Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden

In Conversation with... Elle Bower-Johnston Aug 22, 2024

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation with... Rosie Murphy Aug 15, 2024

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation with ... Jo Casey Aug 08, 2024

**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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation with...Tamu Thomas, part 2 Dec 14, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation with...Tamu Thomas Dec 07, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation With...Lucy Hawthorne Nov 08, 2023

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

lucy@climateplay.org

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation With...Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts Nov 01, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Walk don’t run: The 5-stage path to sustainability Oct 25, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In Conversation With...Tom Curran Oct 18, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Exploring Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world Oct 11, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

In conversation with... Minnie Moll, Design Council Oct 04, 2023

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.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Laura Eigel Mar 29, 2023

In this episode, Katie is joined by Laura Eigel PhD, the founder of The Catch Group, a leadership coaching firm accelerating women into the C-suite, and the host of the You Belong in the C-Suite podcast. Known for her direct feedback and her passion for living a life guided by her values, she has been an HR executive at Fortune 50 companies, joined the C-suite as a Chief Learning Officer, and now coaches high-achieving women to build fulfilling lives inside and outside of the boardroom. She's also a mom, wife, and true-crime podcast fan who loves indoor rowing.

You can connect with Laura below:

www.thecatchgroup.com (you will find her free Values worksheet in the footer of this site)

LinkedIn: @lauraeigel

Insta: @thecatchgroup

Katie and Laura discuss,

How being aligned to our values can make us be more successful in business
Laura’s six-part Values First framework
How to get clarity around what your values are
Why your values shouldn’t just sit on your pinboard!
What a boundary is, how we set them, how we enforce them, and how they help to create businesses that are in alignment with your values when it comes to sustainability and environmentalism
The importance of uplifting others by modelling behaviours and getting the support of your community
The red flags that might suggest the situation is not in alignment and what are some of the traps we can fall into that move us out of alignment and into conflict
How we can navigate conflict of values
How we can run values aligned creative practices for the long haul

Here are some highlights:

The six-part Values First framework

“So it spells out values, and the V for Values is all about identifying your values, the A stands for Audit Time so just identifying like, what, how am I spending my time, is it aligned with my values or not? The L is for Life Boundaries and that's a really important, I think we should dig into a bit in our conversation today. And it's all about how you create, you know, systems and routines that align with your values in any way, and the U is for Uplifting Others and that's the idea of modelling it other for others, right to create those cultures. And E is for Experiencing Conflict, so it's not going to be, you know, if it's when we experience conflict, and I find that it's a lot of internal conflict, not just external conflict. And so how do you navigate through your values, and there's some ways to do that. And then S is for Sustaining Values and this idea that it's an ongoing journey, and you're never really done, it's always about what and how to dig in to what matters most to you now, and that next time in your life.”

Boundaries are not about other people, they are about you!

“When I ask people, “What do you think a boundary is?” generally people say, it's kind of a wall or restriction or a guideline or a hard line. I really like to think of it in a different way. And so if you think about your values, you have that in the centre. And then I think about like holding my values in my hand, and your boundaries are your hands. And it kind of creates care for your values. And that's really what I want you to do with boundaries, I want you to create care for yourself, for what's important. And so that can look like a lot of different things. That could look like who you work with, it could look like how you make decisions, it could be how you spend your time, right. And so as a business owner, it could be all of those things, it could be none of those things, it could be a mindset, it could be the story that you tell yourself.“

A decision doesn't have to be a lifetime one, it's okay to do things in a different way

“I used to like to do this, but I don't like do it anymore. We don't have to, once we do something, once we make a decision, we do not have to say it and do it forever. And so that's another kind of knowing, sometimes it's your body, sometimes it's just like procrastination, sometimes it's something else. But I think we do a lot of things for lots of different causes that might mean giving time or money or both, or whatever it is. And a decision doesn't have to be a lifetime one. And it's okay to do things in a different way. And so I think one of the things that we can do is to think about, if we feel like I'm not super excited about this thing I used to be really excited about, like, why is that? And to kind of dig into that. I think that's a big thing for business too. Right? So just because you did it this way in the past, do you have to do it in the future?”

Books & Podcasts we mentioned:

Values First by Laura Eigel

The Waymakers by Tara Jaye Frank

Crime Junkie

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Define Mar 22, 2023

In this episode, Katie talks about Define, another element of the Making Design Circular framework, this is all about working out your niche, your unique contribution to environmentalism, and letting go of the idea that you have to save the planet single-handedly.

Here are some highlights:

The Starfish Story

“…this particular story is about a little girl who is walking on the beach, and there's been a big storm. And lots and lots of starfish have been thrown up onto the beach after this storm, and they're starting to dry out in the sun. So there is a danger that these 1000s and 1000s of starfish are all going to die. And the little girl is picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them into the ocean. And an old man asked the little girl what she's doing and says, ‘Well, you know, you can't possibly make a difference, look at all these starfish, there's no way you can throw all these starfish back into the ocean, what you're doing is pointless.’ And the little girl picks up another starfish and throws it back into the sea and says ‘well, it made a difference to that one.’ And I think that is the point, right? We don't have to save the planet but if we pick a tiny area of focus, if we find our starfish, we can make a huge impact.”

Doing less will have a bigger impact

“The idea that by offering less, you'll actually have more business success is counterintuitive, and yet absolutely correct. If you tried to be all things to all people, you're much less likely to attract a loyal band of customers. Whereas if you really focus on a very niche product, you'll have much more success, because those customers that are right for you will really be attracted to what you're doing. And that requires bravery because it's counterintuitive, because it requires you to turn down business. But I think when you when you apply that to sustainability requires even more bravery. Because not only have you got to believe that this approach is going to make for a successful business, you've also got to believe that the people around you are going to pick up all the other stuff”

The Sweet Spot

“…this idea of finding the sweet spot between the things you love the things you're good at, the things the planet needs, and the things you can make money from doing, that you can support yourself and your creative business from doing. And I think that's really powerful, and really important, because this is going to be the work of your lifetime, I hope. And so it's really important that it fills your cup, and that it nurtures and nourishes you, it's really important that it plays to your strengths, so that you can have a sort of disproportional impactby doing this thing because it's stuff you're better at than other people might be. And stuff that you're better at than other stuff you might try to do. It's something that will enable you to have a financially sustainable business as well as an environmentally sustainable business. And it's also stuff that world needs, right that that is important to the environmental movement.”

Books Katie mentioned:

The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley

Values First by Laura Eigel

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.

Find out more about The Seed, Katie’s online course to help you Identify your unique contribution to environmentalism – either as a self-paced course or live digital course running in May 2023.

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world, This new book celebrates 25 artists, curators, designers and 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.

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – if you’re a designer-maker, DM me a♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Ray Dodd Mar 15, 2023

In this episode, Katie talks to Ray Dodd a Money Coach who helps those who have traditionally been excluded from making money, to make life-changing amounts of money. All without compromising who they are.

If you’re hearing the term ‘money coach’ and wincing a little – imagining fluffy talk of manifesting millions in your sleep, – prepare to have your fears soothed – because you’re in for a treat. Ray is a money coach with a difference. You won’t hear ‘think good thoughts and watch the money come rolling in’ from her. Ray believes that money, business and intersectional feminism are inextricably linked and that there’s a lot more to making money than simply manifesting it.

During this episode, Katie speaks to Ray about the ways in which your social conditioning is stopping you from having the impact you want to have, whether that's in your creative practice, in your business and money making or in your environmental work.

You can connect with Ray below:

IG: @ray_dodd

www.raydodd.co.uk

Download Ray’s free Pricing with Feeling Guide

Listen to Ray’s podcast, Real You Real Money

Here are some highlights:

Eye Opening Experiences

“All our lives as, particularly as people conditioned as women, we’re told that our bodies aren't good enough, right? That they need, fixing, improving, and all of that. And then as soon as I was pregnant, everyone's like, Oh, my God miracle of life, you just really need to trust your body. And I was like, hang on, you've told me my body is terrible, for the whole of my life, and now you're like glorifying it suddenly… it was just a really eye opening experience in terms of how I'd been conditioned to be and I'm sure we're going to talk a lot about conditioning today, versus what the actual experience in the world is.”

Social Conditioning keeps us small

“I 100% believe that we have been tricked into believing many things are not possible for us that absolutely are. And so we've been tricked by a culture and a society that conditions us to believe that there's only certain spaces that certain people are allowed to occupy… but I really think that we all have these spaces that are perfectly us sized in the world. And so for a lot of the designer makers listening, designing and making will be part of like, it's not just something they like, “oh that seems like a good idea, that's what I'll do”. There's something intrinsic in them that needs to create, needs to be in that cycle of putting work out and having people respond to it. There's something innate in them. And so what can happen, when we have these very narrow spaces to operate in, is we don't believe that the space that is intrinsically ours is even available to us.”

The stigma around coaching

“When you think about the general narrative around power, it's somebody at the top getting it all right, telling us all what to do. And actually having support is its own version of redistributing power. It is a version of saying, you know what, I don't have all the answers I do need help. You don't have to be lost to have coaching. But this conditioning that we've talked about runs so deep, and if we're not careful we recreate things like, we recreate systems that we actually are very, very much against because we're just not conscious of how it plays out in our lives.

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow: The word of mouth sensation by Gabrielle Zevin

The Soul of Money: Transforming your relationship with money and life

Serena Hicks is talking about money again

Dare to Lead with Brené Brown

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.

Find out more about The Seed, Katie’s online course to help you Identify your unique contribution to environmentalism – either as a self-paced course or live digital course running in May 2023.

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world.

This new book celebrates 25 artists, curators, designers and 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.

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘_Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalist_s’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – if you’re a designer-maker, DM me a♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Mil_k and _Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Believe Mar 08, 2023

In this episode, Katie explores another of the pillars of the making design circular framework – Believe. The idea that we need to bring about change and that we need to believe that it's possible, but as ever it’s easier said than done. Maintaining hope, and believing that we can sort all this out, is the work. It’s one of the hardest things we have to do as environmentalists so Katie is diving into how to maintain that stubborn optimism, how to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis through feeling, naming and acknowledging your feelings, rebuilding your connection with the natural world and to taking aligned action.

Katie has built a three-part mini course around this subject,are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to her three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action. Cultivating Hope | Katie Treggiden

Here are some highlights:

Where it all started

“We'd hit 40 degrees for the first time, you know, there was this sense of I can't even enjoy the sunny weather because of this sense of impending doom that comes with it. And my husband and I went camping that weekend. And I just felt so down. I remember feeling that I had the rare sort of privilege and space and luxury of just being allowed to feel my feelings. So we went camping and I just spent a couple of days feeling properly gloomy about the future of our species. You know, the state of the planet what as humans, you know, the damage we’re racking on this planet. And I just allowed myself to feel those feelings. And then because we were in the countryside camping, I was just accidentally more connected to nature than I would normally have been.”

Name those feelings

“…name, acknowledge, and really feel your feelings. So cultivating hope is not about toxic positivity. It's not about emotional bypassing, the only way out is through. So the first thing that we have to do is make space for those emotions… And, you know, in the middle of a busy life, it's not easy, it's not always easy to carve out that time to feel hard feelings, but it is necessary. So if you are feeling overwhelmed by the news cycle, you know, if you're feeling helpless, if you're feeling sad, if you're feeling angry, the first thing to do is to carve out a little bit of space, and name those feelings.”

Rebuild your connection with the natural world

“It's not that being in nature does something magical, it's that being separated from nature is inherently bad for us, we are supposed to be connected… and not only will that do your emotional well being the world of good there's also evidence that shows that people who are more connected with nature in whatever way are more likely to take actions that are good for the planet. So there's a sense of just by reconnecting with nature in ways that make us feel good, help us to take more planet positive actions. And then once you're in that space, once you've moved through those feelings, and reconnected with the natural world, you're ready to take action.”

Resources & Quotes mentioned:

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 - Cultivating Hope | Katie Treggiden

Find out more about The Seed, Katie’s online course to help you Identify your unique contribution to environmentalism – either as a self-paced course or live digital course running in May 2023.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.”
― Paul Hawken

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Liberate Feb 22, 2023

In this episode, Katie talks about perfectionism, about:

Liberating yourself from perfectionism, the second part of the first pillar of the MDC framework
Her personal journey with perfectionism including publishing her first foray into the online learning and recording a podcast
The idea of toxic professionalism – the sense that any deviation from a white, straight, cis, tall, able-body bodied man in a suit is seen as unprofessional – and the similarities between this and perfectionism – the sense of perfect being dictated by other people
The shift needed towards an acceptance of imperfection in sustainability work
How to be an ‘imperfectionist’, understanding that the outcome will actually be better by letting go of perfectionism by embracing vulnerability, about taking risks and showing the cracks

Here are some highlights:

Connection

“…I think that's quite exciting, because I think we sort of connect at our points of imperfection and vulnerability. So perfectionism is not the pursuit of excellence, it's something different from that. It's this idea that if you show up in a way that is ‘perfect’, you won't be criticised or rejected or hurt.”

Natural and human

“We tend to think of perfect as something that is flawless, something that's consistent perhaps. And often, when we think about objects, those things are mass produced. They're machine made. They come from a globalised economy. And yet, as designer makers, craftspeople and artists, you are used to embracing imperfection. The throwing rings in a pot are the sign of a human hand, the knots in wood are the sign of a natural material. And we talk about embracing these imperfections, because they're human, because they're natural and yet in our sustainability work, we feel the need to get it right to be perfect. But do we want sustainability work that is informed by machines, by consistency, by globalisation, by mass production? Or do we want sustainable thinking that is informed by the human hand, by nature?”

Be Brave

“…we've always been led to believe that if we hold ourselves to these high standards, we're more likely to achieve them. Actually, it's not true, we are more likely to achieve high standards, if we play and experiment and do something a lot because we're not frightened of getting it wrong. And so, I think in order to achieve what we need to achieve in sustainability, in order to make progress, we need to not be frightened of getting it wrong, we need to do it a lot, we need to do it playfully the same things apply.”

Research, Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Matt Hocking Feb 15, 2023

[Trigger Warning: Matt mentions female genital mutilation (FMG) in this episode, so listener discretion is advised.]

In this episode, Katie talks with Matt Hocking from Leap.eco, an award-winning design studio who has proven it’s possible to create inspiring work which delivers positive outcomes for people, planet and profit.
He has been passionate about working sustainably since long before it was cool. Every project he’s delivered doesn’t just meet a client’s business goals, it helps make the planet a better place – either directly or by changing the way a business thinks and works.

And he’s not kept that knowledge a secret, priding himself on sharing what he’s learnt with the industry – helping define and develop a model for sustainable design and working with creatives across the world to ensure design remains at the forefront of change.

He is committed to building a better future: one that is progressive, collaborative and thoughtful.

We discuss:

Matt’s development of the Giving Budget, a model where, when you feel called to be generous, and to give something away, you can put certain boundaries around that to make sure that it's a good thing.
Why it’s important for Matt to not just run a design agency
The fascinating role creatives can play in asking the difficult questions
How creativity is one of the three pillars of the change we need in in the world for a better outcome
The clients he has supported with the Giving Budget and the surprises along the way

Here are some highlights:

Designing for Change

“…using my design skills to sort of make a living making a difference, kind of working with social and environmental issues, challenging projects to amplify what they're saying and what they're changing, the world they're trying to sort of manifest.”

Reframing the transaction of Kindness

“.. we all do free stuff, there's always somebody asking a creative can you do this or friend that saying, help me do this. You know, and a lot of people don't actually value how long that creativity takes or how much industry knowledge and training, I wouldn't want my creativity and a fee to be a barrier to get something great done that would support society to the planet…how do I reframe that while still giving back to say thank you for the creative journey that I'm on, so became our giving budget.”

Be Valued

“Look at what's sustainable for you, everything comes from you and if you break you, then the rest of the change you want to make in the world won't happen. Do you, look after yourself first, be valued, and be really thorough. A lot of people are takers and leeches in business, just really be careful about how this happens, this transaction, this agreement between you both, and do it in a way that works for you.”

Books, Podcasts & Ted Talks we mentioned:

Other interesting things we talked about:

You can find out more about Leap here, and connect with Matt on LinkedIn

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Absolve Feb 08, 2023

In this episode, Katie talks about the idea of absolving yourself from guilt. The climate crisis is not your fault, but it is your responsibility, and you have an incredible opportunity to bring about change.

Katie talks about:

The idea of absolving yourself of the guilt that comes with the climate crisis
How the energy industry has not only contributed the vast majority of the carbon in the atmosphere, but has also worked really hard to curb regulations and undermine public understanding of climate change
How the climate crisis might well have been resolved before you were even born!
How we are the last generation that have the opportunity to do something about this
That there are no magic bullets, tech is not going to save us

Here are some highlights:

It’s Not Your Fault

“…80% of the environmental impact of an object is determined at design stage. And that's true, right? From material choices to end of life considerations by the time an object goes into production from a sustainability point of view, its fate is largely sealed.”

This stuff didn’t all happen in the past!

“There are very big online retailers selling and shipping 1000s of dollars worth of products every second, with business models that are built on what Greenpeace describes as greed and speed… If we're looking to apportion blame, let's look to massive globalised companies, and global leaders who are not doing their bit to make the big changes that they could make.”

Get excited about this responsibility about this opportunity!

“… the soil in which creativity thrives is curiosity, optimism and collaboration, all impulses, I'm guessing that drew you to our industry in the first place. Right? So we need designers to stop feeling guilty so they can reconnect with those feelings of curiosity, optimism and collaboration and tap into their creativity to become part of the solution.”

Reports we mentioned:

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah Fox Feb 01, 2023

In this episode, Katie talks with Sarah Fox a coach and mentor helping organisations and individuals who are motivated to do good and do well, being drivers of positive social change. Sarah’s mission is to help people who care about the world to live a life of fulfilment, a life that is truly well lived, meaningful, purposeful and creative.

We discuss:

Sarah’s strive to always do good and her journey with ‘kindness’
What is means to be good, not just to the natural world but to ourselves.
Sarah’s values of kindness, compassion, cooperation, collaboration and courage (added during the podcast!)…and how these relate to our self-worth.
Why this group of people, who are working so hard to look after everybody else and bring about positive change in the world, find it so difficult to take care of themselves.
Do we need to learn to look after ourselves in order to look after the planet, are those things connected?
The importance of connecting with nature, observing nature in the human world and reminding ourselves of the bigger picture.

Here are some highlights:

What does it mean to be good?

“Essentially for me, the doing good bit is what it's about it's about leaving the world or trying to leave the world in a better place than you found it. Really stepping into what we can do that somehow contributes positively and whilst doing that, really thinking about how we do well based in terms of quality. But also in terms of our own well-being. When I talk about wellbeing, I'm talking about physical well-being emotional well-being and financial well-being. So how can we bring those things together so that we are making an impact of some kind and we're doing that in a way that is conscious and we have a self-awareness about that. But also, how can we do it so that we're not breaking in the process.”

I have value in the world!

“It’s as much about being kind to ourselves, as it is to everybody else. And if we can hold up a mirror, if we can talk to ourselves in the way that we talk to other people, if we can take action, and be kind to ourselves in the way that we are with other people, then I think the world would be a much better place, because it's coming from people feeling like they are enough already, without having to do all the things.” “if you already feel safe and enough, then you can really focus on delivering benefit in a way that most benefits the people you're trying to serve.”

How can we step into our wise Jedi self?

“I think if we're going to have these regenerative, restorative businesses, there needs to be a complete self-awareness as much as possible. We need to be in our autonomy, not standing in the narrative pattern that we have been in in the past. And how do we kind of step into, I call it the wise Jedi self, rather than that kind of inner critic? How do we step into that? So that we can create these businesses that are making a difference, that is having the impact that we want to have and that we don't get distracted?”

Books & Podcasts we mentioned:

You can find out more about Sarah here, connect on LinkedIn and listen to her podcast on Spotify or Apple 

With reference to our conversation on what is “good” and who gets to decide – here is Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s PhD “better”: https://www.daisyginsberg.com/work/better 

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Making Design Circular: The Framework Feb 01, 2023

We’re kicking off with Katie guiding us through her Making Design Circular Framework, all based around the goal to “rewild your creative practice, so that you, your business, and the planet can thrive”, and you can find the image Katie promisedHERE. (It turns out you can’t add images directly to show-notes!)

We discuss:

The 3 distinct areas of the framework, Release, Plant and Grow
Absolving yourself from guilt about the climate crisis and the things you were doing right or wrong when it comes to sustainability, liberating yourself from guilt, duty, and perfectionism. And moving away from the idea of right or wrong, and towards the idea of alignment.
Finding purpose, joy, and curiosity, in a sustainable creative practice.
Building a sustainable business that enables you, your creative practice and the planet to thrive.

Here are some highlights:

Why the word rewild?

“There is a sense that we all ought to do things certain ways, there is an element of duty, there's an element of guilt around environmentalism. But there's also just this sense of being in a box, of how one ought to behave, how one ought to run a small business, run a creative practice. The meaning of rewild that I love is about breaking free of all of that, letting go of that social conditioning and stepping into your full power, as an environmentalist, as a designer maker. So ‘rewild your creative practice’ is the kind of call to action, I guess. And then the benefit of doing that is that you, your business, and the planet all get to thrive.”

It’s not YOUR fault

“Climate crisis is not your fault. It's not, 71% Of all the carbon released into the atmosphere, since the Industrial Revolution, has been emitted by just 100 companies. Countless governments have had the chance to solve this issue, probably before you were even born. And there are billionaires mass producing crap, and sending rockets to Mars. So none of this is your fault. It's just not. So you can let go of that guilt. And you know why that's important, because guilt is not the soil in which creativity thrives. We need creative people to solve this problem.“

Regeneration, it’s not just for the planet

Are you taking resources from yourself without replenishing them? We need to build creative practices that regenerate and nourish us as humans, that fill our cup that feed our soul, give us energy. If they're just draining us and exhausting us and taking from us that's not sustainable. It's also not good for the planet because if you're trying to create a planet positive, creative practice, and you burn out, the benefit that you're having is no longer being delivered. This is about building businesses that nourish you, that nourish the people who work with and for you, that nourish the communities around you, and the ecosystems around those.”

Katie is walking you through this framework because everything else she talks about in this season of the podcast is going to be informed by it in some way!

Don’t forget to follow and review this podcast to help other people to find it – thank you!

Books we mentioned:

Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac(Not ‘Carnatt’ as Katie pronounced it in the recording!)

Spread the Word:

Please share 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 me some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how it works, but apparently, all that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

And finally, sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ landing gently in inboxes most Fridays - just click here. And find me on the Interwebs: @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram), @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube). If you’re a designer-maker, DM me a ♻️ to be added to my close friends group especially for sustainable craftspeople and check out Making Design Circular at www.katietreggiden.com/membership

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

About our partners:

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offer restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and well-being also play a major part in the brand's ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller, everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram @inhabit_hotels.

Surfers Against Sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and everything that the ocean makes possible. They campaign against everything that threatens the ocean; plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation, and water quality, by taking action on the ground, that triggers change from the top. If like me, you'd like to support surfers against sewage, head over to https://www.sas.org.uk/

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

TOAST Renewal: a panel discussion Aug 24, 2021

Do we always need to mend? How can mending help to nudge us towards significant behaviour shifts? What are the materials innovations that might help? Are there self-healing materials – or even self-destructing materials?

In this bonus episode, I’m leading a panel discussion with TOAST, including amazing insights from Seetal Solanki, Tom van Deijnen, Celia Pym and Bonnie Kemske.

We discuss:

- The art of kintsugi and what it means within Japanese culture.

- The fine line between repairing invented holes and using repair techniques as embellishment.

- The stories and conversations held within the damage and the process of repairing.

- How a lot of the world’s fashion waste comes from fast fashion and why this is so problematic.

- Who gets to decide when something is ‘broken’ and what that means.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

How stories come through during the act of mending something

“What I discovered very quickly was that if you ask someone, ‘do you have a hole in your clothing?’ you very swiftly discover an awful lot about a person that you weren't expecting to learn. You learn who their relative is, how the thing got damaged, you learn about maybe someone who's important to them who's died. And I thought, I'm onto something here, 'cause I'm fundamentally quite a nosy person. I'm always, if I'm on a bus, the person who wants to talk to my neighbor. I was very excited and moved to discover that clothing and this invitation to repair clothing would invite all this conversation.” - Celia Pym

Why the cycle of fast fashion is so problematic

“There are so many reasons, and I think a lot of it really comes down to the fact that we don't really care or respect these textiles, the clothing that they become and how they actually adorn our bodies. Because we haven't really formed a relationship to those pieces of clothing in a way where we build a relationship towards care and respect. We actually don't know where they have been derived from because the supply chain of a lot of the textiles being made for clothing is really convoluted and complicated, and deceitful. So it's really quite challenging to understand where things are being made, how they are being made, and where they end up even. We're so disconnected and so far removed from what things are made of, simply.” - Seetal Solanki

Things aren’t meant to last forever

“Not all materials will have a long life span, and I think that really stems down to the fact that there are materials that are meant to naturally bio degrade. And that's actually okay. And we need to be more accepting of the fact that things die. Everything has a birth, a life, a death and a re-birth, and that exists within the material world, human world, animal world, and plant world. We are so fixated on the fact that everything has to be long living, and I think there's a sense of renewal that needs to be understood a bit more, and that really comes down to the natural cycles of materials as well, that we need to kind of address rather than forcing our material to do something that maybe it's not meant to be doing.” - Seetal Solanki

Connect with the panelists:

The books we mentioned:

Why Material Matter – Seetal Solanki

Kintsugi: The Poetic Mend – Bonnie Kemske

Wasted: When Trash become Treasure – Katie Treggiden

Homemade Europe – Vladimir Arkhipov (sorry we could only find the follow-up to Homemade, the book Celia mentioned, and only on Amazon!)

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Tom of Holland Aug 17, 2021

Is there a trade-off between affordability and disposability? Can we go back to a mindset of mending and repair, without pricing ourselves out? How do we overcome the objections of time, money and skillset to get more people involved in this movement?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Tom van Deijnen – a self-taught textiles practitioner, founder of The Visible Mending Programme, and a volunteer at the Brighton Repair Café. He says that he likes ‘doing things that take forever’ because that slow pace gives him a deeper understanding of material qualities and traditional techniques.

We discuss:

- Why visibility in mending is important.

- How wearing mended clothes still has associations with poverty for some people.

- His time with Brighton Repair Café and its values and purpose.

- Why mindset shifts are important as we try to move towards a more circular economy.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

What interests him in the visibility of the mend

“Originally, I was of the very traditional mindset of, ‘Oh, if I repair something, it needs to be invisible, nobody should be allowed to see it.’ It turns out that it is really, really difficult to repair something invisibly! It's just very, very difficult to do that. So I was thinking, if you can kind of see it anyway, then just turn it into a feature and let's not try and hide the fact that it’s mended. I started changing my mind a bit about that, and then I started to enjoy adding something visible and highlighting the fact that my items have been worn. I love the patina of use anyway. I buy shoes that I really like, but I only find them really beautiful once I've worn them in and you get all the nice creases in the leather, that's when I find my shoes most beautiful or my bag or what have you. I enjoy seeing the patina of use and lots of people, for instance, with denim, they wanna see that used look. In fact, you can buy jeans pre-distressed. Obviously, there's a big interest in that. And for me, it's also a way of showing that I care about this item, highlighting the history of it. It's sometimes a conversation starter. I'm not gonna shout “you must mend,” but if somebody asks me, “Oh, I see you've got this patch on there, what's that all about?’ Then I'll explain that I like to look after my clothes and make them last for longer, and this is why I do it. Look, we've had a conversation about it now, maybe if you fancy it, give it a go yourself.”

The popularity of the visible mending movement on social media

“It's great to see. I really like seeing other people's repairs, and I really like the social aspect of social media. The Internet has really allowed people to come together from all over the world, and that's something that I really enjoy. I've met quite a few people through that. People I would never have met otherwise, and yeah, so you start sharing ideas and hear about how people in their own country or their own family look at these things and what they might do and not do, or how they view repairs. Yeah, I find it really interesting and it's very nice to see that so many people have embraced it.”

The importance of understanding how things are made

“I think it's important to realize when I say we should go back to an older mindset, I'm not saying we necessarily need to raise prices, it's more about the way that people would treat these items that I think we should go back to. And the other thing that people often confuse is price versus ethical production. You might spend a lot of money on designer clothes, but that doesn't mean that they have been produced more ethically than a t-shirt from H&M or Next, they can be made even in the same factory, there will just be given higher quality materials to sew with, and they are allowed to spend more time putting it together or use different techniques that are a bit more expensive to use. I think for me, that means even if you did only spend five pounds on a t-shirt because that's what you can afford, try to look at it as if you have spent two weeks worth of wages or a month of wages on it, so you look after it. And I think it is really difficult for people to understand. All clothes are made by hand. They are made by people.”

Amy Twigger Holyroyd's book Folk Fashion in which she talks about open and closed objects/systems/structures: https://amytwiggerholroyd.com/Folk-Fashion

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Connect with Tom van Deijnen here.

Follow Tom on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here . If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Lauren Chang Aug 10, 2021

How does conservation differ from repair? How is it similar? How have the tenets and ideas of best practice with conservation changed over time?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Lauren Chang, a textile specialist, who spins, dyes, weaves, and writes about textiles on her website interstitial-spaces.com. She holds a B.A. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University and an MA in Textile Conservation from the Textile Conservation Centre in the United Kingdom. Lauren worked as a textile conservator at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

We discuss:

- How attitudes to repair differ between Chinese and American cultures.

- How the tenets and ideas of best practice with conservation have changed over time.

- The power dynamics at play in conservation between the people orchestrating the conservation and the people deciding what gets conserved and what doesn’t.

- How we can start to repair some of those power imbalances within museums and within conservation.

- The importance of ‘sitting in the discomfort of not knowing’, of holding two conflicting ideas at the same time, of nuance.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

The difference between textile conservation and domestic repair

“Conservation is quite a rigorous and practical and theoretical discipline. So practically speaking, there are specifics like when you're stitching, you always move your needle or you place your pins through the interstices of the textile., so the spaces between the warps and wefts never split a thread. There’s also really stringent parameters around the material you select, so they don't cause damage just by sitting next to or how they age and degrade. There are also philosophical differences. You don't often choose what you repair. So for example, perhaps you work in a museum, it's usually exhibition driven. So you might be consulted for the choice of them looking at the condition, but the selection is really made by curatorial staff.”

How opinions towards mending and repair have changed

“There's a point in conservation where you learn everything. You learn different techniques, but you realize that no action is neutral, right? So you do one thing and that causes all these other problems, then you do another thing, and it causes another problem. But you still have to move ahead. Maybe you’re repairing to be thrifty or to be respectful of the environment, and I'm learning that my actions have all these different repercussions, but it doesn't mean we just stop. I feel like that's where the conversation is going, and I think it's really important because if you sit in the complexity of the discomfort, I think you understand the frameworks that lead us to this point.”

Preserving the soul and culture of an item (in this case, dance regalia from Northern California)

“It was really tense. But I remember Loren saying, ‘Oh, these pieces haven't been sung to or danced to in a really long time, and that's why they're in such bad shape. So he sang to them. He started telling me about the history and how they were made and how they were used and how that relates to the contemporary traditions in the community. And he moved the pieces as if they would be danced. And towards the end they dressed me in his aunt's regalia, which was such an honor, but also so incredibly moving. And I think these were all acts of preservation and care. And the power had really shifted because I only learned as much as they were willing to share. And they also brought up a lot of ideas about conservation for me because it was clear that I could learn to care for the materials, the physical aspects of the dance regalia, but it was also clear that I could not care for them in a way that actually preserved them. So it raised the question of what is my role as the conservator? What is best care or best practice? What are we conserving? And how do I fulfill my role in providing the best care?”

Connect with Lauren Chang here.

Follow Lauren on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Ekta Kaul Aug 03, 2021

Can mending and repair be used as self care? How can the traditions we’ve studied impact our current actions towards sustainability? Are we too disconnected from our past? What drives the culture of mending?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Ekta Kaul, an award-winning London based artist. Her artistic practice is focused on creating narrative maps that explore places, history and belonging through stitch. A pared back aesthetic coupled with a considered use of graphic marks and lines form the core elements of her work. These are underpinned by a thoughtful approach to making with meaning, a deep interest in heritage and a firm commitment to sustainability.

We discuss:

- What role mending and repair can play in mental health and self-care.

- Her time both at the National Institute of Design in India and her MA in Edinburgh.

- Portrait of Place and why maps interest her so much.

- Her forthcoming book about kantha coming out in Spring/Summer 2023.

- How she learned from her mother and grandmother, and how traditional skills can be modernized.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

Mending as an act of emotional repair

“I feel that it is also an act of emotional repair. Sewing is so much related to catharsis and this idea of emotional repair for me, particularly within my own practice, this is something that I have come to realize, and I'm kind of reflecting more and more on this. When I am working with stitch, I am instantly connected to my mother, and I'm instantly connected to my grandmother and although they are not here in this world, it just feels that I'm sort of honoring their presence of what they handed down to me.”

Stitching makes meditation accessible

“It is about finding joy in creativity. It is about finding that space, a meditative space where all your worries begin to melt away and you're just focused on the journey that your needle is taking on the cloth. And really, I feel stitching makes meditation so accessible. This idea that sitting down for 20 minutes and listening to an app or focusing on our breathing, I know I do it and I find it so hard as do many people. But I feel that the cloth, the intimacy of the cloth there is something about that, and just this act of holding a needle and making a very simple line can help us access that state so very easily. And also it has a tremendous impact on our sense of well being.”

Teaching our children traditional skills

“I also feel that there is the need to be teaching our children and young people how to mend things, and I imagine that the national curriculum should have a module on that and how they can fix the things that they use every day. And also, I feel that there’s much to be learned from the wisdom of ancient cultures, which at the moment, we have somehow, almost like an amnesia, has happened since the industrial revolution that everything done before that was somehow not right. Or could be improved upon. I'm not against progress, but what I'm saying is that we can re-imagine tradition in contemporary ways. We can apply that wisdom to today's problems.”

Connect with Ekta Kaul here.

Follow Ekta on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Caitlin DeSilvey Jul 20, 2021

Do we only repair the things that we cherish? Is there a place for visible mending in our built environment as well as our clothes? Can a repair add value to the object that is mended? And do we always need to intervene with repair – or is 'curated decay' sometimes a better option?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Caitlin DeSilvey, a geographer whose research explores the cultural significance of material change and transformation, with a particular focus on heritage contexts. She has worked with artists, archaeologists, environmental scientists and heritage practitioners on a range of interdisciplinary projects, and is one of the most inspiring academics I have ever come across. She has worked with artists, archaeologists, environmental scientists and heritage practitioners on a range of interdisciplinary projects, supported by funding from UK research councils, the Royal Geographical Society, the Norwegian Research Council and the European Social Fund.

We discuss:

- The overlaps between cultural geography and history of design.

- Her book, Visible mending: Everyday repairs in the South West.

- Using visible mending in stonemasonry in heritage sites.

- Why she uses visual imagery and storytelling as well as participatory activities to engage people in imagining changing environments and places.

- Why damage and decay captures her imagination.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

How value can be created by repair:

“One of the things that we became really interested in the project was how the objects that people were bringing to be repaired and then the stories that the repairers told us about these objects, were as much about people's identities as they were about the objects themselves. There were stories about the woman who would bring her all blown out slippers and say ‘Oh, I need you to put the new souls on these,’ and the repairers would say 'But it’s not economical. And the response would be, ‘No, no, but you really need to do this because they're the only slippers that are comfortable’ or ‘You need to fix my porridge pot because I've been making porridge in it for the last 50 years.’ There was always a little bit of a narrative attached to it. And that sense of value and what we value, and that being often uncoupled from economic valuation became really central to the project. We also became quite interested in how value is created by repair, so by attending to something, and extending care, we actually produce value. So it's not just about a thing that we value and therefore we get it repaired, there is actually this much more dynamic relationship with the things that we repair.”

Our impulse as human beings to fix things:

“I've been really interested in the value in actually not repairing. What happens when we have a structure that is probably already on that path, something that is falling apart, ruining, however we wanna describe that process, and instead of pulling it back from the brink and making intact again, we just let that process play out? And the stories that become available when you allow that to happen are interesting and worth telling. But it's an approach that only applies to specific contexts and that way of thinking around that. You can find heritage value in something that's falling apart as well as something that's held together. It really came out of that work at the Homestead – it was the decay and the dereliction and the interplay, the way in which animals had occupied the buildings and the way in which there was this real blurriness around nature and culture that actually was so rich about that site. But to be honest, my interest in damage and breakdown and decay is partly about the moments when we can allow that to play out and learn from it, but also partly about the moments when we just can't resist intervening and why? So it's not necessarily about always stepping back, it's also about trying to understand our impulse as human beings to fix things.”

The importance of storytelling

“One of the things I'm preoccupied now with is the fact that we really need better stories to move us into this future that we're facing. And we need ways of knowing the world and watching it change that are not all about loss and despair; where there's some hope, which can be difficult at times. So for me, I think it’s just trying what works.”

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind-the-scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Waste: A masterclass is a 12-week programme conceived to inspire, educate and empower designer-makers to create circular products from waste. Click here to find out more or visit katietreggiden.com/masterclass.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Justin South Jul 13, 2021

Is repair and restoration limited to the things we own? Can it be applied to other facets of our life? How is repair correlated to poverty, and can that change for the betterment of our planet? How is community related to all of this?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Justin South, a 32-year-old bisexual fashion student. Four years ago, Justin went into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and has been in recovery ever since. During that time, he has worked with several charities that support recovering addicts and discovered the power of repair – as both a literal skill and a helpful metaphor.

We discuss:

- How restoration and repair played a role in his recovery .

- His time learning at Restoration Station.

- The idea of living with mistakes and how restoration helps to build that confidence.

- Why mending and repair is so important from a sustainability perspective.

- How mending and repair play a role while studying Fashion Pattern Cutting at London College of Fashion.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

How repair and restoration can heal

“These ideas of repair and restoration, I think, are not just limited to the things that you own, it can also be yourself. And having an LGBTQ+ community, it creates this space where you can be accepted and you can air your “brokenness,” as it were and find within that community a way to heal.”

People’s reactions to restoring for the first time at Restoration Station

“I think people were really, really surprised and almost in a way that was unbelievable, that they couldn't even envisage this piece coming back to life. You get so used to – when something is broken – to it being always that way, and for them to see it go from simply being broken to being fixed without any of the in-between process, I think people got a real kind of shock and surprise and enjoyment out of how different their piece of, whatever it is they brought in, looked.”

Mending and its assumed correlation to poverty

[Katie adds] “I think there’s a real hierarchy sometimes between the different things we enjoy, and all the different things we like to do. I think it's interesting that you mentioned that you're from quite a middle class background and therefore mending and repair didn't necessarily come up. I think it's another thing that it’s interestingly often associated with poverty. We mend something because we can't afford to buy a new one rather than because we love that thing and we just wanna keep it in our lives.”

Learn more about Restoration Station: https://www.sct.org.uk/social-enterprises/restoration-station/

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Waste: A masterclass is a 12-week programme conceived to inspire, educate and empower designer-makers to create circular products from waste. Click here to find out more or visit katietreggiden.com/masterclass.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Janet Gunter Jul 06, 2021

Do we really have the right to repair the things we own? How can broken items be given new value? Is repair only to be used when an object is spoiled or broken? Can repair be aspirational, playful and creative?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Janet Gunter, the co-founder and outreach lead at The Restart Project and a leading Right to Repair campaigner. The Restart Project is a social enterprise that aims to fix our broken relationship with electronics.

We discuss:

- How attitudes to repair differ in the various places she has lived and traveled.

- How The Restart Project is a ‘people powered’ project.

- Why mending fell out of favor and how to re-ignite people’s interest in it.

- The laptop donation project she undertook during the pandemic for school children without access to the right kit for home-schooling.

- What other levers government and big business could be pulling to allow or even encourage more home repairs.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

The systemic issues at challenge repair

“I think the other important message that we always tell people is that the barrier to repair is often systemic. So it's not on you to figure out how to change a battery in a mobile that just was designed not for that to happen. How are you going to change the battery in your Airpods when Apple itself cannot change the battery? So I think when encouraging people to make a change themselves, we need to also always reinforce that it's not only on you. And if it makes more sense for you to campaign to change the system instead of darning a sock, then please go ahead and do that.”

What manufactures can do to make repair easier

“Look at the thriving second-hand market of Dualit toasters, the high-end ones, people actually do really want your high-end ones and they don't even care if they would necessarily get it second hand. Look at a company like Patagonia with its “worn wear shop.” [Look at] this idea that you can reinforce your brand and actually take advantage of the fact that people want your products second hand. Use that to your advantage instead of [producing cheap things]. Patagonia, as far as I know, doesn't have a cheap crap line for people that don't want to pay. Instead, what they've done is they've made it easier to get their product second hand.”

Hope for the future of repair

“I think things are changing. We’ve seen big YouTubers come out in favor of repair and reuse and basically saying that shredding something, recycling it is the absolute last resort. And these are YouTubers with millions and millions of followers. So it's really brilliant to see that we are moving past recycling and that there's a real sense of change and critique in relation to our stuff and the way that we're buying stuff. The question is whether policy makers are going to keep up with the public outrage and interest, but I guess that's our challenge.”

Connect with Janet Gunter here.

Check out the Restart Project here.

Check out an interview with Felipe Fonseca about repair in Brazil here, All We Can Save by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K Wilkinson here, and the podcast How To Save a Planet here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Waste: A masterclass is a 12-week programme conceived to inspire, educate and empower designer-makers to create circular products from waste. Click here to find out more or visit katietreggiden.com/masterclass.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Hans Tan, Tiffany Loy & Hunn Wai Jun 29, 2021

How can broken items be given new value? Is repair only to be used when an object is spoiled or broken? Can repair be aspirational?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Hans Tan, Tiffany Loy and Hunn Wai from the R for Repair exhibition, which ran from 13 January until 6 February 2021 at the National Design Centre, Singapore. The exhibition, curated by Tan, shone a timely spotlight on global waste by showing how broken or discarded items can be given new value.

We discuss:

- R for Repair, the exhibition and their approach to researching and curating it.

- How sustainability can be articulated and practiced in an attractive, purposeful way.

- How opinions towards mending and repair are changing.

- Their perspective on repair in Asian culture.

- How repair helps us appreciate the way things are made.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

Hans Tan’s approach to R for Repair

“I think one thing that I reflected on was the fact that in most Asian cultures, mending is seen as something you do only when you can't afford to replace something that is spoiled or broken or torn. And so that's why buying something new on a festive occasion, like Chinese New Year, was something important, and a sign of prosperity. In the Asian context, I think mending is also not a profession that anyone would want to aspire to do as a professional. For me, it was really important to reposition repair as an aspirational activity that could generate an inspirational outcome. And what better way to do it than to work with designers in Singapore?”

Why repair and mending contributes to sustainability, according to Hunn Wai

“I think it gives a lot of ownership and autonomy to the user. It shows you, ‘Oh, I never knew you could do it that way.’ I think that there's quite a nice sense of renewed ownership and also confidence in your own capabilities. I think repairing also helps you to appreciate the amount of work and engineering and ingenuity that has gone into that object. I think one part of the equation for sustainability is the appreciation of how things are put together and how things are made. I think a huge part of why the world is not sustainable is because we’ve become so numb to these things. We don't appreciate these things.”

Tiffany Loy’s approach to the bag she repaired for the exhibition

“I think flipping something inside out, just to continue using it seems very much aligned to Arnold’s attitude. Like, you just wanna keep using it until it's not possible to use it anymore. So when I first received it, I had a good look at the bag just to get to know it and to highlight all the areas that were fragile, areas that I need to take care of. I did iron on some tape just to patch up the holes, just so they didn’t get bigger. But then when I saw how well maintained the inside was, surprisingly, I decided that we should just show that instead. But then, of course, I couldn't just end there. I think Hans might be disappointed if I just stopped there. And because the inner lining was quite delicate, I definitely added an additional material. Again, I could have just stitched a piece of fabric all over it, but I thought that might be a bit boring and I wanted to do something a bit more fancy and be a bit more indulgent, so I decided to make it mesh.”

Connect with Hans Tan here.

Connect with Tiffany Loy here.

Connect with Hunn Wai here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Waste: A masterclass is a 12-week programme conceived to inspire, educate and empower designer-makers to create circular products from waste. Click here to find out more or visit katietreggiden.com/masterclass.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Bridget Harvey Jun 22, 2021

What are the differences between repair, restoration and conservation? Is maintenance also repair? And how are these processes viewed along gender lines?

On today’s episode, I’m talking to Bridget Harvey, an artist who uses making to ask critical questions, generate new understanding and add meaning through craft. Investigating processes and concepts through making: she asks what we make, how we make it, and why that matters.

We discuss:

- What we make, how we make it, and why it matters.

- How mending and repair are loaded words with material and gender implications.

- The differences in textiles that age well versus those that don't.

- The benefits to the planet of repairing lower priced items.

- How the circular economy has to be about more than just upcycling.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

Repair is often multidisciplinary.

"I've never felt comfortable to sit just with one material, because I'm always interested in the processes more than the materials themselves. So in trying to understand repair extremely deeply, which is what I've been doing for the last eight years or so, it's just been a natural fact that I will be multidisciplinary. I was before and I still am. Breakage happens across different materials across different objects across different scales. Even breakage itself is really a scale. The idea of just being with one material, just isn't natural for me. And also, one of the things that I've found through my explorations is that you don't necessarily mend an object with the material that it’s made with. So repair quite often by its very nature is in some way, multimedia. Mixing and melding just kind of happens along the way."

Using the word repair rather than mending

"I tend to use the word repair because it means to make something work as you need it to work. And that is quite important to me because I don't think it needs to go back to exactly how it was, which is the kind of formal definition of mending. And 'restore' is quite a loaded word. I mean, once you start looking at restoration, as opposed to say, conservation or preservation, you know, you start getting into all these areas, which are really sort of lumped together. But actually, they're very different. And the differences are quite important. Once you start digging through them in gender terms, and again, this goes a little bit binary. But that's maybe because the internet is a little bit binary… if you google ‘mending’, you get textiles, and you get women. If you google ‘repair’, you get vehicles, maybe washing machines, and you get men. And that, I think, is inaccurate. So repair work was done by all people on all things. Soldiers mended their clothes and we know men were heavily involved in textile mending."

The repair movement

“There's a lot of discussion on the right to repair movement. And that idea around something called "optional durability.” You can decide how long your thing lasts, if you don't want to change your phone every year, you're quite happy to keep using it until it properly conks out. A part of that is that ongoing maintenance or care for those objects and that there's those kinds of choices rather than being forced into someone else's timeline, which you can almost guarantee it's not for your good, not for community good, not for planetary good. It's money up and choices out."

The visible vs the invisible

"They try not to hide conservation work, they try to make it subtle so it doesn't disrupt your view of an object, but not to hide it. The object is viewed as perfect with no life story as per pure restoration. And that, to me, was very interesting with that visible/invisible, because it starts to show you it as a scale rather than a split. And you start to think 'I might not be able to mend this perfectly, but I don't have to make it really in your face visible', you know. I can do it sort of subtly, or decoratively or with some other kind of nuance compared to the original object and material. And that is a really interesting route to the accessibility of repair for those of us who aren't incredibly skilled makers, who can’t properly do invisible repair work.”

Bridget’s PhD document

Connect with Bridget Harvey here.

Follow Aya on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Aya Haidar Jun 15, 2021

I’m talking to Aya Haidar. As a self-described 'mother, artist, and humanitarian,' her creative practice focuses on found and recycled objects, through which she explores themes of loss, migration and memory. She has studied art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, The Slade School of Art – part of University College London – and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, before undertaking a Masters in Non-Governmental Organisations and Development at the London School of Economics and Politics Science. She has exhibited all over the world, with international solo and group shows in London, Berlin, Jeddah, Paris, Dubai and Turkey – as well as being involved in charity and social engagement projects.

We discuss:

- How life and resources were not disposable in previous generations.

- What are some of the connotations of the word 'mending'?

- Work that is politically and socially engaged, but not necessarily political.

- How we are living lives that are so fast and disposable there isn't time to slow down.

- Why social media is giving us the chance to connect with mending and sustainability topics.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

The notion of repair has often been out of necessity, not choice.

"Because my parents fled during the war they left everything behind. My mother is very frugal, I think because they had to leave everything behind. The sense of not wasting anything is so much a part of her. And she definitely passed that on to me. And my grandmother, right through her whole life until the day she died. I think it is a generational thing, being born in 1920 in Lebanon, I don't think it was a choice. Life then wasn't as disposable as it is now. You mended things. You knitted a jumper and if it got too small you took it apart and you re-knitted it in a larger size."

Terrible things should not be forgotten.

"Terrifying things need to be remembered because they can still affect people very much emotionally because it's their childhood, it's everything that they've lived. For me it's about embellishing this and filling in these cracks with all these beautiful threads. And in a way these colorful threads also highlight it. These bullet holes and these cracks cannot be forgotten. The problem with that is you can go back into a cycle where you cover it up and you replace these old buildings with these beautiful new buildings we have and in some way the new generation forgets what it's been through."

Mending has a unique place in environmental sustainability.

"One thing I've learned is that if you look at these refugee communities, every tiny bit of scrap is used. You have a bed sheet that then becomes a wrap and then becomes a dress and then becomes a head scarf and then becomes a bag. It becomes so many things before it's ever thrown away. Then it becomes a little doll for the child because it can take on so many forms and I believe there is a lot that can be learned from that. We live in such a disposable society now with such cheap clothing and it's so dangerous and it's so unsustainable. Looking at these communities and how they respect their materials, honor them, and constantly breathe new life into them, it's something so positive and something I hope will influence whomever it rubs off on.

Her work is politically and socially engaged, but not political.

"With all of my work I am not interested in the bigger geopolitics. What I'm doing is picking the stories that are silenced and have fallen through the cracks. What comes out are these incredibly raw and personal stories of mothers having to choose between their children at border crossings. Someone is sharing with you and entrusting you with these stories. I'm interested in the mother who had her baby ripped from her hands and thrown into the sea so the whole boat doesn't get caught by police patrols. This is a story that gets re-shared every time I tell it because these personal stories are what humanize these political situations. My work is politically engaged because it engages in stories and issues that are rooted in politics and social issues but it's not about the 'politics' of it."

Books mentioned:

The Invention of Craft – Glenn Adamson
All We Can Save – Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K Wilkinson

Connect with Aya Haidar here.

Follow Aya on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind-the-scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Daniel Charny Jun 08, 2021

In this episode, we’re talking to Daniel Charny, a creative director, curator and educator with an inquiring mind and an entrepreneurial streak. Alongside Dee Halligan, he is co-founder and director of Forth, a creative studio, where he works with clients from Google to the Design Museum. Describing themselves as ‘part R&D Lab and part consultancy, small, connected and serious about finding better responses to our changing world,’ their most recent initiative is a large scale European research project exploring the potential of ‘Open Schooling’ to enrich childrens' creative engagement with science curriculum. Daniel is perhaps best known as the curator of the influential exhibition Power of Making at the V&A, which drove him to establish the award-winning learning programme Fixperts, now taught in universities and schools worldwide. Other projects include the Aram Gallery, the British Council’s Maker Library Network, the open-source exhibition Future of Fixing and the Design Museum’s permanent exhibition Designer Maker User. And, as if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Daniel is also Professor of Design at Kingston University and guest lecturer on the Master in Design for Emergent Futures at IAAC, Barcelona. He lives and works in London.

We discuss:

- The mindset around fixing and the impact it has.

- The importance of ‘applied creativity’ in education.

- Why young and older makers need to come together to create change.

- The differences between formal, informal and non-formal education and why all three are important.

- His time spent working with Zeev Aram and The Aram Gallery

- Fixperts, an award-winning learning programme for applied creativity and social sustainability.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

The connection between making and mending

“I think they are completely connected, but there are different values sometimes behind them and different reasons for doing them. Menders have material intelligence, they have acquired skills. Making is, I think, completely integral to mending. I don't think it works the other way around. I think a lot of makers can mend, but it's not necessarily their driver. There are lots of tribes of makers, and some of them are interested in innovation. And so improving is more of their state of making. And yes, they are mending something, but not in order to mend it back to what it was. We then just think about it as a kind of access of care, and you think about conservation, you think about maintenance, you think about care in daily life and repair, and then hacking and then adapting and so on.”

Waking people up to remember that we have making

“It was kind of like, ‘Okay, let's open that cupboard and remember we have it.’ We don't have to invent it, it's there, we just kind of forgot about it. Too many people forget about it. And Fixperts, Maker Library Network, they really are taking that notion with a social agenda together. So there was an area in ‘The Power of Making’ that was very much about communities making together, so it wasn't so much DIY culture, it was ‘MIY’ culture, and it was very much the early 3D printers. […] Or materials like Sugru are about fixing but also inventing and maybe doing repair for someone else, and there was this whole notion of the social of communities doing things for themselves and for others.”

The importance of engaging with young people to create change

“When you think about the challenges we're facing with the environment, it's not just about coming up with how to clean in the ocean or how to reduce carbon footprints, you need a major cultural shift to support young people to even learn to think like that. We have to engage much earlier with younger people at the stage when they are thinking about what their values are, how they understand themselves and creativity. It becomes a different kind of premise for me than teaching design. It's not just the sense and the mindset, it's actually enabling. The idea is not enough, they also have to have the skills. It's the imagination and the skills together in order to achieve these shifts.”

The book Katie mentions towards the end of the episode, from which she has taken the term ‘stubborn optimism’ is The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, which you can buy here. (This is an affiliate link and both Katie and a bricks and mortar bookshop will get a small cut if you purchase this way.)

Connect with Daniel Charny here.

Follow Daniel on Twitter here.

This episode is dedicated to Zeev Aram: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/03/22/zeev-aram-obituary/

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind-the-scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Celia Pym Jun 01, 2021

In this episode, we’re talking to Celia Pym, an artist living and working in London. Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, from small moth holes to larger accidents with fire. Her interests concern the evidence of damage, and how repair draws attention to the places where garments and cloth wear down and grow thin. In clothing, this is often to do with use and how the body moves.

Pym was shortlisted for the Women’s Hour Craft Prize and her work has been exhibited all over the world and is held in the permanent collections of the Crafts Council UK and Noveau Musée National de Monaco.

We discuss:

- How working with people’s garments opens the door to learn more about them.

- The importance of craft and why it should be a priority in education.

- Why colour contrast is creatively interesting when considering yarn and string.

- The reason mended pieces deserve to be displayed in museums.

- How mending showed up in her previous careers as a teacher and a nurse.

- What the future holds for mending and repair.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

Why Colour Contrast Matters

“There are two reasons I love contrast. Number one, it's easier. You can see what you're doing, so you can see the stitch that you're making. I also have always felt that I wanted to see what was missing. So I've always sought to mend with a contrast because I want to be able to see the actual damage in a way. But the other thing that I think about a lot is that I'm following the damage. The bit that's interesting to me is the damaged bit of the garment and the mending is the work to understand that and sort of reconstruct it, so you need to be able to see that. The color is where it gets fun. I love the way that yarn is colour in your hands, it's in your fingers, like it's a physical material colour, and so when you're mending with it, it's like drawing... You're colouring in with the yarn.”

Why mended pieces deserve a space in museums.

“I like the shift of value that things that come from your home might be held to have value within a museum context. And this idea of a skillfulness that gets practiced at home has a place in the conversation about what craft and skill is, which is what a significant museum, a really important museum is sort of saying. It’s sort of saying ‘this has meaning in our culture, and I really do think the craft from within Home spaces does have a place in our culture.”

The importance of material literacy from a young age

“I also just think there's a general richness to understanding the differences [of materials]. They’re sensational. They feel different against your skin, and that's something that's full of pleasure and excitement and memory, and we’re denying our children that. It would enhance their imagination. And then as we say, from a sustainability point of view: they are the designers of the future, and they do it completely differently in ways we can't imagine. This morning, I was actually thinking, what if you had as many lessons on materials as you do on English, or Maths? What if they said: ‘this is as important, knowing where wool comes from, or how to spin it, or how it can be reused. Or knowing the whole life of one material, like wood or ceramic? You can tie in politics, history, all the rest of it, but it would be wonderful. It would be absolutely fantastic.”

Connect with Celia Pym here.

Follow Celia on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind the scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Chris Miller May 24, 2021

This season is all about repair and in this episode, we’re talking to Chris Miller the co-founder of Skinflint – Europe’s leading vintage industrial lighting website. Skinflint scours locations across the world to source historic vintage lights, which are restored with a gentle touch by UK-based lighting experts, ensuring their stories shine through.

We discuss:

- How a life-changing experience in Sri Lanka set his life on a new path

- How his company, Skinflint, got its start

- The interesting places he sources lights from and why.

- His ‘Full Circle’ buy-back program and how it’s helping his clients.

- How his approach relates to the circular economy.

- How he is aiming to be carbon-free by 2025.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.

What Inspired him to start his company Skinflint.

“I’d become disillusioned with the manufacturing side of the industry. This constant loop of production, consumption, a reinvention of the wheel. I was also rapidly becoming disillusioned with producing lighting schemes for predominantly second homes, both in London and Cornwall. However, the project in Primrose Hill, which was back in 2007, offered a completely different perspective and it was, excuse the pun, a ‘light bulb moment.’ The whole building fabric was to be designed around reusing existing materials, not just from an environmental perspective, but in order to create what they wanted, which was a well-worn interior. We're used to seeing that with floorboards, and this, that and the other, but every single item in the property, this is an extensive property, had to be in existence. The end result was magnificent. Over those two years, it became apparent that there were a number of respectable salvage companies throughout the UK selling lighting, but there weren't any lighting companies selling salvage, if that makes sense. So we recognised the gap and a growing trend toward sustainability, more importantly, provenance and a return to well-made items being built to last or to be repaired and as such we built a company from the product up.”

Why they source from the 1920s-1970s.

“It’s bookend by the widespread adoption of electricity in the 1920s and the advent of plastics in the 1970s, because you start to see documentation coming into the language there of planned obsolescence and valued engineering, and effectively engineers were handling a material they didn't fully understand. Yes, it [plastic] was seen as the be all and end all at that point and I think we know where we've gone with that, but effectively, we can't refurbish products from that period because we can't do anything with the plastic. It does end there but we've restored somewhere around 50,000 products, and we have about 5000 products in stock at any one time. I'd like to think we can cover any of those styles from antique to art deco to industrial right up to the retro period or early 1970s. In fact, many of the pieces, especially the early ones, they’re massively over-engineered rather than value-engineered. I liken it to the Victorian railway bridges, they'll still be there in another 100 years without any problem and they're pretty indestructible, so they're a pleasure to refurbish and to handle the materials are magnificent.”

Carbon neutral by 2025

“The carbon-neutral piece I struggle with a little bit because for me, it's become something that's been green-washed by larger companies. I don't really care if Heathrow airport is carbon-neutral. That kind of ignores the elephant in the corner there, the building may very well be carbon neutral, but...yeah. From our perspective, we're doing a lot of things right, but there's always areas to improve upon. Our company emissions for the calendar year 2018 were actually relatively low. They may not sound low, but they equated to 16 tons of carbon dioxide, which roughly translates to two tons per employee. That is an extremely low per capita footprint for a UK retail company. The embodied carbon of our product is very low because they're being reused and going into the circular economy rather than going for disposal or to recycling. The bulk of our carbon footprint, and this is a challenge 'cause it's about 70% from scope-1 is from diesel emissions used in transportation of goods in the operation. So although all of our contractors are obviously based in the South West, we are bringing products predominantly from the UK, but from Europe and further afield. We’re trying to reduce this within the UK by switching over to electric vehicles. But again, it’s a challenge. It’s not black and white.”

Learn more about Skinflint here.

Follow Skinflint on Instagram here.

About Katie Treggiden

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk and Monocle24. Following research during her recent Masters at the University of Oxford, she is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and this podcast.

You can find Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1, sign up for her e-newsletter here and if you’re a designer-maker interested in becoming more sustainable, sign up for her free Facebook Group here. If you’d like to support more fantastic content like this, you can buy Katie a ‘virtual coffee’ here in exchange for behind-the-scenes content and a shout-out in Season Three.

Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Christopher Raeburn Oct 06, 2020

In the ninth episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden talks to Christopher Ræburn, founder and creative director of ethical fashion label RÆBURN, about how his discovery of unworn 1950s jackets – still in their original packaging – as a student led to a career exploring reuse, surplus and repair, and Christopher reveals that making nothing at all for his latest collection, RÆFOUND, is an intentional provocation for the industry.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Lauren MacDonald Sep 29, 2020

In the eighth episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden talks to artist, designer and director of textiles studio, Working Cloth, Lauren MacDonald, about dying clothes using food waste. Lauren explains why she finds the term ‘natural dye’ problematic, how a box of penises put her off studying art (yes, you read that right!), the magic tricks she performs with red cabbage, and why avocados will turn your clothes pink not green.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Yinka Ilori Sep 22, 2020

In the seventh episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden chats to London-based designer Yinka Ilori about his early exposure to reuse and upcycling in Nigeria, his penchant for collecting discarded chairs off the street and bringing them home on the bus, the first time he created a collection he could truly see himself in, his most meaningful collaboration to date, and why he now has legacy and reuse written into his contract.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Nina Tolstrup Sep 15, 2020

In the sixth episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden talks to co-founder of Studiomama, Nina Tolstrup about the impact her Scandinavian childhood had on her approach to sustainability, meeting her husband and co-founder Jack at Doors of Perception, their eco-criteria for every design they create together, and the moves towards circularity they’ve seen in the last decade within the manufacturers they work with.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Tristram Stuart Sep 08, 2020

07–11 September 2020 is Zero Waste Week, and with this year’s focus on food, who better to have as our guest on the fifth episode of Series 01 than author of Waste: Uncovering a Global Food Scandal, Tristam Stuart? He and Katie Treggiden explore how his early freeganism got him punched in the face, and how he fed 5,000 people on 13 tonnes of unwanted ‘ugly’ fruit and veg on a snowy day in Trafalgar Square.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Ander Zabala Sep 01, 2020

Ahead of Zero Waste Week next week, the fourth episode of Series 01 is a conversation between Katie Treggiden and ‘Zero Waste Warrior’ Ander Zabala (@goxuboys on Instagram), who can fit his weekly household waste into a single jam jar. They talk about how Ander found his calling while still at school, the importance of making waste visible, and how starting small can produce big results.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Seetal Solanki Sep 01, 2020

In the third episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden is in conversation with designer, author and educator Seetal Solanki. They talk about the embodied learnings of thrift and reuse we inherit from our parents, why we need to stop using the term ‘waste’ altogether, the decolonisation of the language around materials, and how we can build bridges between the Global North and the Global South.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe

Lucy Siegle Sep 01, 2020

In the second episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden chats to ethical journalist and broadcaster, Lucy Siegle, about the trip to India that changed her life, her lockdown interview with David Attenborough, why she buys clothes like an Italian ‘Nona’ at a fruit market, the importance of personal agency, and why ‘building back better’ after COVID-19 requires citizenship and not consumerism.
As recommended by Metro, The Week, Wallpaper and FastCompany.
Get full access to Brackish at brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe