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How do we draw people towards a deliciously sustainable future?
In this episode, we’re going off at a slight tangent: to explore how we can bring people into this world, to feel they have agency and to see an exciting, meaningful future where we do better, with less.
We’re going to hear about a way of telling stories – that could be fiction to help people understand circular solutions, or it might be stories to help them imagine how circular products and services work in real life, helping them see how that’s more fulfilling than buying yet more stuff and adding to the problems of waste and pollution.
Alex Holland is the Founder of SolarPunk Stories, and has worked as a journalist in the UK, Venezuela and India.
Alex has an MA in Leadership for Sustainable Development and created the world’s first Tea Pub which was also Crowdcube’s most-shared startup.
SolarPunk is a much more optimistic genre than dystopian fiction – it’s more like the Thrutopian concept set out by Professor Rupert Read in an article for the Huffington Post, a few years ago.
Utopias are too fantastical, whereas dystopias can be useless, even dangerously doom-mongering. Instead, we can create Thrutopias: stories that help us see a way through the challenges we face, that help us build a vision for the future we want to be part of: a regenerative, fair and inclusive future that we can be proud of. Stories that help us to imagine, to feel what it would be like, and to design the political and economic systems to get us through.
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Read on for more on our guest and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.
Links we mention in the episode:
Links for our guest:
- Sign up to SolarPunk Stories fortnightly substack newsletter: https://solarpunkstories.substack.com/
- A Solar Punk story: https://www.solarpunkstories.com/buy-our-1st-story
- Deep dive article on What SolarPunk is, isn’t and why it matters here >
- https://www.solarpunkstories.com/blog/what-is-solarpunk-one-thing-or-many
- A shout-out for CoFounders for SolarPunk Style here https://www.solarpunkstories.com/cofounders-wanted
- Yogurt commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4
- Alex Hollands’s communications agency, Merlin Branding: helping mission-led business build their tribe of customers by telling their origin story in a way that works https://www.merlinbranding.com/
Books, people and organisations we mentioned
- Katie Patrick’s podcast How to Save the Planet https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/katiepatrick
- Futerra’s Sell the Sizzle report https://www.wearefuterra.com/thinks/sell-the-sizzle or https://climate-pact.europa.eu/get-inspired/resources/sell-sizzle_en
- Solarpunk VC https://solarpunkvc.com/
- Sojo – fixing the fashion industry by powering online tailoring and repairs https://www.sojo.uk/
- Ken Webster talking about the circular ECONOMY, including the importance of the global commons and Universal Basic Dividends, in Episodes 119 and 119 Bonus https://www.rethinkglobal.info/119-ken-webster-the-circular-economy/ https://www.rethinkglobal.info/119-bonus-ken-webster-the-circular-economy-part-2/
- Rupert Read’s article on Thrutopian fiction https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rupert-read/thrutopia-why-neither-dys_b_18372090.html
Guest bio
Alex Holland is the Founder of SolarPunk Stories. He has worked as a journalist in the UK, Venezuela and India. After that he led the campaign to stop Brixton Market getting knocked down and went on to represent Brixton Hill as a local government Councillor.
He’s got an MA in Leadership for Sustainable Development and created the world’s first Tea Pub which was Crowdcube’s most-shared startup.
He loves reading, writing and is one of these lost tribes of posh people who was born in Brixton.
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Podcast music
Thanks to Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow, otherwise known as the brilliant, inventive and generous folk duo, O’Hooley & Tidow for allowing me to use the instrumentals from the live version of Summat’s Brewin’ as music for the podcast. You can find the whole track (inspired by the Copper Family song “Oh Good Ale”) on their album, also called Summat’s Brewin’. Or, follow them on Twitter.
