Making Design Circular: The Framework

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 promised HERE. (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/

 

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