was born after Lucy spent a good while in the charity and NGO-world and became concerned the heaviness of the conversation was affecting energy to act. So now she challenges the norm of serious seriousness as always the best way to get things done. She is a qualified coach and LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator. 

During this Katie & Lucy discuss:

• How Climate Play came about
• Understanding what Play is and how its defined
• Where Play comes in to a topic such as the climate crisis
• How to use her safe, light, fun form of engagement with environmentalism
• intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. 
• The overlap between choice, wonder and delight as well…
• Play archetypes and how they help us engage with environmentalism

You can connect with Lucy here:

www.climateplay.org

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/climate-play

[email protected]

Monthly Climate Play Meetup (first Thurs of the month 1300 – 1400 GMT) https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/lucy-hawthorne-founderfacilitator-climate-play-29888274577

Here are some highlights:

Origin of Climate Play

“Climate play is in essence, trying to find different ways of really tapping into people's motivations and really trying to create spaces where people can engage in subjects that they don't really want to and that feels very different to a very hard hitting strategic approach that I spent many years, many years doing.”

Become the best version of yourself

“How many people actually fulfil their own moral compass? Very few, even people who are very dedicated, we're not perfect beings. And therefore, there's something about what will you always want to do. I'm not saying that if everyone suddenly untapped their playfulness, then climate change is going to disappear into a puff of smoke. But I think there is just something about reframing the way we engage with things. Whether that is thinking about and understanding (your audiences) motivations? What are they doing? If you're thinking about how you run initiatives in your company, or you're trying to think about how your family considers sustainability, there is just something about finding a combination of the things that you love doing, the things that you're good at doing, and the things that the world needs some support on. It's not a magic silver bullet, but I think there's something about understanding your sense of playfulness, you are highly likely to be more engaged. And when you are engaged, you're likely to be a better version of yourself.”

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

The Art of Peace by John Paul Lederach

International School of Billund

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Play by Stuart Brown

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

You’re Dead to Me, BBC Radio 4 Podcast

Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain, Huberman Labs Podcast

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.

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/

IG: @bioleadershipproject

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

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Sky Above, Earth Below: Spiritual practice in nature buy John P Milton

The Spaceship Earth Podcast with Dan Burgess

BBC Radio 3, Unclassified

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.

In this episode, Katie digs into one part of her Making Design Circular framework, the methodology that underpins everything she does. She talks about walk, and walk is short for walk, don't run. It is this idea that you don't have to do everything all at once you can take things step by step. And to support you doing that she has developed a path to sustainability, taking of all the things you could possibly do and put them into an order. By the end of this episode, you will be able to work out whether you are an acorn, seedling, sapling, tree or a forest, and take away at least one action you can do this week to help you move towards the next stage. 

Here are some highlights:

One step at a time

“There's 100 different ways to become more sustainable. But what I've done is interviewed hundreds of designers and makers and craftspeople at different stages of their journey and tried to understand what they did when, so that I can put all of the stuff into some sort of order for you. And I think that just takes some of the overwhelm out of it. Because it enables you to take this one step at a time, it enables you to walk not to run.”

Replicate what we celebrate

“…recognise and celebrate how far you've come. In fact, for anybody make a list of 10 things you're already doing really well. And I think it's so important. Positive psychology shows that our brains seek to replicate what we celebrate. So yes, it's important for your well being and your just general sense of joy, but also, celebrating your success and giving yourself credit where it's due actually means you're more likely to achieve more of those things”

Books mentioned:

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

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.

In this episode, Katie talks to Tom Curran, a World Leading Expert on Perfectionism. With an eye on politics, economics, and society, he takes a cultural lens to the study of perfectionism. His work is groundbreaking and has uncovered a frightening trend of young people breaking under the strain of perfectionistic pressures. Tom brings perfectionism to life and makes it relevant and understandable to the widest audiences. He is a TED speaker and Thought Leader, a regular contributor to high-profile podcasts and has been featured in the national and international mainstream media. With the objective to put perfectionism on the map as a public health concern, Curran draws on his unique sense of wit and self-depreciation when he travels the globe speaking on the topic. 

During this episode, Katie and Tom discuss:

• How he came into the field of social and personality psychology and what that actually is
• His findings from the first systems-level cohort study showing that perfectionism is on the rise in American, Canadian, and British college students
• The damaging impacts of perfectionism
• The difference between perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence
• How to navigate perfectionism
• How we can tap into failure as a strength
• How can craftspeople, makers, artists, and designers contribute to a culture of imperfect progress

You can connect with Tom here

LI: @thom_curran

https://www.thomcurran.com/

Here are some highlights:

Seeking approval and validation

“Perfectionists are really concerned about how other people appraise them, whether they're valued and approved and loved by other people. This is a huge part of perfectionistic psychology because deep down, they believe that they're flawed, they're imperfect, that they're deficient. And in order to feel a sense of self-worth, they go about the world trying to hide those deficiencies from other people and seeking their approval and validation all times. Well, that's okay, but what tends to happen is that perfectionistic people are so scared of rejection, so scared of criticism that they can move themselves away from people and away from situations where they feel like they might be judged. That can create some social disconnection which can lead into things like loneliness and there's a lot of data to suggest that perfectionistic people experience quite a lot of loneliness and social disconnection. That's the first reason why it has an impact on mental health”

Pushing past human fallibilities

“Perfectionism has quite an aggressive, aggravated vulnerability built into it, and perfectionist people push themselves to the max and then some, it's this idea of, well, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, I've got to keep pushing through the pain, I've got to keep grinding, I've got to keep going, I've got to keep my head up and keep moving forward, and that that's an unsustainable way to live. You just don't let yourself rest. You just don't let yourself recuperate. You don't give yourself permission to accept that life sometimes defeats us and that's okay, that's a part of parcel of being human being. Perfectionism is really pushing past those very human fallibilities and vulnerabilities to try and project at all times a perfect persona. But of course, that's not, that's not possible and left untreated, left unchecked, that can be quite, quite different.

Exposing ourselves to failure

“You just got to get comfortable with it. You know, failure is such an intimately, human experience. Look, we're going to fail way, way more than we're going to succeed. That's the first thing to remember. We're fallible, we're exhaustible creatures. I think it's such an important way to go through life acknowledging that failures of this beautiful thing that we shouldn't be afraid of, it's very humanizing. The more we put ourselves out there and the more we can expose ourselves to failure, the more comfortable we get with it. Like taking a sledgehammer to perfectionism. Just putting yourself out there and feeling the fear of doing it anyway.”

Books, Podcasts and articles we mentioned:

The Perfection Trap by Thom Curran

Our Dangerous Obsession with Perfectionism is Getting Worse, Ted Talk with Thom Curran

Nassim Taleb

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank

Chatabix with comedians Joe Wilkinson and David Earl

Resources for Mental Health Support

Whatever you're going through, a Samaritan will face it with you. We're here 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Visit https://www.samaritans.org/ or call 116 123 for free.

Mind provides supportive and reliable information to empower you to understand your mental health and the choices available to you – take a look at https://www.mind.org.uk/

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.

This week Katie is doing something a little different.

As you may have heard her mentioned in the previous episode, her latest book, Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world came out in April of this year, and she will be reading you the wonderfully. Thought-provoking  introduction to give you a flavour of the book. 

Here are some highlights:

Making a statement

“Although any form of mending or repair could be seen as a form of activism in today's single use culture, many of today's artists, menders and remakers are choosing to make a statement with their work. A broken object delivers frustration because it doesn't achieve its functionality says Paulo Goldstein, on page 122. But the same principle applies to a broken system that people profiled in repair as activism are deliberately using repair to point a finger at what is broken.”

Broken World Thinking

“If we want new and better stories, and world orders, ones that are better for all of us, not just a tiny minority, we can't look away any longer. We need to hold the stare with what is broken, with what can be repaired or remade, and what needs to be cleaned up and let go. The act of noticing, of paying attention and asking questions enables us to hold space for two radically different realities. Realities that Jackson describes as a fractal world, a centrifugal world an almost always falling apart world on the one hand, and a world in a constant process of fixing and reinvention, reconfiguring and reassembling into new combinations and new possibilities on the other. He describes our broken world as a world of pain and possibility, creativity and destruction, innovation and the worst excesses of leftover habits and power, and suggests that the fulcrum of those two worlds is repair. The subtle acts of care by which order and meaning and complex socio technical systems are maintained and transformed. Human value is preserved and extended, and the complicated work of fitting to the varied circumstances of organisations, systems and lives is accomplished.”

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.

In this episode, Katie talks to Minnie Moll, Chief Executive at the Design Council. Minnie spent years in innovation, design, advertising and brand consultancy. She was Managing Partner of HHCL, the ‘Advertising Agency of the decade’ and then Global Marketing Director of Innovation company? What If!, which won Great Place to Work Institute’s ‘Best Place to Work in the UK’ two years running.  Minnie was voted Vistage UK Business Leader of the Year in 2020. Always a purpose driven business leader, she has proved you can do well and do good. While Joint Chief Executive of the East of England Co-op, they won Alzheimer’s Society ‘Large Business of the Year’ in 2016. That year she was appointed by HRH Prince Charles as his Ambassador for Responsible Business in the East of England. She has passion for place making and has been a board member of two Business Improvement Districts and a Town Deals Board.  

Minnie has a First-Class Degree in Creative Arts. She is also a qualified Transformational Coach. When she’s not working, Minnie can be found animal wrangling and driving her 1952 little grey Fergie tractor.  

During this episode, Katie speaks to Minnie about how she came to join the Desing Council in 2021 and her involvement with their rebrand and new vision, mission and values which now fully align with ensuring environmental issues are at the heart of everything. We find out more about the 2023 Design for Planet Festival, now in its 3rd year. To find out more about the upcoming Design for Planet Festival, at which Katie with be in conversation with TOAST communications manages Madeleine Mitchell, head here: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-events/design-for-planet-festival/

You can connect with Minnie and The Design Council here:

The Design Council website: designcouncil.org.uk

The Design Council Twitter: https://twitter.com/designcouncil

The Design Council Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/designcouncil/

The Design Council LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/design-council/

Minnie Moll Twitter: https://twitter.com/minniethemoll

Minnie Moll LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minnie-moll/

Here are some episode highlights:

Why Design for Planet?

“I think the biggest area that we've worked in (over the past 2 years) has been what I'd call, curating and convening. So a big, big focus on designers and commissioners of design. We knew that, following research, that of the 1.97 million people working in design in this country, a massive majority said, I really want to design for planet and I don't really know that I have all the right skills and tools to do so. So a lot of our focus in the last two years has been on galvanising and supporting designers. The key thing that we've done has been our Design for Planet festival, we did the first one in the in support of COP, that was held in Glasgow in 2021. And then we held the second one last year with Northumbria University. And that's been about bringing together thought leaders, really inspiring people working in design, some of them at the very cutting edge of thinking, some of them that are actually really making a difference in the organisations that they're in. So that sense of bringing in evidence, inspiration for designers, you know, we can do this.”

Intelligent Collision

“And I think there's also a sense of one of the one of the values of making design circular is collaboration over competition. And I think there's a sense isn't there, that the sort of apprentice style of doing business, it's all about winning because someone else is losing, whereas I think to solve this problem, we have to work together. We need scientists and techie people and strategists, but we also need designers and we need to plug design into those spaces that perhaps it hasn't always had a voice in…. And one of my favourite phrases is intelligent collision. So it’s almost, the more unlikely the partnership, probably the more dynamic it will be. And the sense of intelligent collision between architects, fashion designers, engineers, scientists, boy if there was ever a time for us to come together, and work in a collaborative way it's now.”

Design can be regenerative

“We are acutely aware that a regenerative world for all is a quite out there, far reaching vision, you know, that's not a five-year vision, that's it, I probably won't be here, kind of vision. But we feel so passionately that that is what we have to be shooting for. Because if you take the meaning of sustainability, sort of literally the sense of sustaining, we do not want to sustain floods, drought, catastrophic, biodiversity loss, you know, so you don't sustain that. And so this point that acknowledging that we have so depleted and so broken, some of the really important systems, we have to be looking for every opportunity where design can be regenerative”

Books, podcasts and articles we mentioned:

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Material Matters Podcast by Grant Gibson

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

Dolly Parton’s America Podcast

Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool

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.