Creative Communications Bio-Leadership Cluster
““Look at the gift of being, now. Look at the astonishing responsibility of legacy-leaving. And look at what you’ve inherited in the wonder of this world. And what will our time leave?”
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What are we doing?
This is an invitation to join a group of creative leaders who, together, have the capability to transform the potential of creative and commercial communications, and to connect to something bigger than brands, agencies, consumers and products.
Our future, and the future of all generations, rely on these talents taking meaningful collective action at this moment in time, now, on our watch. It requires them to connect with others who are gifted at this, to build on our collective hopes and fears, and cultivate our wider intelligence.
Ultimately, this work seeks to transform not just our sector, but the very paradigm of leadership so that it can be made fit for our times.
A Mission
This process is a 6 month journey that brings together sector leaders to work in a deep and courageous way.
The journey takes the form of workshops, online calls, and individual and collective learning questions. It is facilitated by Dan Burgess (The Spaceship Earth), Andres Roberts (The Bio-Leadership Project) and special guests who, together, bring a unique combination of sector knowledge and work at the vanguard of leadership development, purpose and innovation.
The process invites each individual to develop a personal learning challenge, defined as a question or set of questions.
Supported by stories, models and tools for working towards new forms of thinking, we share hopes, vulnerabilities, visions and opportunities as a collective, setting out to grow more resilient as individuals, while optimising our opportunities to grow and our potential for collective impact.
The question in our minds throughout is, in the words of Jonas Silk, “are we being good ancestors?” But this process is bigger than all of us. It is what we call “becoming crew.”
Why is this for you?
You have a foot in two camps. As a leader, you’re still holding the old story of infinite growth, new business wins, shareholder value, and award-winning work. At the same time, you’re witnessing an awakening within yourself, your agency or business, your clients and stakeholders.
You can see and feel that there’s a need to take greater responsibility for something that’s bigger than our businesses, clients and the everyday churn of ‘more stuff’. The need is increasingly urgent, and at the same time, the answer can’t be to push harder. It’s time to change how you work as well as what you do.
You know there’s a pattern: lots of talent and agencies who want to do good in the world; not enough brands and businesses ready to work in genuinely new ways. But the pattern needs to be broken because until it is, there can’t be a shift in the dynamic of creativity, responsibility and relationships.
You have a hunch that creativity and responsibility fit together. It certainly beats the current business-as-usual planning model. But how to really bring this new creative brief - perhaps the most important creative brief of all time - to life?
There are no simple answers. But maybe it’s time to give yourself, and people in similar positions to you, the permission and space to ask the really hard questions, then find the resilience and wisdom to answer them. To let the cracks open, so that the light can come in.
You know that no one can do this alone. No single person, organisation or even industry can make the change required alone. So this is an opportunity to connect across boundaries - joining a group not just from our sector, but as part of a Bio-Leadership ecology working to transform the very paradigm of leadership for the better.
Why is this different?
This programme is for leaders and experienced practitioners working in creative communications, brand, marketing and media, commercially and not for profit.
Create space for a different way of thinking, feeling and working together
Support individual journeys as a collective in a way that will ultimately drive systemic change
Unabashedly work through a new set of guiding principles and actions reconnected to the living world
Work with different forms of knowledge: not only strategy and ideas, but internal qualities related to systemic awareness, resilience, connection, regeneration and care.
Work consistently at 3 levels: self, agency/client/business, planet
Provide space to be an actual human at this advanced point in our work and lives, sharing the hardest questions, the biggest hopes and fears, and breaking through to redefine a story of leadership for this moment.
This programme also sits as part of a wider Bio-Leadership 'ecosystem' - a web of people, projects and programmes that complement each other in a shared goal of changing leadership for the benefit of all people and planet.
What will we cover?
The dynamics/tensions of our times - what are we moving from and to?
Where do we position ourselves and what are the forces of change in a revolution?
What are the opportunities?
What are different ways of changing the frame entirely? What does radical look like?
How do we shift the relationship of responsibility (from agency to client <> client to agency <> planet)
How do we address the growth dilemma? How do we move to a more regenerative model?
How do we develop new forms of knowledge?
How do we lead in new ways?
What is the legacy we really want to live behind? How do we act on it with greater intention now?
Process
Each person to develop a learning question to work with - and support others with
3 days group dive
1 online call to support group process
2 online calls with additional content
A one day review meeting with whole group
Continuous group work
Continuous connection to wider Bio-Leadership community and access to others in an ecosystem of innovators, via other Bio-Leadership workshops
Logistics for the 3 days workshop
Dates: from the 1st to the 3rd of April 2020
Location, accommodation & travel information: This workshop will likely take place in a beautiful place around Bristol area (2.5h from London max). More details around the accommodation and the related costs will follow shortly.
Guides
Dan Burgess - Guide
Dan is a creative strategist, catalyst, activist and co-designer who works with head, heart and hands with deep experience from 25 years working at the leading edges of creative engagement, culture, brand, communications, design, insight and human behaviour, sustainability, eco-innovation, social innovation, cause led campaigning, creative activism, co-design, participation and collaboration culture, values led leadership, purposeful brand and business innovation.
Today he practitions across 3 core areas: creative mobilisation and civic creativity in pursuit of a more beautiful world, co-creation with organisations shifting towards regenerative culture and inspiration through podcasts, talks and workshops.
He’s founder of The SpaceShip Earth, co-founder of Good for Nothing , co-pilot of collaboration unit Wild Labs, guest lecturer on Co-Creating the Emerging Future program at Schumacher College, holds an MSc in Sustainabilty & Responsibility and a graduate of Call of The Wild.
Andres Roberts
is a guide dedicated to a new kind of progress, fit for a positive future for all.
His work combines renewed ideas about learning and change, reconnection to Nature, and the wisdom of ancient cultures to help more positive, and more systemic, change happen. Building on twenty years of experience in learning and leadership, Andres has studied with respected elders from across the world, helping to make ancient wisdom and Nature-based practices more accessible in the modern world.
Andres is co-founder of Way of Nature UK and founding partner of The Bio-Leadership Project.
Guest Speakers
Rowan Conway
Rowan Conway is Head of Policy Partnerships at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).
Former Director of Innovation and Development, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA)
Rowan has recently joined UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) to host the Mission Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN). Prior to this Rowan led innovation at the RSA with the focus of the RSA’s work on the emerging model of change “Think Like a System, Act Like an Entrepreneur”.
She has 20 years’ experience in research, innovation and engagement with communities, businesses and government bodies. Collaborative and cross-disciplinary by nature, she specializes in participatory action research and has worked with local authorities, NGOs, academic partners, NHS Trusts, corporate businesses and social enterprises, as well as a wide range of central government departments.
Alex Weller
As Marketing Director for Patagonia, Alex Weller oversees marketing strategy for the brand, throughout Europe. Based at Patagonia’s European Headquarters in Amsterdam, he is responsible for building communities through outdoor sport and environmental activism and amplifying the company’s mission: “We’re in business to save our home planet.”
Anna Murray
“Because a shared awareness and understanding of pattern will positively shape the future”
ANNA MURRAY is the Co-founder and creative director of ‘conscious creative organisation’ PATTERNITY’. Artfully bridging the worlds of science, sustainability and design; their multidisciplinary projects, products and educational experiences channel the unique power of pattern; telling meaningful stories that highlight human interconnectedness with nature and promote regenerative patterns of seeing and being on the living Earth today.
Anna regularly speaks across the globe about the key role of nature, creativity and design as catalysts for culture change. She was named by the Evening Standard as one of London’s most influential people and is also the co-author of two books PATTERNITY: A New Way of Seeing and BE GREAT BE GRATETFUL. A Gratitude Journal to Inspire Positive Living.
Programme Costs
The costs for this 6 month journey, including of everything listed in the process section - are as follows. Please kindly note that all the meals during the retreat are included too, but the travel/accommodation costs will have to be paid separately.
(All costs below exclude VAT, but if you can’t claim back VAT, please let us know and we can invoice a different way.)
We also offer three bursary spots for people working with creative activism/NGOs in service of our home planet. The bursary rate is £750. Please get in touch to find out more.
£2750 for large organisations
£1750 for smaller organisations/Independent/NGOs
To book your place on this programme please complete this registration form.
If you have any questions regarding this programme, please drop us an email: connect@bio-leadership.org or use the form below - we’d love to hear from you!