My Continuous Learning Journey in Sustainability
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking back over my learning journey in sustainability and comms – right back to late 2016 when I undertook my first immersion in the area with the 6 month Reclaiming Agency programme from the Purpose Disruptors, an experience I cannot recommend highly enough.
This kicked off an 8-year self-directed educational deepdive into sustainability and marketing, with topics including climate science, nature and natural intelligence, ways of living and working, activist memoirs, the intersection with business, media decarbonisation, roles for community, culture and citizens…
And now, I’ve come to the opinion that there are 4 learning elements we need to build breadth & depth of useful, applicable, knowledge in the field of sustainability and comms:
1. Knowledge.
Read. You might watch videos, or listen to audio, I happen to read. Voraciously and widely. I read books about climate science but also about the role of rest in activism. I read up on greenwashing, as well as ecotopia fiction. Inhale as much knowledge, from as diverse a group of authors, as you possibly can.
2. Synthesis.
Write. I find the process of writing to be like meditation. But it also enables me to synthesise everything I’m reading and find insights, trends, new questions…and then, I find my opinion amongst it all.
3. Sharing.
I have a community of people around me who share my passion, who are each expert in their field, and who want to talk about the changes we need to create in the world. We share our perspectives and refine them in that process. I also apply my knowledge to client work, in talks at events like Ad Week or Future of Brands, and in publications including WARC, Creative Salon and the Drum. The feedback from sharing our work openly is critical in pushing the sustainable transition forward.
4. Evolution.
My opinions change as new information comes to light. I’ve created frameworks on redesigning consumption that shift and alter as new real-life examples show up, building on what started out as theory. And as my lifestyle changes, I’ve evolved how I go about building up my expertise – what was once a sprint, I’ve now recognised is a marathon, and requires regular rest if it’s to be, ahem, sustainable.
Hope this is useful to anyone wanting to move into this space – if you’d like a book recommendations to get you going, give the below a whirl :-)
Doughnut Economics: is a really strong grounding in the economics of the change we need to work toward, everything has to come back to this.
Less Is More: shines a light on not only what degrowth might look like, but also on how we got here with a bit of a trawl back through history. Made me want to burn things.
Four Thousand Weeks: a meditation on how little time we have, and how to make the most of it without driving yourself into the ground in the process.
Ministry for the Future: a story of what our near term future might look like, with one of the most immersive opening chapters I've ever read.
If you’ve got recommendations of your own, please share in the comments!