Conversations on Creative Climate Leadership Podcast
Episode 1: PLAY
SPEAKERS
Toby Peach, Farah Ahmed, Ntando Cele, Louis VI
Louis VI 00:00
Can I just start by saying something blunt? Leadership we have is proper feeling, isn't it? Like, look around. There's some there's some fundamental facts. The planet of ours is getting hotter. With each increment the consequences for us, me, you, the listener, every other being, it gets worse.
Farah Ahmed 00:21
Start us on a cheery note, Louis!
Louis VI 00:23
Well, we should introduce ourselves, really, and welcome people to the podcast. On a slightly cheerier note, my name is Louis VI. I'm a musician and zoologist, and I'm here with Farah. Farah, do you want to introduce yourself for the people?
Farah Ahmed 00:37
Hi, I'm Farah Ahmed, and I'm the Climate Justice Lead at Julie's Bicycle, which is an organisation all about mobilising the arts and culture sector on…oh my god, how have I forgotten what I do?
Louis VI 00:52
It's an important part of being and doing it is embodying it! You don't have to explain it.
Farah Ahmed 00:57
At Julie's Bicycle, we try to mobilise the arts and culture sector around the climate, nature and justice crisis.
Louis VI 01:04
Alright. Well, thanks to Greg, we've got our mics and our headphones on. Why are we here?
Farah Ahmed 01:09
Well, as you said, climate is the biggest challenge that humanity faces right now. It affects everything, but we've known about this for a really long time, and there's been a real failure in leadership to address it at the scale and at the pace that we need.
Louis VI 01:25
Yeah, and we're in the first half of 2025 and it doesn't seem to be off to the best start. In fact, yeah, it feels pretty intense.
Farah Ahmed 01:35
You say that, but there are great things happening. And I really want to talk to you about Creative Climate Leadership.
Louis VI 01:42
Go on.
Farah Ahmed 01:43
So to solve this problem, we need to come at it with different approaches. And I think Creative Climate Leadership has so many of the answers. As a musician, Louis, what does that term even mean to you?
Louis VI 01:56
You know what? I'm not even gonna play. I don't actually know.
Farah Ahmed 01:59
Okay, well, I guess that's the point of this podcast. We're going to share six episodes, and the plan is to do two things. Firstly, we're going to explore what Creative Climate Leadership is. We're going to answer that question, and then secondly, hopefully, make a really compelling case for why we need a lot more.
Louis VI 02:19
All right, sounds good. Lots of learning, lots of enacting, lots of talking. Where do we start?
Farah Ahmed 02:26
So behind the scenes, I've been lining up a bunch of people who are going to help us to explore this. And I guess you would call them Creative Climate Leaders. They are people from all over the world who are really deep in the work and their stories are going to really help us to demonstrate what it means. Just like these two:
Toby Peach 02:45
Hi, I'm Toby Peach. I am an experience and games designer, and over the last decade, I've had a real focus on using play as a tool to explore social change. Primarily, I've been doing that with a charity, an arts and social change charity called Coney where I've been associate director, and a lot of that focus has been work with young people and families. I've been working with Greenpeace over the past couple of years to develop a secondary school introduction to climate activism and climate justice, and that is now in its second pilot stage, which is called the Playful Activism Toolkit, which takes students through an eight week programme exploring how they can how we can use games as a way to explore system change.
Ntando Cele 03:35
My name is Ntando, and I'm currently based in Bern in Switzerland. I have been working as a theatre maker and performer, and mostly doing projects that deal with prejudice, racism, how stereotypes affect how, yeah, I'm seen and how I move in Europe as a Black woman from South Africa. And the latest project that I did is called A Wasted Land, which is a piece about trying to connect climate change to fast fashion, not only that, but connecting it directly to a living example of people living in Ghana and how the clothes that we here, as somebody who lives in Bern and Switzerland, we religiously put these clothes in boxes to go and help, and so now I'm part of the help market. And so then the piece tries to talk about that, to show whether these clothes are really helping or making the situation worse.
Louis VI 04:42
Okay, okay, cool. I feel like I'm starting to get it, but I guess what I'd like to know is, where are we going with all this, Farah.
Farah Ahmed 04:49
That's a great question. I've given a name or a word for each of the episodes, and each one is a quality that I think Creative Climate Leadership means.
Louis VI 05:00
It's right. Okay, got it. So we're starting with Play. Why Play?
Farah Ahmed 05:05
Let's find out. Louis, let's come back and chat after hearing this.
Louis VI 05:17
Toby and Ntando, welcome to the podcast. So happy to have you guys with us today. This series is all about Creative Climate Leadership, so let's just go straight in and stick to those three words, Creative - Climate - Leadership. What does that mean to you, and how does that live in your day to day, work, Ntando. If we could start with you?
Ntando Cele 05:38
I never thought that I had the permission to talk about climate, you know, for a long time, and it's something that I recently just gave myself the right to do as a maker and as a Black woman in general, because it always felt like something that's not for me. It felt like something that's too big, and I just cannot even begin, because I'm still struggling with the basics of “Hello, I'm human, I'm here, see me, I'm - you know” and so, climate felt like too many steps ahead of the conversation. And so even to identify myself like that, as a Creative Climate Leader, I'm like...
Louis VI 06:27
When you say permission, is that permission from yourself or from the wider climate community?
Ntando Cele 06:37
Interesting question, yeah. Interesting question, Louis, maybe both, both. I think it's from seeing examples of who talks about the climate, and then mostly from where I am right now, not seeing people who look like me or people who speak my language in how to solve the problem. In my experience, it's only been scientists and numbers and things that I cannot relate to, and therefore it felt like, yeah, there's nothing for me to add here. I'd rather stick to what I know, yeah. And so now then… I did this because… I started to work with this topic here, because now there's a lot more younger people who are now talking about identity, Black identity, also in Switzerland or in Europe in general. And it felt like, I felt like, okay, I think that's enough, you know, from my side now. I need to move on as an artist to talk about other things, because I know that there's a lot more issues. It's not only just about one thing that affects us, which is racism and prejudice.
Louis VI 07:50
And we'll get into it a bit later, but those things also come into the climate conversation as well. And I think we are in a place where we've had the science and the facts for long enough and as, like it or not, we're not these logical decision making machines that some people wish we were. We're very much feeling based, emotional beings. So I think art has got to get involved now at that point. Toby, how about you? What does Creative Climate Leadership look like in your day to day work?
Toby Peach 08:29
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing the course, and I was in my kind of, mid 20s, and I felt quite young in that space. I remember going - I'm not in my mid 20s - now my mid 30s. And I yeah, I remember going into that space, and I found, essentially the word permission, that actually is, like a very, in a different way. I felt it gave me permission to have conversations, and I think also kind of gave me this understanding that there was permission to go and try to find ways to start this conversation, in different communities and different groups. And I think from that moment forward, I've kind of always part of any project. And I think even if, I mean, I have lots of conversations which perhaps you wouldn't directly say are related to the climate crisis, but as they kind of pointed out, they are all interconnected. And so even if I'm having conversations about healthcare and the importance of access to healthcare, it's like these things, because of the kind of understanding that these are all interconnected, I find that the Creative Climate Leadership kind of comes through of making sure that it's present throughout, even in in both the stories and the conversation that's happening, but also in the practice behind it as well. And. And I think it's only been absolutely the last couple of years when I've realised the practice behind it is as important as the piece that is coming out of it.
Louis VI 10:10
Really, yeah, it's a good point. And, I mean, I guess… I guess this is a good point to also go into each each episode we have on this has a word based around it, and the word is very much like a characteristic of this climate leadership that we've been speaking about. And the word of this episode is Play, for quite obvious reasons, I reckon, looking at both your work. What does it mean to have play or an attitude of play going into what you do and the way you express yourselves as makers?
Ntando Cele 10:49
For me, play has to be part of the conversation, because honestly, I don't take myself that seriously, and I struggle… I struggle with the very serious situations of this, of you know, “saving the world”. And I just cannot say that with a straight face, because for me, it sounds so ridiculous. And then also, then the people you know that are the leaders of “saving the world” are very serious, and take this very seriously as well, which, of course we should, because it's related to, yeah, bigger topics, life and death kind of issues. And so then being playful and ironic and questioning is, then, for me, part of the package.
Louis VI 11:42
It's also a question of language a bit, isn't it? So that play maybe, from what you guys are saying, sounds like it allows more people to universally embody quite difficult subjects. And no one's going to respond that well, I mean, maybe there's a few people on this earth, but not myself, where you know, you just wake up and someone goes “all right, you got to save the world. What are you going to do about it?” I think that even on just a straight up level, even we're aware that we do need to do that, it's just that's a big ask for anyone, regardless of what position they are in, in a society. And I think we are kidding ourselves, if anyone doesn't think that play is such an important part of yeah, getting through life. If you're if everything's too serious, you know, you're going to be exhausted by day two.
Ntando Cele 12:40
But also it's also a tool to have distance, a little bit of a distance, and then maybe better solutions, you know, show up.
Louis VI 12:51
Are we also talking about a sense of humour as well? Because can you use that as a tool to give enough distance, but also empathy to it, to talk about things that are, you know, phenomenally huge subjects, like the north/south divide, intergenerationality, and, you know, also speaking to people that might not necessarily engage with a traditional show or game or theatre piece about climate change…
Ntando Cele 13:20
For sure! I mean, I don't know Toby, how you feel, or what's your experience like there? for me, it's the only way, kind of because of my education in theatre, you know, I think it's so… it separates people in such a way. It's so…I want to say, I don't want to say exclusive. It sounds so special, you know, if I make it exclusive. So coming from South Africa, there are so many different ways of dealing with storytelling. For example, I'm saying that because I'm obsessing at the moment about, like, writing a text for artists of how to use storytelling as a tool. And so there's so many different ways of telling stories in South Africa, and I have chosen performance, video, music, sound to tell stories. And that's a very specific way, as a choice of telling stories. But in order to make then the topics that I use more accessible to everybody, without excluding some people or making people feel like they don't belong in the theatre, for me, it's important that I use humour and be playful and be able to have space enough to laugh about the topic that I'm talking about.
Toby Peach 14:36
Yeah, I totally agree. It's one of these things where I think over the years… So when I was younger, I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. And I have learned, because I've made quite a lot of work in that community and talking about that world, which to talk about the, to have conversation with audiences about cancer and the climate crisis, wonderful things to bring up! You know, people really want to talk about these things(!) But I made a show about that, a theatre show which was based on that experience, because it was wanting to talk about healthcare and, yeah, and wanting to explore . science and arts. But like it to have a conversation about the climate crisis, to have a conversation about cancer like it's, there is a need for us to make that conversation accessible, because otherwise you do not want to have it. And humour and play is so important, in a way, to allow people to be able, to be comfortable, to come into that space with you. And then the uncomfortable comes with that, like it's they come hand in hand, but if you’re just feeling one side of things, I think then the blocks come up, and people go, I don't want to process this. I don't want to engage and that's when we get the bite back.
Louis VI 15:54
I mean, Toby, you've definitely picked the two big C's to discuss, if it's possible, and it's amazing. This is, this is your play, The Eulogy, right?
Toby Peach 16:08
Yes, yeah.
Louis VI 16:09
I don't know if either of you managed, anyone managed to catch this, but I saw a play called Nowhere by Khalid Abdalla, who was there during… he's an Egyptian, but there during the Egyptian revolution. And it was a very interactive, very heavy topic, but also there was quite a lot of play in it, which gave relief. You know, there were moments where it was almost too much, and then the play kind of, and the humour gave relief to that. How have you found as makers, have you found that there's a way that you can make people, whether they're scientists, whether they're complete laymen, whether they're children in school, find something common with each other that essentially are strangers as an audience?
Toby Peach 16:58
Yeah. I guess tapping into art, humanity is like, one of the key things I think, that play can do, and like being in those spaces of experiencing stories together. And, yeah, your point of going can you still give them the the important and the heavier parts, whilst giving them like the yeah…the importance of the other side of things, of allowing them to to feel a sense of going “I can hold this for a little while longer, because I know that others are holding it as well”. I think that's…we've just been developing this piece with some young people in the UK and some young people in Vanuatu, which is a collection of islands near the Solomon Islands. And this piece was about exchange between islands, particularly focused on climate justice. And Vanuatu is one of the most at risk of climate - natural disasters because of the climate crisis. And so what we were exploring, seeing there was this exchange, but we were also making this piece for adults, which was to have a conversation with them about… I'm really interested in this activation from people who think about climate emergency but might not think about climate justice, and so might not be active because of that sense. And we we had like, there was a sense of…they are playing and working with the work from the young people in the UK and young people from Vanuatu, and they are building and creating and playing together from the offers from young people. And we had these adults, just making on the ground and creating these little kind of responses to what was offered to them. And yet, through that as well, we were kind of laying options of ways that you can engage with some of the more important conversations. So do you want to have a cup of tea and engage with some of the conversations around climate justice? And what does that mean to do that? Can you use the act of…we were exploring care and responsibility particularly, and I think there's a sense of allowing, we wanted people to have played throughout that. And the challenging thing for us was, whilst we were making it Vanuatu had a 7.2 Richter scale earthquake fairly recently, in December. And like, that's a clear moment of like, seeing it for real. And it's a clear moment of feeling it. And these adults who are playing and experiencing this work, from young people who might be like, down the road to them, because they might be from the UK and be like “oh yes, I know young people down the road to me” but also experiencing it off going, there are young people who are not down the road to you. Can you develop that compassion through play? Because, like, you need to accept that you are in your shoes and you are seeing these other things playing out. And I think the only way, as we've kind of been exploring through this conversation, is that you need to have both sides of you…need to have the heavier conversations. We have to be able to allow, people need to want to be in that space and need to want to step forward to have that. If we force them to have it, that's when, that's when they…people don't want to come and hold the weight.
Ntando Cele 20:34
Yeah, I think, I think what I also understand from what you just said Toby, also is, that we try then, to speak like this eye to eye. Yeah, you know, we try to speak eye to eye. Atleast that's also an approach that I think has worked better for me, is to speak with an audience on an eye to eye level, and not as the expert, because that's been my experience of most climate pieces in the past. The person speaking on stage is usually speaking from a higher position of knowing what's going on and therefore pointing out what you did wrong. Again. Also even social…you know, with social justice issues, I think the person saying something is wrong is usually seen as somebody guilt tripping everybody else into doing something. And so this is something also that I think we have to be very aware of and then try to tackle the topic, you know, in a different way. But I like also what you said about care and responsibility. I practice this also with myself, you know, and also the people that I'm working with in the team of such topics. How do I…because I feel like we should first practice what this is before then telling other people to have care and responsibility. And for me, the theatre world can be quite violent, and in terms of how we approach also topics that we feel passionate about. Art can, of course, has the power to change and transform things, but sometimes I feel like I am in a position, sometimes to hurt myself in order to talk about something that I feel is important. And so how do I, yeah, I don't know. How do I then also practice care and responsibility for myself and the people that I'm working with in order to deliver the topic?
Louis VI 22:49
That's the classic case of people expecting the pained artists, right? And, yeah, expecting art to be, you know, only comes out of a painful process. And I think that's, you know, I think that's something that's been purveyed for quite a long time, and it's quite damaging to the sustainability of being an artist in itself. And I love what both of you were saying, to be honest. I mean, Toby it’s amazing in that work, the islands work, finding that commonality and that connection between two places, very far apart, you know, couldn't be more ecologically different, but also the fact that they're both islands, they both have a lot of shared experience. And I think that is something that we need to recognise, because, you know, what happens in one part of the world affects another, and that's something I think we've disconnected from as humans, quite deeply. A lot of this play, it's interesting because…to get geeky as a zoologist, like, if you're really trying to understand an animal or an ecosystem or any other organism, like it's mimicry, as you know, as as you'd know Ntando in South Africa, with incredible wildlife and some of the deepest, oldest, longest relationships with wildlife and understanding from, either a zoological perspective or tracking an animal, mimicry comes into it a lot. And, you know, getting down, I like what you're saying about getting, you know, an eye to eye level, because sometimes it requires getting down onto the level of the animal to really imagine the experience. And I was wondering, does your idea of play extend to the more-than-human world? Because obviously, you know, the climate crisis is the big, huge umbrella thing, but the biodiversity loss is as important. If we lose our biodiversity, it doesn't matter if we save the world from climate crisis, because we're all dead.
Toby Peach 24:58
Yeah. I actually also think it's one of the, in some ways, I would find some of those conversations easier to have than to talk about human impacts, and particularly if I think about work with young people, I find that they find it easier to discuss conversation about biodiversity loss. “Can I talk to you about bees decline” and it's like “yeah, I want to talk about bees. That's important!” And it's like, yeah, great. And it also, I think I would hold myself up as well, my hands up, and say sometimes I think that that is not an important like…Oh, we should be getting to the really important stuff straight away with young people. And actually, particularly when I do things with primary schools, it's really important to come in and then to find that as their access point to go “can you connect more to your - the nature on your doorstep? And does that, then start to help you understand the nature in your, on the island that you are in, or the land that you're in?” Think about the land underneath. Then think about…I think it's part of it that's really, I think it's really important, because if they don't do that at an early age, you might have, and we do at the moment, we are seeing that people aren't as connected to their local green spaces, maybe because they're not as easily accessible, and maybe not have that connection to local nature, and finding ways to start spark just that little hint of what might be possible. I think it's yeah. It's really important for a vast amount of reasons.
Ntando Cele 26:52
Yeah. I mean, I felt a shift here when the weather changed a lot, but drastically, as in…So people here walk all the time. People are always in outdoor gear. I mean, it's probably the same in some places in the UK as well. Outdoor Gear is fashion. And so older people also walk to the mountains. They go skiing and things like this. And I think there's a part of the glaciers that is just gone, which then sent everybody into a frenzy, even tourists that came to visit famous spots in the mountains. Then it got people kind of connected in a different way to their surroundings, I thought. And also, there's usually here a conversation about flowers every spring, you know, somebody walking past looks here at the garden and be like, ah, these roses are late this year. And then, you know, so I saw that kind of shift in the last couple of years. And then also floods in Germany, where then, yeah, a couple of towns very close to here, I guess, were then flooded, and people didn't have homes. And so then that shifted the conversation a little bit compared to what I thought, okay, I…there's floods in South Africa, there's floods in Mozambique every February. And you know, it's kind of normal, but of course not, if you know what I mean, in those terms. And so I feel like the awareness has kind of shifted of everybody, including then the kids as well. Because now my kids were talking about chocolate and talking about, like “Yeah, but where is this…where is this chocolate, where did it come from? Where did the cacao? Where is this cacao?” And I was like, what, what are you? What are you talking about? And so I feel like there was also a shift in the schools, in something is moving. Of course, it's never fast enough, the change that we want. But for me, the non human part when it comes to social justice. So for example, I make a bad joke in Wasted Land, because I show images of the waste piles in Ghana, and then these cows, obviously on top of the waste piles and chickens, and there's farms and a river that's full of clothes and stuff and things like this. And then I say, after a while “Oh, I bet you feel sorry for the cows, no?” And it's a really interesting…it's a really interesting moment, because it's true. You know, in that moment, I've always found that when it comes to social justice, some people would feel more inclined to save animals, you know, to save dogs and cats. And this is not all animals, just very specific ones, during a crisis, you know. So maybe I'm taking us in a different route. I don't know what you think.
Louis VI 30:09
I wish we had more time. There's a whole…there's a whole other channel going down, domesticated - the hierarchy of animals.
Ntando Cele 30:18
And us feeling for them, you know? And yeah, what's…yeah.
Louis VI 30:23
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you know, even just the word hierarchy is so unnatural, because, yeah, it's everything that requires a balance. But we'll go, we won't go there, because this podcast will be another hour. Hierarchy of empathy. Hierarchy of empathy. That's an amazing way to put it. Yeah, but yeah. So, it's been an incredible chat, and sadly, we've got to wrap it up. But just before we go, you know, we've been, I think we've spoken about the playfulness that should come to Creative Climate Leadership, and yeah, for but for many people listening, you know, they'll be aware of it a little bit. Other people will be brand new. So just as we leave, for the people that are listening, what's one thing you'd ask the listener to do with this next?
Toby Peach 31:16
Ah, for me, I think it's giving yourself permission to play. And then that giving…and then your craft giving permission for others to play. I think permission and play, I think particularly as adults, we find it really difficult to give ourselves permission to play. And actually that is so important, and it's an important part of everything that we've been speaking about being resilient humans in a climate crisis. It's about being able to do this work. It's about being able to have better well being. So, permission to play. That's mine.
Ntando Cele 31:49
And I would balance play with giving ourselves also the permission to sit with difficult things, to hold space for yeah, death and suffering. And you know that these extreme things also contribute to play, because when there's death, it doesn't mean that there's also no laughter, but we need to be okay with such extremes as well. This I would…I feel like this is a good place then for better solutions and for thinking outside of the norm.
Louis VI 32:33
Brilliant way to wrap it up, Toby and Ntando. Thank you so much for coming on to this podcast. It's been a pleasure chatting with you guys.
Ntando Cele 32:40
Thank you.
Toby Peach 32:41
Thank you so much.
Louis VI 32:49
Welcome back listeners. This is episode one of Conversations on Creative Climate Leadership, and we've just been hearing from our guests, Ntando and Toby about their work.
Farah Ahmed 32:59
So this is day one of Creative Climate Leadership School, Louis, what did you make of that conversation?
Louis VI 33:06
Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely being schooled. I mean, it was incredible. Both of them really embody that word Play, so I get why you called it that, and it's interesting because it was very much about the whole perspective of using play and humour and like and ways of making really difficult subjects easier to digest, giving it that spoonful of sugar for the medicine to go down. Yeah, it was really interesting. I really want to go see Ntando's play.
Farah Ahmed 33:36
Were there any other stories or particular points that resonated with you?
Louis VI 33:41
Something I hadn't thought of that Toby spoke about was the fact that the play element actually creates a bit of distance, and that's what can really unlock, like a deeper engagement for people, I think if you go straight in and go, you know, like we were saying, “save the world, everything terrible is happening. You're responsible, do it now, or else everything's gonna come crashing down!” You know, not many people are gonna react very well to that.
Farah Ahmed 34:08
No, that kind of doom and gloom is really hard to motivate yourself with and motivate other people. It feels like it can be really easy to get stuck in the weeds of “this is so big. This is huge. Where do I even start?” And sometimes, just taking a step back and being able to find some joy and beauty and laughter in what we're doing collectively is the way to remind ourselves, actually, of the world we're trying to build, right? I want a world filled with laughter.
Louis VI 34:39
Yeah, it does feel like humour is an antidote to kind of the overwhelmingness of it. And I don't know about you, but I really related to the point that Ntando was saying about not, you know, she didn't feel like she had permission to go and talk about these things in the climate space. Because no one looked or sounded like her in the climate movement, and it took her a long time to give herself permission. And I was asking, you know, it was a really interesting point.. I was asking about whether that was permission from that community or from herself, and it was a bit of both. And I think that's a really deep one, and I think that's a big problem, because if you have one narrative… you miss 1000 more solutions that can come out of it if you just have one narrative. So, you know, she hit the nail on the head of a big problem with the climate movement, I think.
Farah Ahmed 35:32
Yeah and it's something that we see all the time. It's something that I've certainly felt before is coming into this space and realising that I've been doing all of this work. A lot of us who might not think of ourselves as climate experts or climate activists or people who are really involved in that at all, we're doing it in our day to day lives, and it's all about making that connection sometimes and really being able to, as you said, give yourself permission. We don't need to wait for anybody else. We need to, we need to be finding these connections now.
Louis VI 36:09
And that activist doesn't need to look like, you know, the things that are pre defined and you see on TV and stuff. You know, when people say climate activists, they tend to think of a very specific looking person. I think that is actually problematic, because it puts off a lot of people that is really needed, you know, their opinions, some of these listeners, hopefully will be people from quite diverse backgrounds, and we need non traditional spaces to be kind of occupying and talking and engaging with this, I guess. And, you know, something also I really liked, which, you know, brought a lot of relief to me…it was, the whole conversation was fun! Even though we were talking about deep stuff. Toby talked about climate and cancer, the two most hardcore C’s. I mean, that's a lot. And, you know, speaking with youth engagement and allowing play to come into that and that, combined with what Ntando was saying about being able to be comfortable in being uncomfortable. And I think, you know, unfortunately the future is looking pretty uncomfortable. But if we're able to find some kind of peace with that and use that as a motivator, then yeah, maybe that is being comfortable with it.
Farah Ahmed 37:27
I think that that's a really great thing to sort of land on. As we go into the next few episodes before you go, Louis, how are you feeling?
Louis VI 37:37
I'm feeling good. Yeah, I'm ready to learn more. My brain's starting to turn on. You know, these early starts, but it's good, man. I'm really, yeah, I'm getting into it. Let's get up the next one.
Farah Ahmed 37:52
Okay so you can load the next episode wherever you get your podcasts, and we look forward to being with you next time on Conversations, on Creative Climate Leadership. Thanks for listening to Conversations on Creative Climate Leadership. It's a podcast from us here at Julie's Bicycle, a non profit mobilising the arts and culture to take action on the climate, nature and justice crisis. Big thanks to our funders and partners who've supported the work of the Creative Climate Leadership Network and the making of this podcast, Pro Helvetia and Stiftung Mercator Schweiz for CCL Switzerland, as well as the European Cultural Foundation’s Culture of Solidarity Fund, and Porticus. And a thanks to our host, Louis VI, who's a member of EarthPercent, the music industry's climate foundation, who support JB's work on climate action with the music community. Thanks for listening.
Episode 1: PLAY
SPEAKERS
Toby Peach, Farah Ahmed, Ntando Cele, Louis VI
Louis VI 00:00
Can I just start by saying something blunt? Leadership we have is proper feeling, isn't it? Like, look around. There's some there's some fundamental facts. The planet of ours is getting hotter. With each increment the consequences for us, me, you, the listener, every other being, it gets worse.
Farah Ahmed 00:21
Start us on a cheery note, Louis!
Louis VI 00:23
Well, we should introduce ourselves, really, and welcome people to the podcast. On a slightly cheerier note, my name is Louis VI. I'm a musician and zoologist, and I'm here with Farah. Farah, do you want to introduce yourself for the people?
Farah Ahmed 00:37
Hi, I'm Farah Ahmed, and I'm the Climate Justice Lead at Julie's Bicycle, which is an organisation all about mobilising the arts and culture sector on…oh my god, how have I forgotten what I do?
Louis VI 00:52
It's an important part of being and doing it is embodying it! You don't have to explain it.
Farah Ahmed 00:57
At Julie's Bicycle, we try to mobilise the arts and culture sector around the climate, nature and justice crisis.
Louis VI 01:04
Alright. Well, thanks to Greg, we've got our mics and our headphones on. Why are we here?
Farah Ahmed 01:09
Well, as you said, climate is the biggest challenge that humanity faces right now. It affects everything, but we've known about this for a really long time, and there's been a real failure in leadership to address it at the scale and at the pace that we need.
Louis VI 01:25
Yeah, and we're in the first half of 2025 and it doesn't seem to be off to the best start. In fact, yeah, it feels pretty intense.
Farah Ahmed 01:35
You say that, but there are great things happening. And I really want to talk to you about Creative Climate Leadership.
Louis VI 01:42
Go on.
Farah Ahmed 01:43
So to solve this problem, we need to come at it with different approaches. And I think Creative Climate Leadership has so many of the answers. As a musician, Louis, what does that term even mean to you?
Louis VI 01:56
You know what? I'm not even gonna play. I don't actually know.
Farah Ahmed 01:59
Okay, well, I guess that's the point of this podcast. We're going to share six episodes, and the plan is to do two things. Firstly, we're going to explore what Creative Climate Leadership is. We're going to answer that question, and then secondly, hopefully, make a really compelling case for why we need a lot more.
Louis VI 02:19
All right, sounds good. Lots of learning, lots of enacting, lots of talking. Where do we start?
Farah Ahmed 02:26
So behind the scenes, I've been lining up a bunch of people who are going to help us to explore this. And I guess you would call them Creative Climate Leaders. They are people from all over the world who are really deep in the work and their stories are going to really help us to demonstrate what it means. Just like these two:
Toby Peach 02:45
Hi, I'm Toby Peach. I am an experience and games designer, and over the last decade, I've had a real focus on using play as a tool to explore social change. Primarily, I've been doing that with a charity, an arts and social change charity called Coney where I've been associate director, and a lot of that focus has been work with young people and families. I've been working with Greenpeace over the past couple of years to develop a secondary school introduction to climate activism and climate justice, and that is now in its second pilot stage, which is called the Playful Activism Toolkit, which takes students through an eight week programme exploring how they can how we can use games as a way to explore system change.
Ntando Cele 03:35
My name is Ntando, and I'm currently based in Bern in Switzerland. I have been working as a theatre maker and performer, and mostly doing projects that deal with prejudice, racism, how stereotypes affect how, yeah, I'm seen and how I move in Europe as a Black woman from South Africa. And the latest project that I did is called A Wasted Land, which is a piece about trying to connect climate change to fast fashion, not only that, but connecting it directly to a living example of people living in Ghana and how the clothes that we here, as somebody who lives in Bern and Switzerland, we religiously put these clothes in boxes to go and help, and so now I'm part of the help market. And so then the piece tries to talk about that, to show whether these clothes are really helping or making the situation worse.
Louis VI 04:42
Okay, okay, cool. I feel like I'm starting to get it, but I guess what I'd like to know is, where are we going with all this, Farah.
Farah Ahmed 04:49
That's a great question. I've given a name or a word for each of the episodes, and each one is a quality that I think Creative Climate Leadership means.
Louis VI 05:00
It's right. Okay, got it. So we're starting with Play. Why Play?
Farah Ahmed 05:05
Let's find out. Louis, let's come back and chat after hearing this.
Louis VI 05:17
Toby and Ntando, welcome to the podcast. So happy to have you guys with us today. This series is all about Creative Climate Leadership, so let's just go straight in and stick to those three words, Creative - Climate - Leadership. What does that mean to you, and how does that live in your day to day, work, Ntando. If we could start with you?
Ntando Cele 05:38
I never thought that I had the permission to talk about climate, you know, for a long time, and it's something that I recently just gave myself the right to do as a maker and as a Black woman in general, because it always felt like something that's not for me. It felt like something that's too big, and I just cannot even begin, because I'm still struggling with the basics of “Hello, I'm human, I'm here, see me, I'm - you know” and so, climate felt like too many steps ahead of the conversation. And so even to identify myself like that, as a Creative Climate Leader, I'm like...
Louis VI 06:27
When you say permission, is that permission from yourself or from the wider climate community?
Ntando Cele 06:37
Interesting question, yeah. Interesting question, Louis, maybe both, both. I think it's from seeing examples of who talks about the climate, and then mostly from where I am right now, not seeing people who look like me or people who speak my language in how to solve the problem. In my experience, it's only been scientists and numbers and things that I cannot relate to, and therefore it felt like, yeah, there's nothing for me to add here. I'd rather stick to what I know, yeah. And so now then… I did this because… I started to work with this topic here, because now there's a lot more younger people who are now talking about identity, Black identity, also in Switzerland or in Europe in general. And it felt like, I felt like, okay, I think that's enough, you know, from my side now. I need to move on as an artist to talk about other things, because I know that there's a lot more issues. It's not only just about one thing that affects us, which is racism and prejudice.
Louis VI 07:50
And we'll get into it a bit later, but those things also come into the climate conversation as well. And I think we are in a place where we've had the science and the facts for long enough and as, like it or not, we're not these logical decision making machines that some people wish we were. We're very much feeling based, emotional beings. So I think art has got to get involved now at that point. Toby, how about you? What does Creative Climate Leadership look like in your day to day work?
Toby Peach 08:29
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing the course, and I was in my kind of, mid 20s, and I felt quite young in that space. I remember going - I'm not in my mid 20s - now my mid 30s. And I yeah, I remember going into that space, and I found, essentially the word permission, that actually is, like a very, in a different way. I felt it gave me permission to have conversations, and I think also kind of gave me this understanding that there was permission to go and try to find ways to start this conversation, in different communities and different groups. And I think from that moment forward, I've kind of always part of any project. And I think even if, I mean, I have lots of conversations which perhaps you wouldn't directly say are related to the climate crisis, but as they kind of pointed out, they are all interconnected. And so even if I'm having conversations about healthcare and the importance of access to healthcare, it's like these things, because of the kind of understanding that these are all interconnected, I find that the Creative Climate Leadership kind of comes through of making sure that it's present throughout, even in in both the stories and the conversation that's happening, but also in the practice behind it as well. And. And I think it's only been absolutely the last couple of years when I've realised the practice behind it is as important as the piece that is coming out of it.
Louis VI 10:10
Really, yeah, it's a good point. And, I mean, I guess… I guess this is a good point to also go into each each episode we have on this has a word based around it, and the word is very much like a characteristic of this climate leadership that we've been speaking about. And the word of this episode is Play, for quite obvious reasons, I reckon, looking at both your work. What does it mean to have play or an attitude of play going into what you do and the way you express yourselves as makers?
Ntando Cele 10:49
For me, play has to be part of the conversation, because honestly, I don't take myself that seriously, and I struggle… I struggle with the very serious situations of this, of you know, “saving the world”. And I just cannot say that with a straight face, because for me, it sounds so ridiculous. And then also, then the people you know that are the leaders of “saving the world” are very serious, and take this very seriously as well, which, of course we should, because it's related to, yeah, bigger topics, life and death kind of issues. And so then being playful and ironic and questioning is, then, for me, part of the package.
Louis VI 11:42
It's also a question of language a bit, isn't it? So that play maybe, from what you guys are saying, sounds like it allows more people to universally embody quite difficult subjects. And no one's going to respond that well, I mean, maybe there's a few people on this earth, but not myself, where you know, you just wake up and someone goes “all right, you got to save the world. What are you going to do about it?” I think that even on just a straight up level, even we're aware that we do need to do that, it's just that's a big ask for anyone, regardless of what position they are in, in a society. And I think we are kidding ourselves, if anyone doesn't think that play is such an important part of yeah, getting through life. If you're if everything's too serious, you know, you're going to be exhausted by day two.
Ntando Cele 12:40
But also it's also a tool to have distance, a little bit of a distance, and then maybe better solutions, you know, show up.
Louis VI 12:51
Are we also talking about a sense of humour as well? Because can you use that as a tool to give enough distance, but also empathy to it, to talk about things that are, you know, phenomenally huge subjects, like the north/south divide, intergenerationality, and, you know, also speaking to people that might not necessarily engage with a traditional show or game or theatre piece about climate change…
Ntando Cele 13:20
For sure! I mean, I don't know Toby, how you feel, or what's your experience like there? for me, it's the only way, kind of because of my education in theatre, you know, I think it's so… it separates people in such a way. It's so…I want to say, I don't want to say exclusive. It sounds so special, you know, if I make it exclusive. So coming from South Africa, there are so many different ways of dealing with storytelling. For example, I'm saying that because I'm obsessing at the moment about, like, writing a text for artists of how to use storytelling as a tool. And so there's so many different ways of telling stories in South Africa, and I have chosen performance, video, music, sound to tell stories. And that's a very specific way, as a choice of telling stories. But in order to make then the topics that I use more accessible to everybody, without excluding some people or making people feel like they don't belong in the theatre, for me, it's important that I use humour and be playful and be able to have space enough to laugh about the topic that I'm talking about.
Toby Peach 14:36
Yeah, I totally agree. It's one of these things where I think over the years… So when I was younger, I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. And I have learned, because I've made quite a lot of work in that community and talking about that world, which to talk about the, to have conversation with audiences about cancer and the climate crisis, wonderful things to bring up! You know, people really want to talk about these things(!) But I made a show about that, a theatre show which was based on that experience, because it was wanting to talk about healthcare and, yeah, and wanting to explore . science and arts. But like it to have a conversation about the climate crisis, to have a conversation about cancer like it's, there is a need for us to make that conversation accessible, because otherwise you do not want to have it. And humour and play is so important, in a way, to allow people to be able, to be comfortable, to come into that space with you. And then the uncomfortable comes with that, like it's they come hand in hand, but if you’re just feeling one side of things, I think then the blocks come up, and people go, I don't want to process this. I don't want to engage and that's when we get the bite back.
Louis VI 15:54
I mean, Toby, you've definitely picked the two big C's to discuss, if it's possible, and it's amazing. This is, this is your play, The Eulogy, right?
Toby Peach 16:08
Yes, yeah.
Louis VI 16:09
I don't know if either of you managed, anyone managed to catch this, but I saw a play called Nowhere by Khalid Abdalla, who was there during… he's an Egyptian, but there during the Egyptian revolution. And it was a very interactive, very heavy topic, but also there was quite a lot of play in it, which gave relief. You know, there were moments where it was almost too much, and then the play kind of, and the humour gave relief to that. How have you found as makers, have you found that there's a way that you can make people, whether they're scientists, whether they're complete laymen, whether they're children in school, find something common with each other that essentially are strangers as an audience?
Toby Peach 16:58
Yeah. I guess tapping into art, humanity is like, one of the key things I think, that play can do, and like being in those spaces of experiencing stories together. And, yeah, your point of going can you still give them the the important and the heavier parts, whilst giving them like the yeah…the importance of the other side of things, of allowing them to to feel a sense of going “I can hold this for a little while longer, because I know that others are holding it as well”. I think that's…we've just been developing this piece with some young people in the UK and some young people in Vanuatu, which is a collection of islands near the Solomon Islands. And this piece was about exchange between islands, particularly focused on climate justice. And Vanuatu is one of the most at risk of climate - natural disasters because of the climate crisis. And so what we were exploring, seeing there was this exchange, but we were also making this piece for adults, which was to have a conversation with them about… I'm really interested in this activation from people who think about climate emergency but might not think about climate justice, and so might not be active because of that sense. And we we had like, there was a sense of…they are playing and working with the work from the young people in the UK and young people from Vanuatu, and they are building and creating and playing together from the offers from young people. And we had these adults, just making on the ground and creating these little kind of responses to what was offered to them. And yet, through that as well, we were kind of laying options of ways that you can engage with some of the more important conversations. So do you want to have a cup of tea and engage with some of the conversations around climate justice? And what does that mean to do that? Can you use the act of…we were exploring care and responsibility particularly, and I think there's a sense of allowing, we wanted people to have played throughout that. And the challenging thing for us was, whilst we were making it Vanuatu had a 7.2 Richter scale earthquake fairly recently, in December. And like, that's a clear moment of like, seeing it for real. And it's a clear moment of feeling it. And these adults who are playing and experiencing this work, from young people who might be like, down the road to them, because they might be from the UK and be like “oh yes, I know young people down the road to me” but also experiencing it off going, there are young people who are not down the road to you. Can you develop that compassion through play? Because, like, you need to accept that you are in your shoes and you are seeing these other things playing out. And I think the only way, as we've kind of been exploring through this conversation, is that you need to have both sides of you…need to have the heavier conversations. We have to be able to allow, people need to want to be in that space and need to want to step forward to have that. If we force them to have it, that's when, that's when they…people don't want to come and hold the weight.
Ntando Cele 20:34
Yeah, I think, I think what I also understand from what you just said Toby, also is, that we try then, to speak like this eye to eye. Yeah, you know, we try to speak eye to eye. Atleast that's also an approach that I think has worked better for me, is to speak with an audience on an eye to eye level, and not as the expert, because that's been my experience of most climate pieces in the past. The person speaking on stage is usually speaking from a higher position of knowing what's going on and therefore pointing out what you did wrong. Again. Also even social…you know, with social justice issues, I think the person saying something is wrong is usually seen as somebody guilt tripping everybody else into doing something. And so this is something also that I think we have to be very aware of and then try to tackle the topic, you know, in a different way. But I like also what you said about care and responsibility. I practice this also with myself, you know, and also the people that I'm working with in the team of such topics. How do I…because I feel like we should first practice what this is before then telling other people to have care and responsibility. And for me, the theatre world can be quite violent, and in terms of how we approach also topics that we feel passionate about. Art can, of course, has the power to change and transform things, but sometimes I feel like I am in a position, sometimes to hurt myself in order to talk about something that I feel is important. And so how do I, yeah, I don't know. How do I then also practice care and responsibility for myself and the people that I'm working with in order to deliver the topic?
Louis VI 22:49
That's the classic case of people expecting the pained artists, right? And, yeah, expecting art to be, you know, only comes out of a painful process. And I think that's, you know, I think that's something that's been purveyed for quite a long time, and it's quite damaging to the sustainability of being an artist in itself. And I love what both of you were saying, to be honest. I mean, Toby it’s amazing in that work, the islands work, finding that commonality and that connection between two places, very far apart, you know, couldn't be more ecologically different, but also the fact that they're both islands, they both have a lot of shared experience. And I think that is something that we need to recognise, because, you know, what happens in one part of the world affects another, and that's something I think we've disconnected from as humans, quite deeply. A lot of this play, it's interesting because…to get geeky as a zoologist, like, if you're really trying to understand an animal or an ecosystem or any other organism, like it's mimicry, as you know, as as you'd know Ntando in South Africa, with incredible wildlife and some of the deepest, oldest, longest relationships with wildlife and understanding from, either a zoological perspective or tracking an animal, mimicry comes into it a lot. And, you know, getting down, I like what you're saying about getting, you know, an eye to eye level, because sometimes it requires getting down onto the level of the animal to really imagine the experience. And I was wondering, does your idea of play extend to the more-than-human world? Because obviously, you know, the climate crisis is the big, huge umbrella thing, but the biodiversity loss is as important. If we lose our biodiversity, it doesn't matter if we save the world from climate crisis, because we're all dead.
Toby Peach 24:58
Yeah. I actually also think it's one of the, in some ways, I would find some of those conversations easier to have than to talk about human impacts, and particularly if I think about work with young people, I find that they find it easier to discuss conversation about biodiversity loss. “Can I talk to you about bees decline” and it's like “yeah, I want to talk about bees. That's important!” And it's like, yeah, great. And it also, I think I would hold myself up as well, my hands up, and say sometimes I think that that is not an important like…Oh, we should be getting to the really important stuff straight away with young people. And actually, particularly when I do things with primary schools, it's really important to come in and then to find that as their access point to go “can you connect more to your - the nature on your doorstep? And does that, then start to help you understand the nature in your, on the island that you are in, or the land that you're in?” Think about the land underneath. Then think about…I think it's part of it that's really, I think it's really important, because if they don't do that at an early age, you might have, and we do at the moment, we are seeing that people aren't as connected to their local green spaces, maybe because they're not as easily accessible, and maybe not have that connection to local nature, and finding ways to start spark just that little hint of what might be possible. I think it's yeah. It's really important for a vast amount of reasons.
Ntando Cele 26:52
Yeah. I mean, I felt a shift here when the weather changed a lot, but drastically, as in…So people here walk all the time. People are always in outdoor gear. I mean, it's probably the same in some places in the UK as well. Outdoor Gear is fashion. And so older people also walk to the mountains. They go skiing and things like this. And I think there's a part of the glaciers that is just gone, which then sent everybody into a frenzy, even tourists that came to visit famous spots in the mountains. Then it got people kind of connected in a different way to their surroundings, I thought. And also, there's usually here a conversation about flowers every spring, you know, somebody walking past looks here at the garden and be like, ah, these roses are late this year. And then, you know, so I saw that kind of shift in the last couple of years. And then also floods in Germany, where then, yeah, a couple of towns very close to here, I guess, were then flooded, and people didn't have homes. And so then that shifted the conversation a little bit compared to what I thought, okay, I…there's floods in South Africa, there's floods in Mozambique every February. And you know, it's kind of normal, but of course not, if you know what I mean, in those terms. And so I feel like the awareness has kind of shifted of everybody, including then the kids as well. Because now my kids were talking about chocolate and talking about, like “Yeah, but where is this…where is this chocolate, where did it come from? Where did the cacao? Where is this cacao?” And I was like, what, what are you? What are you talking about? And so I feel like there was also a shift in the schools, in something is moving. Of course, it's never fast enough, the change that we want. But for me, the non human part when it comes to social justice. So for example, I make a bad joke in Wasted Land, because I show images of the waste piles in Ghana, and then these cows, obviously on top of the waste piles and chickens, and there's farms and a river that's full of clothes and stuff and things like this. And then I say, after a while “Oh, I bet you feel sorry for the cows, no?” And it's a really interesting…it's a really interesting moment, because it's true. You know, in that moment, I've always found that when it comes to social justice, some people would feel more inclined to save animals, you know, to save dogs and cats. And this is not all animals, just very specific ones, during a crisis, you know. So maybe I'm taking us in a different route. I don't know what you think.
Louis VI 30:09
I wish we had more time. There's a whole…there's a whole other channel going down, domesticated - the hierarchy of animals.
Ntando Cele 30:18
And us feeling for them, you know? And yeah, what's…yeah.
Louis VI 30:23
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you know, even just the word hierarchy is so unnatural, because, yeah, it's everything that requires a balance. But we'll go, we won't go there, because this podcast will be another hour. Hierarchy of empathy. Hierarchy of empathy. That's an amazing way to put it. Yeah, but yeah. So, it's been an incredible chat, and sadly, we've got to wrap it up. But just before we go, you know, we've been, I think we've spoken about the playfulness that should come to Creative Climate Leadership, and yeah, for but for many people listening, you know, they'll be aware of it a little bit. Other people will be brand new. So just as we leave, for the people that are listening, what's one thing you'd ask the listener to do with this next?
Toby Peach 31:16
Ah, for me, I think it's giving yourself permission to play. And then that giving…and then your craft giving permission for others to play. I think permission and play, I think particularly as adults, we find it really difficult to give ourselves permission to play. And actually that is so important, and it's an important part of everything that we've been speaking about being resilient humans in a climate crisis. It's about being able to do this work. It's about being able to have better well being. So, permission to play. That's mine.
Ntando Cele 31:49
And I would balance play with giving ourselves also the permission to sit with difficult things, to hold space for yeah, death and suffering. And you know that these extreme things also contribute to play, because when there's death, it doesn't mean that there's also no laughter, but we need to be okay with such extremes as well. This I would…I feel like this is a good place then for better solutions and for thinking outside of the norm.
Louis VI 32:33
Brilliant way to wrap it up, Toby and Ntando. Thank you so much for coming on to this podcast. It's been a pleasure chatting with you guys.
Ntando Cele 32:40
Thank you.
Toby Peach 32:41
Thank you so much.
Louis VI 32:49
Welcome back listeners. This is episode one of Conversations on Creative Climate Leadership, and we've just been hearing from our guests, Ntando and Toby about their work.
Farah Ahmed 32:59
So this is day one of Creative Climate Leadership School, Louis, what did you make of that conversation?
Louis VI 33:06
Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely being schooled. I mean, it was incredible. Both of them really embody that word Play, so I get why you called it that, and it's interesting because it was very much about the whole perspective of using play and humour and like and ways of making really difficult subjects easier to digest, giving it that spoonful of sugar for the medicine to go down. Yeah, it was really interesting. I really want to go see Ntando's play.
Farah Ahmed 33:36
Were there any other stories or particular points that resonated with you?
Louis VI 33:41
Something I hadn't thought of that Toby spoke about was the fact that the play element actually creates a bit of distance, and that's what can really unlock, like a deeper engagement for people, I think if you go straight in and go, you know, like we were saying, “save the world, everything terrible is happening. You're responsible, do it now, or else everything's gonna come crashing down!” You know, not many people are gonna react very well to that.
Farah Ahmed 34:08
No, that kind of doom and gloom is really hard to motivate yourself with and motivate other people. It feels like it can be really easy to get stuck in the weeds of “this is so big. This is huge. Where do I even start?” And sometimes, just taking a step back and being able to find some joy and beauty and laughter in what we're doing collectively is the way to remind ourselves, actually, of the world we're trying to build, right? I want a world filled with laughter.
Louis VI 34:39
Yeah, it does feel like humour is an antidote to kind of the overwhelmingness of it. And I don't know about you, but I really related to the point that Ntando was saying about not, you know, she didn't feel like she had permission to go and talk about these things in the climate space. Because no one looked or sounded like her in the climate movement, and it took her a long time to give herself permission. And I was asking, you know, it was a really interesting point.. I was asking about whether that was permission from that community or from herself, and it was a bit of both. And I think that's a really deep one, and I think that's a big problem, because if you have one narrative… you miss 1000 more solutions that can come out of it if you just have one narrative. So, you know, she hit the nail on the head of a big problem with the climate movement, I think.
Farah Ahmed 35:32
Yeah and it's something that we see all the time. It's something that I've certainly felt before is coming into this space and realising that I've been doing all of this work. A lot of us who might not think of ourselves as climate experts or climate activists or people who are really involved in that at all, we're doing it in our day to day lives, and it's all about making that connection sometimes and really being able to, as you said, give yourself permission. We don't need to wait for anybody else. We need to, we need to be finding these connections now.
Louis VI 36:09
And that activist doesn't need to look like, you know, the things that are pre defined and you see on TV and stuff. You know, when people say climate activists, they tend to think of a very specific looking person. I think that is actually problematic, because it puts off a lot of people that is really needed, you know, their opinions, some of these listeners, hopefully will be people from quite diverse backgrounds, and we need non traditional spaces to be kind of occupying and talking and engaging with this, I guess. And, you know, something also I really liked, which, you know, brought a lot of relief to me…it was, the whole conversation was fun! Even though we were talking about deep stuff. Toby talked about climate and cancer, the two most hardcore C’s. I mean, that's a lot. And, you know, speaking with youth engagement and allowing play to come into that and that, combined with what Ntando was saying about being able to be comfortable in being uncomfortable. And I think, you know, unfortunately the future is looking pretty uncomfortable. But if we're able to find some kind of peace with that and use that as a motivator, then yeah, maybe that is being comfortable with it.
Farah Ahmed 37:27
I think that that's a really great thing to sort of land on. As we go into the next few episodes before you go, Louis, how are you feeling?
Louis VI 37:37
I'm feeling good. Yeah, I'm ready to learn more. My brain's starting to turn on. You know, these early starts, but it's good, man. I'm really, yeah, I'm getting into it. Let's get up the next one.
Farah Ahmed 37:52
Okay so you can load the next episode wherever you get your podcasts, and we look forward to being with you next time on Conversations, on Creative Climate Leadership. Thanks for listening to Conversations on Creative Climate Leadership. It's a podcast from us here at Julie's Bicycle, a non profit mobilising the arts and culture to take action on the climate, nature and justice crisis. Big thanks to our funders and partners who've supported the work of the Creative Climate Leadership Network and the making of this podcast, Pro Helvetia and Stiftung Mercator Schweiz for CCL Switzerland, as well as the European Cultural Foundation’s Culture of Solidarity Fund, and Porticus. And a thanks to our host, Louis VI, who's a member of EarthPercent, the music industry's climate foundation, who support JB's work on climate action with the music community. Thanks for listening.
