The Possibility Club

The Possibility Club podcast explores the future of business, culture and education. Richard Freeman talks to the people at the coalface of change.

Practical Bravery - CUTTING EDGES! 05/14/2024

Practical Bravery - CUTTING EDGES! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - CUTTING EDGES! In this episode we dive into the textured world of style AND substance, where creativity meets a profound sense of purpose. How do our expressions of style reflect broader cultural, economic, and personal shifts? How does the aesthetic we choose broadcast our identities and our values to the world? This episode takes us on a journey through the life and legacy of a creative industries pioneer who’s been shaping the public personas of icons across the globe with nothing but a pair of scissors and a flair for transformation. From working class boy with a Bowie obssession to the style sculptor of Princess Diana, Lady Gaga, Kate Moss at their most iconic. What does social mobility look like at the very top of high fashion? And what is it like to move from creating the faces behind brands, to becoming one yourself? This is The Possibility Club, and our special guest is the hairdresser's hairdresser, Sam McKnight MBE. --- One of the most important image makers of the late 20th and early 21st century — New York Times on Sam McKnight “What I know is, people want their hair to look good. Having your hair looking good is an incredible mood booster. It’s a simple, relatively inexpensive way of making yourself feel better.” Hair By Sam McKnight website “We said from the beginning we want to bring some joy into the hair care world, which we have done. And I get lots of joy from that in return.” Sam McKnight via Wikipedia “That generation of the sixties is when social mobility became possible, really.” Sam McKnight via Gagapedia (the Lady Gaga wiki) Sam McKnight on X and Instagram — @sammcknight1 “When David Bowie exploded in colour, that was the start of it for me.” David Bowie on Top Of The Pops, 1972, via YouTube “My friends had a hairdressing salon. I took a Saturday job there and then very quickly I’d left teacher training college and started training as a hairdresser. I didn’t want to be a teacher.” “I’ve always taken risks and that goes back to being a teenager. I like to think that I’ve carried that through to my sixties. I’ve always been a risk taker.” David Bailey, photographer, via Wikipedia Twiggy (Dame Leslie Lawson), via Wikipedia “It was pretty brave, to leave a secure job in the salon in Molton Brown, the best salon in London — before it was hand-wash it was the top London salon, in South Bolton Street — it was the shit, it was the place to be, and I left that in 1980 to be by myself, doing this thing called ‘photo shoots’ and two years later I was in New York working for American Vogue.” Vogue (UK site) Molton Brown via Wikipedia “There are much more opportunities now but there are much more people going after those opportunities.” "There needs to be a revaluation put on the values of what we bring. You have to train for years to be a good hairdresser. You can’t just turn up with a hairdryer.” ‘Hair by Sam McKnight’ 2016 retrospective exhibition at Somerset House “The exhibition gave me power in myself that I hadn’t really tapped into before. To see it all in front of me, all the people I’d met.” “The creative industries are very attached to emotions. Not only does music, fashion and beauty bring in billions to this country, which is not recognised properly, but they reach people’s emotions. Your music, your makeup, your clothes, it sparks people’s emotions. When you’re working with people on a photoshoot, you’re touching them.” “Usually I’m meeting people when they’re very young and forming themselves. You build very, very strong bonds with people and there’s a huge emotion attached to it. It’s a very special relationship.” Kate Moss via Wikipedia "She doesn’t turn out of bed as ‘Kate Moss’ at six o’clock in the morning, there’s a whole process of becoming Kate Moss, becoming Princess Di, becoming Lady Gaga.” Hair By Sam McKnight — the book, via Amazon “I listened to Coldplay on the radio a couple of years ago now, it was touted as the first sustainable tour and Chris Martin was amazing, he was saying, look we’re a fifty piece troupe that’s going on big jets all over America, we’re not sustainable. But we are thinking about it, and we’re doing everything we can in the small ways to have less of a footprint. And I thought, that is really inspiring because it’s hard!” “Now this is where the Internet is really incredible and positive, is people doing their own hair and posting the videos. There was a couple of decades when kids weren’t really doing much with their hair — and that’s completely and utterly changed. And I find that really inspiring, I love that the Internet has made that possible.” "I’m a great collaborator but in the end it’s instinctive as well and I need to be happy with it.” “I don’t really have to please anyone but myself.” ------ This episode was recorded in March 2024 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/31345097

Practical Bravery - CONSCIOUS CO-WORKING! 05/01/2024

Practical Bravery - CONSCIOUS CO-WORKING! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - CONSCIOUS CO-WORKING! In this episode we explore the transformative world of co-working spaces and the burgeoning professional communities they foster. As the traditional office evolves and the allure of flexible work arrangements grows, the importance of spaces that inspire, include, and innovate becomes increasingly clear. Our guest is leading an initiative with established roots in Brighton and plans for nationwide expansion, where workspaces not only meet modern needs but also cultivate communities grounded in equity and sustainability. But what broader impact do these spaces hold for local economies and social dynamics? Can the environments we work in become the epicenters of innovation and social change, fostering a new kind of urban and community life? Are fancy co-working spaces just a modern trend, or do they represent the foundational elements of future cities where collaboration is at the core? I'm Richard Freeman, this is The Possibility Club, and my special guest this episode is Director at Projects, Alex Young. --- Alex Young via LinkedIn “I don’t think using the term ‘revolution’ is incorrect, when it comes to the power that co-working has for the future of business.” “I love to disagree! I love to argue!” Projects website "You can’t expect an amazing community to form naturally. You’re much better off investing in establishing a community while you are setting up a space, and ideally before.” “Founding members really make a space. You can have a huge impact if you hand-pick a few key people that are going to join you once your space is open.” “We don’t just sell workspaces. Because if that’s what we did, we’d do that a lot better and we’d make a lot more money, but that’s not why we’re here.” “We need diverse people in our spaces. We need to problem-solve together and to do that you can’t just have people who think the same way, look the same, have the same kind of lived experience.” “I know ‘diversity and inclusion’ are buzz words, they get used way too much, for us we’re creating community spaces, not just selling office space.” Projects — the team “We are not just running beautiful buildings, we are helping individuals that come into our space every day feel more support, feel welcome, and ensuring that they’re able to show up as their best selves, do their best work.” “I’ve been back working at Projects for a year and I feel like I’m home again.” “I’m very nosy, I go to co-working spaces all over the world.” Ethos Property Management B Corp certification “Everybody talks about how hard becoming a B-Corp is. I don’t find it hard. It requires a lot of hours, policy changes, data gathering, you have to literally change the legal wording of what your business exists to do. Okay, it’s not straightforward, but it’s not hard. For us we were doing all these things anyway.” Coworkies Together Co “We’ve seen the issues that come about if people don’t come into work, and I’m not just talking financially. It’s really bad for your health. We need to be around other people.” “When people show up every day and feel that they can contribute to their work in their best way, that’s going to make a huge impact, not just on their friends, family but their employers as well.” Alex’s page on Favourite Positions podcast Imperial College Business School MBA ------ This episode was recorded in March 2024 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/31068988

Practical Bravery: VOLATILE INNOVATION! 04/15/2024

Practical Bravery: VOLATILE INNOVATION! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - VOLATILE INNOVATION! What does it mean to be a global entrepreneur today? How do new technologies help entrepreneurs tackle big challenges? And what kind of bravery does it take to lead in such dynamic times? Join us as we explore these questions with a leader who’s redefining the boundaries of business and innovation. In this episode we're diving deep into how entrepreneurship not only shapes economies and sociey worldwide but also drives the bold leadership and bravery required to address some of our biggest global challenges. From economic inequality to technological disruptions, what do we need to answer in order to pave the the way forward in a digitised future? Our guest this week is serial entrepreneur and CEO of MoreThanDigital, Benjamin Talin. --- Benjamin Talin website “My first enterprise was at 13 years old, I stumbled into doing I.T. marketing stuff, building server networks. I was making good money for a small boy who got 20 Euros allowance per month, suddenly having 300 Euros per day was kind of good!” “I got bored. Later I was burning a lot of my own capital for my startup and I literally rode it into the ground. I didn’t really get the game because no product no funding, no funding no product. So I built a digital agency. I’m good at marketing so I just built that.” “It was just a journey of constantly: I see an opportunity and I do it, and I create an opportunity and I leverage it.” “I traded most of the companies just out of frustration!” MoreThanDigital Ben’s page at MoreThanDigital "Eastern Europe is very entrepreneurial, because they have more pain, I would say.” “When you talk with Americans they talk about billions, but in Switzerland, Germany or Austria it’s like ‘yeah we dream about one million, or two million’ — so the type of ‘dreaming big’ is different.” Benjamin Talin on LinkedIn “We are doing economic development programmes. That is what I was doing for governments but they didn’t want innovation, they didn’t care about innovation. Most of the time I had people say to me, ‘ah, that’s so different from what we are doing,’ and I’m like, ‘that’s what you paid me for!’” Most people think that innovation is like building a rocket or something. But more than eighty percent of innovation is incremental innovation. You have something, it’s an existing market, it’s an existing product, and you implement something that makes it better. “Radical innovation, which is what people think about innovation, is actually creating a new market with a new product. And that is almost impossible.” Benjamin Talin on Twitter/X Benjamin Talin on Instagram "First of all, we are all humans. We need to understand that besides that we wish that society would be better, and we wish that humans would be nicer, we are first and foremost always optimising our own good. That’s our own priority. If we understand that we can extrapolate it onto organisation.” "People are starting to lose a lot of money. If you are VC-backed they always tell you, ‘invest everything! Be fast! Be fast!’ But if no money is coming up, it’s like ‘ah, you invested everything, how bad’!” Maslow’s hierarchy of needs “Technology will change the way people perceive money, people perceive freedom, people perceive the social structure.” “You have an idea, you pump it up, it goes bust. Before you even launched the second t-shirt, people are already bored and there’s somebody else doing it.” ------ This episode was recorded in March 2024 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/30826323

Practical Bravery: FUTURE-PROOFING WORKPLACES! 04/01/2024

Practical Bravery: FUTURE-PROOFING WORKPLACES! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - FUTURE-PROOFING WORKPLACES! In this episode, we return to the nuanced interplay between machine learning and human ingenuity. Can machines complement our creativity, or will they eclipse the essence of human touch in professions once thought impermeable to automation? As we navigate the digital era's complexities, questions of equity, diversity, and the human experience within the technological landscape become increasingly pressing. How do we harness AI to foster inclusivity and bridge divides, rather than widen them? Amidst the relentless pace of innovation, where does the individual find their footing, and how do we cultivate resilience and adaptability in a workforce facing unprecedented shifts? Our guest this week is work futures and technology expert, Dr Naeema Pasha. --- Dr Naeema Pasha via LinkedIn Dr Naeema Pasha on Twitter/X Futureproof Your Career — Dr Naeema’s ebook co-written with Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj via Amazon “There was just a report done recently at Henley about bosses wanting people back in the workplace, having what’s called a ‘proximity bias’, I will trust you more if I can see you visibly.” Henley Business School “Research shows there are people wanting this identity of us just not being workers, that we are also doing other things, we have families, or commitments, or hobbies, or anything. People expect flexibility.” “People are expecting to have time to take children to school, or wellbeing. All these things seem to be much more in the psyche of workers.” “Looking at the research I did on race equity, and other people in Henley have done further study on this, is that people are biased. And what we found with the A.I. is that it could be less biased in coaching.” “When we talk about skilling, the research I did — and this was my doctorate — is that, rather than the skills of coding and STEM and this kind of thing, what is more important is for us to start understanding ambiguity, work through uncertainty, and therefore what skills are important are how to be focused, how to go through these complexities that we have, and work out where we are and how we progress.” Work of Work Institute Henley Business Schools’ Leading Edge podcast with Naeema On job hunting — “The job hunting experience has been interesting. Having worked in graduate recruitment, where thousands of people go through processes, now myself being part of a pool.” “The most important thing is to humanise the process.” “The ‘ghosting’ experience is strange. A handful of big organisations are processing everyone. Your data is kept and it’s pushed through this funnel, but then you get ghosted at the end. Automated systems should allow for a rejection stage as well.” “There’s enough intellect in organisations to be able to think, how do we manage this process? Because it’s a decent thing to do and actually it’s good for the recruitment brand as well.” "It still feels like ‘you should be grateful’ and we’ll put you through these ridiculous amount of tests and interviews.” “This year has been a real experience of hearing the term ‘we’re about the hustle’, ‘we’re about the hustle culture’, hearing that quite a lot with employers.” ‘Equality alone won’t help you win the war on talent’ article by Dr Naeema Pasha in The HR World Wired article on Grindr’s demand that workers return to the office “Being able to collaborate was really important, and being able to collaborate in a way that allowed for diversity to come into place.” “We still want to feel a sense that people care for us. And we can also do the same for other people. And that was the same in physical places, as well as online.” “Caring has come up so often in organisations that people want to know how they can make it more explicit, how they can show that a lot more. Not just to care for others and our teams, but ourselves as well.” “We might even go to shops where it’ll say ’no A.I. used here’ because we don’t want our retinas scanned.” “The rate of change is fast. We have to work with young people to understand you are valuable, you are brilliant, you’ve got capability, how can we understand your strengths?” “I think equity and diversity is going to be more important and A.I. will probably enable that to work better.” ------ This episode was recorded in November 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/30620078

Practical Bravery: CREATIVE PARTICIPATION! 03/15/2024

Practical Bravery: CREATIVE PARTICIPATION! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - CREATIVE PARTICIPATION! In this episode of The Possibility Club podcast, we're exploring the spaces where creativity becomes a conduit for connection, and where theatres and arts venues become the heartbeats of the communities they serve. Our guest is the Head of Participation at Southwark Playhouse, orchestrating a symphony of projects that resonate with thousands yearly, from all ages and backgrounds. His work is about creating a mosaic of experiences that reflect south London's diversity, challenges, and aspirations. Through strategic development, he weaves the threads of local needs with the theatre's aims, securing funding to turn vision into reality and offering tangible opportunities for emerging talents. Let's explore the conversation where art and community come together to rewrite stories, with David Workman. --- David Workman via LinkedIn “I constantly pinch myself at how lucky I am to be doing the job I’m doing.” “I realised all my career has been spent in the Borough of Southwark, which is totally unintentional.” Southwark via GoogleMaps “Some of the wards are some of the poorest in London, if not the UK. But that’s slap bang up against brand new developments.” “No-one has to engage with us, I’ve got to reach out to them.” “The minute we went out and ran a workshop in a community space, we had a lot more people come along. We went into their territory and said we want to be part of this community.” Southwark Playhouse Southwark Playhouse — participation pages “I still suffer quite regularly from imposter syndrome, thinking I got here, how did I get here? But I guess I’ve been doing it for fifteen years now, so maybe I should get over that.” “All I’ve learnt, I’ve learnt by doing. Not necessarily through studying it per se, but doing it, getting it right, getting it wrong, learning on the job.” “Last year we opened a second venue, so we now have two venues in Elephant & Castle, and within our new venue we have a dedicated participation space, which is all of my work. Realistically I’m not going to be able to fill that space twenty-four seven with all the work I do, but I want to make that space usable. So we’re partnering with charities working with refugees, adults with dementia, young people at risk of exclusion. They’re already doing great work — which there’s no point us trying to replicate, I’d rather support and amplify that in the community, rather than trying to muscle in.” Bristol Old Vic Theatre In Education via Wikipedia Shakespeare’s Globe schools team “I don’t that there’s one approach for everything you do. You have to be adaptive, you have to adapt to different communities, different demographics, one size will not fit all. But also I work with a lot of artists and if I employ someone because of what they’re going to bring to that project, their own approach, their own artistic practice. I’m not keen on imposing on a practical side how that might be.” Elephant & Castle via Wikipedia "The community is changing. There’s very little point me not changing how I approach my work.” “It’s a way of softly building those relationships with the community, really.” “We’re not funded by the Arts Council and we never have been and we’ve sustained and grown that over thirty years. Our model is, in a year we’ll stage between twenty-five and thirty shows and we have spaces of different sizes. By not having money from the Arts Council it gives us more flexibility but more risk. But we get the balance right, generally.” Operation Mincemeat via Wikipedia Operation Mincemeat Little Angel Theatre “I’m a glass half full person. I approach things with a ‘let’s see what happens’ kind of approach.” ”There’s always going to be a need, a desire, for live art. Post-pandemic it took a long time for that to come back, and I think it’s still doing that. People have to weigh up the costs of coming into London. You have to take a punt on something. But there’s lots going on and there are a lot of exciting voices coming through.” ------ This episode was recorded in February 2024 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/30385868

Practical Bravery : EMPOWERED ENTERPRISE! 03/01/2024

Practical Bravery : EMPOWERED ENTERPRISE! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - EMPOWERED ENTERPRISE! In this episode, we navigate the journey of a visionary whose leadership has not just built businesses but has transformed lives. An architect of opportunity, whose blueprint for change is reshaping the landscape of social mobility. From the foundations of financial literacy to the pillars of small business support, her mission is to elevate the underprivileged, to turn the tide of poverty through the power of enterprise. By advocating for a model that combines training, seed capital, and ongoing mentoring, she's not just changing the game; she's setting a new standard for how we approach development aid. Her vision is clear - a world where business serves as a vehicle for social mobility, where every entrepreneur, no matter their starting point, has a chance to thrive. Joining The Possibility Club is a leader in lifting lives through enterprise, and perhaps, a guiding light for future generations of social entrepreneurs - CEO of Village Enterprise, Dianne Calvi. --- Dianne Calvi via LinkedIn Dianne Calvi via Twitter / X “When I was child my dad told me stories about his own childhood. His mum was a single mother who struggled to just put food on the table, they were migrant workers during the summer, they would pick fruit, live in a tent, often go hungry. His life was so foreign to me. I realised that I wanted to make a difference in the lives of people like my dad.” Village Enterprise "When I got the opportunity to take on this role, it brought together so many things I was looking for. To take what I’d learned in organisations like Microsoft and apply it to the non-profit sector. To try to build an organisation that had significant impact.” “If you want to solve a big problem, you have to change policies in the way governments operate. One of the ways you can do that is building a solid base of evidence for an approach.” “We see real transformative change, not only in the women we work with but in the lives of everyone in their families. It really is an incredible change that happens in a relatively short period of time.” "We see a whole new local economy grow out of this work.” Dianne Calvi’s page on Village Enterprise “We’re working in the very rural areas, so still today most of the businesses that we start are agriculture businesses. In many cases people transition from subsistance farming to planting crops that generate income, and generating much more income off the land because of this re-orientation.” “We’re not providing them with a loan, we’re providing them with a cash grant.” Dreamstart Labs — DreamSave fintech for informal community banking “When we go into a new community we target those in extreme poverty and we work with every single household that qualifies. So we’re not just cherrypicking entrepreneurs, we’re really working with the entire village. In many cases 85% of the households in an area.” Mercy Corps “We create businesses for the first time but they need customers, so Mercy Corps is providing the incentives and in some cases training for the private sector actors to work together with our entrepreneurs.” Dianne Calvi’s page on Next Billion Dianne Calvi wins award at Stanford “We’ve done two randomised control trials. It’s the only way you can prove attribution to a program. And we’ve found we can quantify them. We now have evidence that people’s wellbeing is increasing, their mental health, their sense of agency is increasing, and this has all been measured by a randomised control trial, so there are questions you can ask that help quantify that that is happening.” Boconni University, Milan, MBA course Development Impact Bonds via Social Finance “For every dollar invested in the Village Enterprise program, five dollars of income are generated. So now governments are interested in adopting this, because they see that that will create economic growth." US AID Development Innovation Ventures Wildlife Conservation Society African Wildlife Foundation Jane Goodall Institute Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Dufflo — Poor Economics via Amazon ------ This episode was recorded in October 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/30179803

Practical Bravery: MUSICAL POLITICS! 02/15/2024

Practical Bravery: MUSICAL POLITICS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - MUSICAL POLITICS! Can artists change the world? Should they? And should it be through their art, or through their activism? In this episode we're charting the course of a journeyman whose guitar has graced stages worldwide, and whose convictions have spotlighted the corridors of change. From the euphoric highs of indie rock stardom with his band Gomez, capturing hearts and the Mercury Prize in 1998, to the critical acclaim and UK Top 40 albums, his artistry has been undeniable. But it's his transition from artist to advocate and activist that makes him stand out. Elected as the Chair of the Ivors Academy and sitting on the council of the Performing Rights Society, he's not just playing tunes; he's setting the tempo for change. And in 2024 (after we recorded this interview), he's seeking a place in the mother of all parliaments. Our guest is rockstar, campaigner and - who knows - maybe a future prime minister, Tom Gray. ---------- “I always saw myself as a side man, I was the guy stood next to the guy, I loved writing songs. I never saw myself as being a leader.” Tom Gray via Wikipedia Tom Gray via LinkedIn “Actually music wasn’t my goal at all, hilariously, music was just my way of slowing down my racing brain.” "I actually had a choice: do I get on a plane and work for a senator, which is what I wanted to do — I wanted to be a speechwriter — or do I get Madonna’s private jet? A ridiculous thing to choose between.” Gomez the band Gomez the band via Wikpedia "By the time I was twenty-four or twenty-five I felt like I was on my third thing.” “I realised there were all kinds of problems facing my friends in music and a lot of the organisations representing them, although heartily trying, weren’t necessarily getting there.” “I had this curious superpower which was that I understood politics, I’d grown up in politics, I knew loads of people in politics. If didn’t do something, who was?" Featured Artists Coalition The Ivors Academy (formerly British Association of Songwriters and Composers) “I realised they didn’t have a policy unit, helped them build a policy unit, helped them develop a public affairs strategy, actually employ people to do policy, which they didn’t have. They were kind of shaking their fists in the air but not doing this stuff.” Musicians Union “So, end of February 2020 I became a one man campaign, called Broken Record. And three months later the MU and Ivors Academy ran my more traditionally designed campaign called Fix Streaming.” “I was the guerrilla ground offensive, and then the air attack came later.” Broken Record campaign via Wikipedia Mixmag article on the Broken Record campaign to fix streaming Tom Gray’s evidence via the UK Parliament Twitter/X — @MrTomGray Instagram — “There’s a series of levers, there’s a series of relationships, there’s a way to change the world, there’s a path and, boringly, that’s how you do it." "We got all major labels agreeing to forgive debt of artists who’d been in debt for more than twenty years, which was huge.” “We’ve got an industry-wide transparency agreement that is about to be signed.” “My entire thing is, hold the industry in a headlock and force them to improve. People will say government process takes you out of that campaigning mode, it takes you out of holding their feet to the fire. That’s true but you’ve also got the institutional grip. They have to keep saying the right things, there’s no easy exit for them.” Labour List — “Meet Labour Brighton Pavilion candidate Tom Gray as Eddie Izzard falls short” “Music isn’t the arts, are you mad? It’s one of our most basic forms of communication!” Possibility Club interview with Crystal Asige Pete Wishart of Runrig via Wikipedia "We are one of three music net exporters on the planet. We have this huge benefit of our language and our unbroken history of music learning, conservatories, the Beatles, you wouldn’t have the Beatles without the Education Act, that’s clear. Public policy changes the world. John Lennon going to art school was a profoundly important thing that needed to happen, in order for the world to experience the Beatles.” "Resilience is 100% the lesson of being a musician, because it’s been pretty hard, the past twenty years, working in that sector. There’s always someone who’s making a buck out of everybody but for me I think these fights can be won, still. And if that’s optimism, that’s optimism.” ------ This episode was recorded in September 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/29971853

Practical Bravery: CLEAR-SIGHTED SOCIAL ENTERPRISE! 02/01/2024

Practical Bravery: CLEAR-SIGHTED SOCIAL ENTERPRISE! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - CLEAR-SIGHTED SOCIAL ENTERPRISE! How is it possible to mastermind commercially earned revenue alongside philanthropy in a growing business? Nurturing a purpose-driven enterprise that is centred around social impact at scale in turbulent times...? Our guest this week has been at the forefront of transforming lives through visionary healthcare strategies, with over two decades of experience in international development. Now leading an organization that has transformed the vision of over 10 million people, she has unlocked billions in household income potential as people start to see clearly again. Where do we begin to unravel the complexities of creating global health equity and sustainable change? Enjoy our conversation with the CEO of VisionSpring, Ella Gudwin. ---------- Ella Gudwin via LinkedIn Ella Gudwin via Twitter / X @ellarain Ella’s ‘My Working Day’ for Business Leader magazine “Eyeglasses are a 700 year old technology that have failed to diffuse to the low income segment. They have been remarkably stuck as a luxury item, as a product for the learned and the elite.” “VisionSpring was established in 2001 as a social enterprise, recognising that a problem this big is too big for charity to solve alone.” Vision Spring “While the word ‘customer’ could be a capitalist word, I think there’s a really important element to the power dynamic when we stop using the word ‘beneficiary’.” “We have to show up in a community with a product or service that is worth people’s time and it has to be worth their limited discretionary income. We have to earn trust. We need to provide products that are stylish. We have to offer the dignity of choice. The power is in the hands of the customer. First. It’s a real psychological shift.” “There is an organisational culture of determination. We will throw ourselves at the wall again and again, until we get over it. The other one is revealing hard truths — being clear when things aren’t working. Letting the data and the evidence drive our decision-making.” Jordan Kassalow via LinkedIn Ella Gudwin’s page on VisionSpring In some communities 30% of people think glasses make your eyesight weaker. Others don’t want their girls to be in glasses, because it will make them less marriable and might increase their dowry. And there’s just a lot of people who feel like, it makes me old!” "We can all have a little bit of vanity about, am I going to have to wear my glasses?” “The issues and the connections between foreign policy and international aid are ancient. The extraction mindset is real. There’s a huge push in the international development space around decolonising international aid and making sure more funding is going into community based organisations, organisations with local leaders and local founders.” ”It’s important that we use our knowhow and our evidence to catalyse collaborative action.” UN Friends of Vision WHO’s World report on vision International Labour Organization Myopia via Wikipedia “The world needs 500,000 points of distribution for prescription glasses, and 400,000 more points of distribution for reading glasses, in order to have durable, lasting supply. So we have to awaken the demand, get the supply in place and then we will be able to solve the problem globally.” A.I. and digital health in global eye health, The Lancet “It’s a really exciting moment for us in the eyecare space, because the level of collaboration is at new heights.” "I’m a firm believer than one plus one equals eleven.” ------ This episode was recorded in July 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/29755533

Practical Bravery: EVOLVING MARKETS! 01/15/2024

Practical Bravery: EVOLVING MARKETS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - EVOLVING MARKETS! How is technology reshaping the landscape of global finance? What role do ethics play in the evolution of digital communication platforms? In what ways can resilience and innovation drive progress during crises? How will emerging technologies like Bitcoin impact the future of trading and energy resources? What lessons can leaders learn from the transformation of traditional trading floors to encrypted, digital platforms? So many questions, so little time. In this episode of The Possibility Club, we delve into the world of global financial services, banking, and fintech with a focus on bravery and ethics. Our guest has carved an impressive career path, marked by courage and a commitment to ethical stewardship and good governance in financial markets. With over two decades of experience in the industry, he's earned a reputation as a true pioneer. Recognised for his exceptional leadership, he was named CEO of the Year at the 2022 Markets Choice Awards. Additionally, he has been included in the TabbFORUM 40 Top Innovators in Financial Markets list. He's not just shaping the industry; he's actively shaping the conversation around the future of technology and finance. For the first Practical Bravery interview of 2024, please meet the CEO of the rapidly growing fintech infrastructure firm, Symphony. ---------- Brad Levy via LinkedIn Brad Levy biography at Santander Symphony “The industry needs a platform that is secure, ie encrypted, and then highly curated.” “Not everybody can be on Symphony, it’s a walled garden but ultimately inside that walled garden people decide who they communicate with. So it’s very open inside, but it’s encrypted.” Brad Levy via Symphony Leadership page “Symphony is an enabler of remote work.” “I started with no computers really in an industry and I ended up with a Pentium chip in 1995 that was super-fast, and I just stayed with that.” “Electronic trading in 95 didn’t exist, so it was a very physical job, you sat on trading floors, people smoked cigarettes, literally, on trading floors in the 80s and 90s. That really started to fade. Trading floors used to be raucous, and then it started to get more online and fifteen years later in 2010 you go to a trading floor, there’s a lot of people but it really is quiet.” Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs via Wikipedia “There’s a lot more trading and risk activity happening now, it’s just more dispersed and diffused.” “I’ve seen that thirty year arc and it’s just been fascinating.” AIM (AOL) software via Wikipedia “To build thing you need capital. Usually you need funding to do anything. Then you need some form of physical energy. I think of finance, tech and energy as these base areas, and then base industries that all other industries need to deal with.” Bitcoin via Wikipedia “A bitcoin is code, compute, and cooling. Literally. Write code, run the computer and then cool it. That’s why Quebec is big, because it’s got a lot of hydro-power and water.” Freedom Tower - One World Trade Center via Wikipedia Markit via Wikipedia September 11th attacks via Wikipedia Sandy (Hurricane Sandy) via Wikipedia “I’ve just seen all these things — and communication literally winds up being the thing you need at that moment. Not having your cellphone battery, or being down on text on 9/11.” ------ This episode was recorded in September 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/29493623

One Young World Summit special: SUSTAINABILITY! 01/12/2024

One Young World Summit special: LEADERSHIP! 12/27/2023

One Young World Summit special: LEADERSHIP! The Possibility Club podcast: at the One Young World Summit 2023 Special Episode 2: LEADERSHIP! The One Young World Summit 2023 in Belfast was a significant gathering of young leaders from over 190 countries, representing a diverse array of professions and backgrounds. This annual event is renowned for its focus on accelerating social impact and empowering young leaders to address pressing global challenges. For more detailed information about the Summit, you can visit the official One Young World website . ---------- Featuring interviews or speeches from: Crystal Asige: Crystal Asige is a Nominated Senator in Kenya and a renowned singer. Despite losing her eyesight due to glaucoma, she has made significant strides in both music and politics. Asige advocates for the rights of the youth and persons with disabilities. She was nominated to the Senate by the Orange Democratic Movement in 2022. Asige is known for her music career, including an independent album released in November 2023. For more about Crystal Asige, visit Daniel Zapata Castro: Daniel is a celebrated peace-builder from Colombia and a coordinating ambassador for One Young World, focusing on social entrepreneurship in his region. More details can be found on . Bob Geldof: Bob Geldof is an Irish singer-songwriter and political activist, best known as the lead singer of The Boomtown Rats. He co-wrote and organized the charity song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts for famine relief in Africa. Geldof is an advocate for social justice and poverty alleviation in Africa, serving as an adviser to the ONE Campaign. He was granted an honorary knighthood for his charitable efforts. For more on Bob Geldof's life and work, visit . Natalie Ainsworth: Natalie represents AstraZeneca and is involved in fostering positive change. Her professional background and contributions can be explored on . Geraldine Dichamp and Steve Edney: From Pernod Ricard (and Expression for Growth), they represent Pernod Ricard and focus on responsible alcohol consumption and corporate dialogue with future consumers. Geraldine's profile is available on . Steffi Malina Kabre: A first-time attendee and One Young World Ambassador, Steffi works with the UN World Food Programme, focusing on women's health in Burkina Faso. Her professional details can be found on . Madina Abacar: Madina is a finance professional and influential blogger from Mozambique, known for her foundation supporting young women's professional careers. More about her journey is available at . Anxhela Bruci: An Albanian woman trafficked as a child, Anxhela now focuses on helping others exploited by modern slavery. Her LinkedIn profile provides more insights: . ------ This episode was recorded in October 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/29240058

One Young World Summit special: PEACE! 12/22/2023

One Young World Summit special: PEACE! The Possibility Club podcast: at the One Young World Summit 2023 Special Episode 1: PEACE! The One Young World Summit 2023 in Belfast was a significant gathering of young leaders from over 190 countries, representing a diverse array of professions and backgrounds. This annual event is renowned for its focus on accelerating social impact and empowering young leaders to address pressing global challenges. For more detailed information about the Summit, you can visit the official One Young World website . ---------- Featuring interviews or speeches from: Ryan Murphy For more detailed information about Ryan Murphy and his role as the Lord Mayor of Belfast, you can visit the Belfast City Council's website . HRH Queen Rania of Jordan For more detailed insights into her speech and its impact, you can refer to the articles on Queen Rania's official website and BNN Breaking here. Mohammed Al-Othman A Jordanian entrepreneur and the North Region Youth Corner Supervisor at the Jordanian Ministry of Youth. For more details, you can visit his profile on the . Eddy Balina A One Young World Ambassador and the Founder of the Non-Violence Project Uganda, shared his experiences at the One Young World Summit 2023. For more details about Eddy Balina's experiences and contributions, you can visit the One Young World website . Sarah Gribben For more detailed information and suggestions for visiting Belfast, you can visit the Visit Belfast website . Claire Regan For more information, you can visit a news article on Queen's University Belfast's website . Rachael Toland For more details on the broader PwC delegation, you can visit the website . Rez Gardi A notable participant at the One Young World Summit 2023, is a Co-Managing Director for Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table (R-SEAT). For more information about her work, you can visit the One Young World website . Juan Manuel Santos The former President of Colombia and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, was a key speaker at the One Young World 2023 Summit held in Belfast.For more details on Santos' participation and insights at the One Young World 2023 Summit, you can visit the official One Young World website and Al Jazeera's coverage of his interview . Zurich Insurance Group For an overview of the engagement between Zurich and One Young World, including stories from summit attendees, you can visit the . Detailed information about the Zurich - One Young World Scholarship and its impact can be found on the . To learn more about the NEXT strategy within Zurich Insurance Group, which focuses on giving a voice to new generations, you can visit the . Maria Fernanda Ribeiro A young changemaker from Brazil, deeply involved in educational initiatives aimed at reducing inequalities in her city. She and a group of young leaders in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro, created an accessible Model United Nations (MUN) program, bridging the gap in opportunities between students in private and public schools. For more details on these initiatives, you can visit . Monica McWilliams & Hasina Safi You can watch the fireside chat featuring Monica McWilliams and Hasina Safi discussing the exclusion of women in peace processes on YouTube. This session provides valuable insights into the role of women in peacebuilding. The video is titled "Exclusion of women in peace processes is not an option I Monica McWilliams and Hasina Safi" and can be found . ------ This episode was recorded in October 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/29194778

Practical Bravery: DISRUPTIVE UNIVERSITIES! 12/15/2023

Practical Bravery: DISRUPTIVE UNIVERSITIES! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - DISRUPTIVE UNIVERSITIES! Between 2010 and 2015, our special guest for this episode served as the Director of Policy to the UK Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, during the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition government. Her work in government laid the foundation for her passion for equality and social justice. After government, she co-founded the Money and Mental Health charity in partnership with Martin Lewis - before going on to lead the policy and democracy think tank, Demos. As of June 2022, my guest has taken on the role of Chief Social Purpose Officer at the University of Arts London (UAL). In this position, she is championing a groundbreaking initiative—the Social Purpose Implementation Plan—a historic move for higher education in the UK. We explore how UAL's plan goes beyond teaching and research; it's a commitment to addressing the intertwined challenges of our time: climate change, social inequality, and the imperative for creativity to drive positive change. For the last Practical Bravery interview of 2023, I am delighted to bring you a fascinating chat with Polly Mackenzie. ---------- Polly MacKenzie via LinkedIn Polly MacKenzie via Advance HE Polly on Twitter/X — @pollymackenzie “I love creating new roles but there’s this feeling of jeopardy — I have no idea how to do this — and there isn’t a model, I can’t just follow the instructions.” "I just learnt that I’m called a ‘third space’ professional, because I’m not an academic, and I’m not just in the professional services departments. Because I’m trying to catalyse change that goes across this whole waterfront.” “We might be just wrong.” University of the Arts London (UAL) “Grayson Perry has described UAL as the ‘world’s largest factory for troublemakers.’” “In academia you’re embedded in that ‘term’ structure. Parliament has this big long summer holiday, so do universities, but I feel like most normal people grew out of that! In businesses they talk about quarters, Q1, Q2, but here it’s ‘terms’. It’s ‘term’, it’s ‘recess’ and the long vacation. I like the rhythm of the year.” “In our office sections we didn’t have any whiteboards. It’s weird. You go to the studios, it’s like creative central, you go to the offices, it’s like a third tier law firm.” UAL appoints Polly MacKenzie “Give yourself the breathing room, the confidence to keep going, keep plodding, keep asking, keep exploring, keep writing stuff down, and you get to the point where you feel you know what to do.” “Sometimes there’s an instinct, a sharpness. I’m a words person, I studied English literature, my deepest loves are poems, speeches and stories. It’s not that I dislike art but it’s not my medium, the visual arts. So it’s been interesting to push myself to try to think in 3D as well as in words.” "There’s a strong sense within art school tradition of art as disruption, art as activism. It’s the making of something new, and therefore in the mindset of the people who want to do that, and the culture that is built when you gather them together, is to be agents of change. But we’ve started to talk about something that is more directional.” "Anarchism has developed a branding problem on the left, if that makes any sense? You can’t just say ‘smash it all to pieces and see what happens’ and assume that that is a force for good.” “I think there’s a continuum between art-as-disruption,‘burn it all down’, art-as-activism, which is more directed, or then perhaps art as an act of citizenship, of responsibility." Nick Clegg, via Wikipedia The Cameron-Clegg, Lib Dem / Conservative coalition, via Wikipedia “Any of us who’ve ever tried to write experience writer’s block. There’s like a bag but I don’t know how to put a handle on it, I’ve just got noise in my brain. But then there comes a moment when you can write.” taxonomy, via Wikipedia MSE Charity Fund, via MoneySavingExpert How To Win An Election podcast, via The Times How To Win An Election podcast via Apple Podcasts “I think more and more of us are seeing the inter-connectedness of the world.” Kate Raworth — ‘doughnut economics’ website Diana Coyle, via Wikipedia “No academic wants to be told what to do by the university, but I think art school academics just like an extra little sprinkling of that sense of artistic freedom. So the question is, what can we collaborate on, where we feel a shared sense of values?” “We believe that progress is driven by imagination and the practical mechanisms of bringing that imagined world to life.” “I want Britain to be a science superpower like the government does, but I feel like they want us to be a science superpower and none of that flakey, woke soft stuff. But there’s no science without creativity.” “We, as storytellers, have the ability to change the mindsets of other people.” “I guess it’s called agile, isn’t it. Know where you’re going and experiment about how to get there.” DEMOS think tank James Purnell, via Wikipedia “The dysfunctions of politics are many and manifold. I never experienced any of the characteristics of good leadership, really, in my time in politics. And that’s sad.” Mariana Mazzucato, via Wikipedia Arthur Clough, via Wikipedia ‘Say not the Struggle nought Availeth’ (1849, pub 1855) poem by Arthur Clough, via the Poetry Foundation ------ This episode was recorded in August 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/29095388

Practical Bravery: COCONUT THINKING! 12/01/2023

Practical Bravery: COCONUT THINKING! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - COCONUT THINKING! In this episode, we unravel some of the threads of culture, technology, and human experience, exploring how education shapes our understanding of ourselves and our place in a rapidly evolving global society. We ponder questions central to our time: How does the digital age redefine our learning landscapes? What roles do empathy, creativity, and connection play in crafting a more inclusive and compassionate world? From the classrooms of prestigious international schools to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, OUR guest's diverse experiences have shaped his understanding of education as a dynamic, living ecosystem. His philosophy champions a holistic approach to learning, one that nurtures not just academic prowess but also the emotional and social well-being of individuals. A warm welcome to you, and to my guest as we explore practical bravery in coconut thinking - with Dr Benjamin Freud. ---------- Possibility Club — Practical Bravery 015 Coconut Thinking — Dr Benjamin Freud ‘Irascible’ definition (via the Oxford English Dictionary) Dr Benjamin Freud — the Coconut Thinking website Dr Bemjamin Freud via LinkedIn “The word ‘coconut’ is a little cheeky and frankly came off the tip of my tongue because I love coconuts. But a coconut is both a fruit and a seed, and it’s also a nut. And I like this idea of being able to be multiple things at the same time.” Dr Benjamin Freud on Twitter / X Dr Benjamin Freud speaker page on the World Education Summit website “Education is my second career but I brought so many lessons about the way things could be from Silicon Valley — but they don’t necessarily have any anchor in what’s good for the world.” [on Silicon Valley] “…It was indulgent, it was hedonistic, there were so many dark sides to it, but I’ll take back this rule breaking, I’ll take back these long-haired kids who just didn’t care and were going to say I’ll quit my job so I can make something for myself.” “It was really when I had a child that I realised I get a lot of my energy from kids. I find them hilarious, I find them more interesting than many adults I meet. That’s how I got into education.” Prem International School, Chiangmai, Thailand “Why is it that you’re an outlier school if you put the needs of the students and relationships with the students first? What is more important than our relationships with each other?” “Anything that’s a living system — this can be organisations as well, of course — exists because of the networks in which they are. There’s a certain kind of weird boundary between it and the world.” “I do think education has to be values-driven: we layer a certain amount of values that allow us to create more conditions for life to thrive on the planet. Just like a living system grows and re-structures and re-organises.” “It’s better to have no plan and a new vision, than a new plan with an old vision.” Nora Bateson “I’m a little bit nervous about words like ‘regeneration’, I’ve used it for a while but now that I see that if you type in ‘Coca Cola’ and ‘regeneration’ there’s a web page that comes up, I’m thinking there’s gonna be a whole bunch of teal-washing coming on.” “Sustainability and regeneration are, let’s face it, issues for the global north.” “You ask how we get policy-makers to change? Force universities and employers to require eco-literacies, just like you require math and reading and writing literacies. That would do a lot.” ----------- This episode was recorded in June 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/28883203

Practical Bravery: BORDERLESS CONVERSATIONS! 11/15/2023

Practical Bravery: BORDERLESS CONVERSATIONS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - BORDERLESS CONVERSATIONS! In this episode we reflect on our role in this interconnected world. How can each of us contribute to building a more inclusive society? What does it mean to be a global citizen in an age where technology has made distances shorter, but sometimes, paradoxically, the gaps in understanding wider? Our guest is the mastermind behind Conversation Over Borders, an initiative bridging the chasm between displaced individuals and the community. Conversation Over Borders has grown from a response to a pressing need during the pandemic to a thriving community interest company. It's a story of organic growth, driven by the real-time needs of those it serves. This journey illustrates the power of grassroots movements in creating tangible social change, demonstrating the profound impact of empathy, innovation, and relentless dedication. This is The Possibility Club, where conversations are more than just words; they're bridges to a better world of practical bravery. And we would like you to meet Colette Batten-Turner. ---------- Colette Batten-Turner via LinkedIn Conversation Over Borders “Really, to start with, it was just me connecting people that I knew, on both sides. People who I’d worked with closely with this mental health group for about three years, and other people, who I knew through school, or uni, or whatever, who were teachers.” Refugee Radio "I put out a call for volunteers on Facebook and had about fifty people phone up overnight. That was a sign that there was a real demand for connection, and learning English as well, but there was also a real yearning to volunteer and for people to support people at that time. All of us were isolated in one way or another.” “The way that we have developed has remained very rooted in the community.” Screenshare UK “People, generally, want to support other people. If you see someone fall down in the street, most people stop and see if they’re alright, or like help them up. But the difficulty is when people feel so divorced from “an issue”, or an injustice for example, that they just don’t see it as their thing — and they’re focused very much on their lives and their day-to-day problems. But when people feel part of a wider community, quite often there is more of a community spirit around supporting other people as well.” The Hummingbird Project Voices In Exile Caroline Lucas “There is a massive divide between what our Home Office is doing and what people actually want, or feel is there for others.“ Sixty-six asylum children missing from Hove asylum hotel, via The Guardian “Part of the ‘hostile environment’ policy is people who’ve been displaced are regularly moved around the country — is it exactly for this reason: so that they can’t get embedded into a community that will then look out for them, or defend them. Not my neighbours — you’re not taking them away.“ “Quite often we feel disempowered by what we see happening in the House of Commons, the House of Lords, whereas actually we can reclaim some of that power by saying okay, I don’t agree with that, that doesn’t represent me, and I obviously will continue engaging with politics but in the mean time I can live the way that represents what I believe and I can take action to support the people I know.” “Whenever there’s a political crisis in a country, or a recession, someone gets othered, someone gets blamed for it. Whenever there’s political failings, generally a group that’s not given the space to amplify their voices gets blamed or scapegoated for what’s going on.” ----------- This episode was recorded in June 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/28652793

Practical Bravery: DIGITAL CONSCIOUSNESS! 11/01/2023

Practical Bravery: DIGITAL CONSCIOUSNESS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - DIGITAL CONSCIOUSNESS! In this episode of The Possibility Club, we delve into the fabric of this modern narrative. The script is changing, the actors are evolving, and the stage is expanding. It’s a realm where algorithms are the new editors, and data, the ink. Yet, amidst this digital choreography, where does the human touch reside? And more so, where is it headed? Author of 'The Media Business and Artificial Intelligence,’ our guest's writings are more than just a dalliance with theories, they are a deep dive into the interplay between AI and media. His academic roles at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, the Said Business School and at the National Film and Television School, look under the bonnet of the business of arts, culture, tech and entertainment. His current roles at UNICEF UK and The Halle Orchestra symbolise a narrative that looks beyond commercial metrics, but one serious about social change. How can we all navigate the expanse of media, technology, and social impact, maintaining a useful dance between ethics and innovation, between tradition and disruption? In this episode of The Possibility Club, Richard Freeman would like you to meet Dr Alex Connock. ---------- "An AI person could probably do a facsimile of your voice, and your video, and possibly imitate you. So is any of us really ‘inimitable’ anymore, even if we aspire to be?” Dr Alex Connock via LinkedIn Alex Connock via IMDB Twitter — @dralexconnock "On one level you’re talking about these prosaic things, this new tool’s launched, or this bit of machine learning does this, fairly mundane software stuff, and on the other hand you’re talking about these really big philosophical issues, like what is creativity? What is copyright? What is consciousness? What is network? And to marry those two things together every day is genuinely fascinating and a privilege.” Saïd Business School, University of Oxford page for Alex Connock National Film and Television School Alex Connock’s page at the University of Exeter Business School “I specialise in the media business and A.I. — and what a subject it is, in 2023!” Alex Connock — Media Management and Artificial Intelligence book via Amazon ‘The Apple Metaverse - What We Know So Far’ article from XR Today "The Great British export is probably cultural capital. It is things like AI and the creative industries. I think the government is very alive to this now. Of the value of our intellectual property.” Royal Holloway, University of London Pinewood Studios “Britain cherishes its academic leadership now more than it did say twenty years ago, there’s less of this nonsense about they’re all in ivory towers and they all just wear tweed jackets and all that, I don’t see that on either side of the equation.” "We’re good at ideation, we’re good at musicians, we’re good at AI ideas, perhaps we’re not as good as we should be about scaling them up.” CBI Scandal-hit CBI via BBC News Mark Zuckerberg prank-pitches Sequoia in his pyjamas (via Business Insider) “That’s why I always hated the TV show The Apprentice. To anyone who’s worked in business, the paradigm of success on The Apprentice is the quintessentially the opposite of what you actually have to do to succeed in business." “For all the dystopian headlines, every day in my newsfeed, five or ten things come in where I think wow, that’s a completely new way of looking at things. In AI that’s particularly true.” Prisoner’s dilemma via Wikipedia Netflix via Wikipedia Grimes AI voice software via Pitchfork Editor fired over AI fake Michael Schumacher interview via The New York Times “The only way to really mitigate whether people are using ChatGPT is either to sit them down in an examination hall like in the sixteenth century and make them write by hand, or actually talk to them.” “In general academics tend to be quite student-shy and try to find lots of reasons not to talk to students, and in fact now the best way to test students is going to be a viva, like in the old school, which is great.” ----------- This episode was recorded in May 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/28486442

Practical Bravery: HARMONIC HUMANITY! 10/15/2023

Practical Bravery: HARMONIC HUMANITY! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - HARMONIC HUMANITY! Change can often seem like a dream, framed by moments when individuals step into the spotlight, determined to ignite transformation. And when those individuals step up, sometimes from unlikely places, we can see just how weak the system is that needs to be reformed. And we question why we haven't been angry that it wasn't changed sooner. Or by anyone else. Our guest is not just a Kenyan Senator nominated to parliament by the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party; she's a symbol of resilience and determination to many Kenyan people. Losing her sight to glaucoma in her early 20s, whilst studying in the UK, made her realise the hard way that systemic inaccessibility was going to do more damage to her quality of life, her career and livelihood than the blindness itself. Her advocacy knows no bounds. She represents people with disabilities, women, and youth, all while breaking down the pervasive stigmas still associated with disabilities, not only in Africa but across the world. She was a keynote speaker at the One Young World Summit in 2023, an event we are going to cover in some special podcast episodes soon. From Kenyan pop star to University of Bristol student to Kenyan state senator, her professional journey has seen her work with industry giants like the BBC and Disney, and now she's creating a tidal shift in the world of accessibility. In this episode of The Possibility Club, Richard Freeman meets the remarkable Crystal Asige. ---------- Senator Crystal Asige’s page on the Parliament of Kenya website Crystal’s page in the Music Africa directory “I’m not the kind of person who’s scared to be around difference, or scared to speak out, because I’ve already been able to experience and live a life where I was able to do both.” Facebook: “I was always smiling, I was very much of a tomboy — I think I still am.” Mombasa, Kenya (via Wikipedia) Glaucoma (via Wikipedia) “When I was confronted, or given the news that this is what you have, this is what it’s going to mean, I struggled for sure. I was in my second year of university, I didn’t have my family around me, so I had to go through that alone, which was quite dark and pretty painful.” “I spiralled into doing the wrong thing with the wrong people at university, so I could escape from the reality of hey Crystal, you’re going to go blind and there’s nothing you can do about it.” "What does compassion really mean? What does trusting somebody really mean? What does listening really entail?” “In those formative years of the glaucoma I became twenty years older in about two years.” Parliament of Kenya “I am understanding more and more that it’s very important to let yourself be all of you. Just because I’m an artist doesn’t mean I pack it up now I’m in politics. Respectability Politics should not hinder me from being all parts of who I am.” Nina Simone (via Wikipedia) “Through my music I try as best as I can to stamp the moment I’m in through the music, the lyrics, the feel, the texture of what I’m putting out there.” “Visually Impaired Parliamentarian, aka VIP” YouTube channel: Insta: One Young World Summit Caroline Casey “Writing a bill is great, but the story around writing the bill, the reasons why the bill is important, how it’s going to change people’s lives every day, that’s I think what will connect with human beings for decades to come.” “They might not remember my name but I hope that they remember what I was trying to put out into the world and I hope the energy is apparent in anything that I do creatively.” ----------- This episode was recorded in June 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/28321850

Practical Bravery: ETHICAL RECRUITMENT! 10/01/2023

Practical Bravery: ETHICAL RECRUITMENT! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - ETHICAL RECRUITMENT! In an age where AI algorithms can sort through resumes with lightning speed and precision, the opportunities are immense. We can potentially match candidates with jobs that align not just with their skills, but also their values and aspirations. Ethical recruitment means treating candidates with respect and fairness, no matter where they come from or what they look like. But, of course, with great power comes great responsibility. The risks are apparent. As algorithms become more involved in hiring decisions, there's a danger of bias creeping in. If the data used to train these algorithms carries historical biases, they could perpetuate discrimination, inadvertently or not. So, how do we harness the incredible potential of AI in recruitment while ensuring that we remain ethical and unbiased? It's a question that demands thoughtful consideration and practical bravery. In this episode of The Possibility Club, we'll unravel the extraordinary world of human-centric talent experiences. Of technology matching the right people with the right careers - and not just the obvious people, or the connected people. We're asking if there are companies being brave enough to look well beyond the spheres of their competitors and think differently about where future talent comes from. And then even braver still to invest in and develop those people as they progress. Our guest is a global adviser in recruitment marketing, a key figure on the EMEA Council of the Candidate Experience Awards and he is Senior Vice President of Marketing for Beamery, one of the world's leading tech platforms for recruitment and professional development. Meet Ben Slater. ---------- Beamery Talent Management “We think a lot about potential. Potential for organisations but also the potential of the humans who exist within those organisations.” “Until recently the infrastructure rarely existed within businesses to help individuals create a career path that helped them realise their own ambitions.” “Talent is not a fixed asset.” TalentGPT — the world’s first generative AI for HR "We’re in a fantastic time now, where career journeys are not seen in this totally linear format, they can be squiggly. It can be more of a jungle gym than a ladder.” Ben Slater via LinkedIn “There’s a lot of data out there about the skills that businesses are going to need in the future, we’ve all seen what’s happened in the last few months with ChatGPT, businesses changing quickly. Organisations are not going to be able to go to the market and recruit for the skills they need in the future, they have to build that talent internally.” Chat GPT Chat GPT via Wikipedia “When we look at the talent life cycle, it’s really easy for companies to think about someone in these really distinct phases — someone’s a candidate, a job applicant, an employee, an alumni. The reality is, they’re all people. There’s a lot of fluidity between these different stages and we’re trying to support that at Beamery.” “AI allows business to put employees at the helm of their careers.” “What we’re looking at here is a technological unlock, that will allow things that we’ve never done before and a new standard in terms of what we can enable for workers at each stage of their career journey.” feature on Ben Slater in Business Leader EMEA candidate and Experience Awards EEOC (US regulatory body) “We need to have standards around what is expected of AI” “Two years after the start of Tik Tok I saw job adverts asking for 10 years of Tik Tok experience.” “If we’re going to keep up with the changing business headwinds, we have to adopt these processes earlier. We’re not talking about optimisation here, we’re talking about survival.” "So often with hiring, we look at everything up until the moment the employee starts. We optimise for how can it be faster, how can it cost less, versus optimising for employee lifetime value. How can I maximise my opportunity of bringing in a high performer?” “We’re at a time now when talent and HR is top of the CEO priority list. Making sure that their organisation has the skills needed to shepherd the business forward is essential. Our goal as a partner is to make sure they’re moving in that direction.” ----------- This episode was recorded in June 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/28188005

Practical Bravery: WORKPLACE WELLBEING! 09/14/2023

Practical Bravery: WORKPLACE WELLBEING! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - WORKPLACE WELLBEING! Increasingly, work is an integral part of living - not the work/life balance but the work/life blend. And we can often spend more time with colleagues than we do with our own families. So, in return, more people demand careers that makes them feel part of something bigger than a to-do-list. So why, in 2019, did the UK's Health and Safety Executive report that stress, depression, and anxiety accounted for over half of all work-related ill health cases. In this episode we're exploring how brave employers should be in putting wellbeing and welfare at the top of their priorities. Has it gone to far, with new generations unrealistic about what they are entitled to? Or are we still falling short, hoping that AI and automation will simply get rid of expensive and whingeing people for good? Our guest is a coach, a strategist and a facilitator with a mission. A specialist in resilience and mental toughness in leadership. With over two decades of experience in corporate giants like Harrods, IBM, and Rolls Royce, she is a champion of mental health at work - helping banks, tech firms and transport networks to get it right. Meet Anna Golawski. ---------- Anna on LinkedIn Anna on Twitter / X @AnnaGolawski “We look for careers where we’ve got value, where we’ve got things which are aligned with our goals, our beliefs and our purpose.” “We employ people for their brains, for their mental wellbeing.” Stratus Coaching “Organisations are much more understanding around mental health and wellbeing, but there’s a long way to go. So many organisations are very reactive, waiting until there are high rates. I want to get across to organisations that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Anna via Association for Coaching Anna via MHFA England Rolls Royce Aerospace Harrods IBM “I’ve been exposed to all kinds of leadership styles, the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between. That was the catalyst for me to focus on mental wellbeing, based on my own experience of burnout.” Henley Business School (Henley Management College) “People are much more clued up in terms of the culture of the organisation. We’re seeing employees asking a lot more incisive questions about the culture, leadership and wellbeing, and how they’re going to be treated.” “One of the phrases that I like, I think it came from Mike Tyson but don’t quote me on it, is everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” “We can’t avoid difficult stuff that we’re going to have to face. The important thing is to build up our coping strategies, how we can learn and grow, sometimes reframe situations.” “What’s the purpose, what’s the identity, what’s the north star of the team?” Microsoft brain research — people needing breaks Judges’ mental fatigue impacting parole boards — via Wired magazine “It’s about creating those habits. It takes two months for a new habit to become automatic in us.” “Managers need to role-model these behaviours.” ‘healthy mind platter’ — via Dr Dan Siegel Daniel H. Pink — 'When' via Amazon Daniel Goleman via Amazon Charlotte Rae’s Possibility Club episode ----------- This episode was recorded in July 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/28037520

Practical Bravery: COMMON SENSE NEWS! 09/01/2023

Practical Bravery: COMMON SENSE NEWS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - COMMON SENSE NEWS! In a world hooked on extremes, where every headline screams for your outrage or your wholehearted agreement—what happens to the middle ground? You might think it's the realm of the indecisive. A wishy-washy place where no one takes a stand. But, what if today's moderate voice is actually the most radical in the room? In this episode of The Possibility Club, we're diving deep into the audacious world of common sense. Because while others are looking to divide, meet a young man who's built his mission around unity and reasonableness. Despite his youth, our guest this week is a polymath—don't let that intimidate you; it just means he's darn good at many things. He's mingled with royalty, spoken on United Nations stages, and he's been recognised by the Financial Times as a tech influencer. He's the CEO of The Common Sense Network, a news platform with the rebellious idea that we should understand both sides of a story. He founded The Apex Group for CEOs, and even The BAM Project, which dares young boys to reimagine masculinity. This is a conversation with a man who makes the ordinary, extraordinary; the sense-maker in a world gone mad - meet Micheal Omoniyi. ---------- Mike Omoniyi “I have to be particularly disciplined because there’s a lot of context switching.” Mike on Instagram @ @ “The golden thread that connects a lot of my work is I’m very big on bending the levers of power towards justice.” Mike on X / Twitter: @MikeOmoniyiCS @OneYoungWorld @TCSNetwork “My curiosity is just too heavy, and sometimes it’s more of a problem than an asset. As you follow your curiosity, your life tends to look a bit messy.” LinkedIn “On a personal level, when I go to bed at night, I think about whether I made the world somewhat brighter. Whether my unique contribution advanced things. I’m a philosophy major, I deal in big grandiose ideas. Now if there’s maybe five days, two weeks in a row where the answer to that question is no, then it’s often an indication that I need to switch things around, that maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree.” “I used to have an afro a few years ago, it’s gone now and I’m clinging on to the last hair strands I’ve got, so I’m always asking: was this worth my afro?” The Common Sense Network “Common Sense Network was born out of that frustration of what opposite sides of the political wing would do to each-other.” “When I say ‘common sense’, I mean the process of deciphering or working out what you believe, through logical thinking, through exploration, just being someone who is curious, who can follow that curiosity and arrive somewhere.” Clement Attlee via Wikipedia Rory Sutherland via Wikipedia "We need to think about ways to redistribute power to make sure we don’t have so much of a ‘winner takes all’ political system.” The ‘Partygate’ scandal via Wikipedia “I always used to say the mainstream media was broken, until I said it once and an older lady corrected me and said, no, it works for who it was made to work for.” Galdem goodbye letter Al Jazeera UK leaves London, via The Guardian Novara Media Spiked Online (trigger warning: homophobic disinformative content on the front page) “You really have to be very dynamic when you’re our size, to make it through Covid, still be employing people.” "There’s this phrase I talk about all the time, distance creates distortion, and the further we are away from something the harder it is to ascertain its virtues, its values.” “A company is a group of people. The ‘halo effect’ thing is a real danger in today’s social media culture.” ----------- This episode was recorded in June 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27912378

Practical Bravery: REBEL SUPERMARKETS! 08/15/2023

Practical Bravery: REBEL SUPERMARKETS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery REBEL SUPERMARKETS! Whatever is going on, it is clear that the business models of Lidl, Aldi, Asda and Tesco are extraordinarily good if what we want as a society is cheap food, and lots and lots of it, whilst shareholders and private pension funds quietly top slice the return. Is that what we want? In this episode of The Possibility Club the spotlight is on the 21st century supermarket. And the practical bravery of a particular family who decided that the British public maybe don’t want squeezed farmers, low quality processed gunk and lots of waste, a lack of control and a net benefit to invisible billionaires. A supermarket rebel with a cause, co- founder of the Hisbe supermarket shops and The Good Business Club and a legend in the social enterprise world, who has just finished successful £100k crowdfunded to supercharge her mission further... this is our chat with Ruth Anslow. ---------- “I’ve been called mad many times. I think it’s madder to do nothing.” Ruth Anslow via LinkedIn Ruth Anslow on Twitter / X @ruthanslow “The goal was to turn the supermarket model on its head. We looked at how it is and asked how it should be.” HISBE website HISBE founders’ page The Good Business Club “I got a first-hand look at the unintended consequences that come about when you just put profit before everything, short-term profit and shareholder return. It’s resulted in an unsustainable food system and I’m worried about the future of food.” Tesco Unilever Sara Lee Procter & Gamble “Bad food has become normal. It was all just about finding projects to make everything more profitable, and a lot of that meant taking nutrition and goodness out of food, and just promoting the stuff that was high in fat and high in sugar and salt, that’s cheap for them to make and sell.” Ruth’s TEDxBrighton talk “There’s a lot of inequality in the pay system for supermarket workers, so our tax holds up and subsidises supermarket wage bills.” “98% of the population shop at supermarkets and only 8% of the purchases are online, so almost everyone is in a store, shopping in a supermarket, so that’s what we know and you have to start where people are.” “The idea was, if we could create a supermarket, and made that big enough and offered it to enough people and enough people shop there, you could change the whole system. I’m not kidding myself that’s going to happen in my lifetime, I’m probably just a baton-bearer for the next lot, who’ll do it a lot better than us. But we’ve had a go, we’ve created a model.” “We’ve saved over a million pieces of plastic packaging from going into landfill by selling stuff loose. We’ve created £7million of income for the local economy that, if it were a Tesco, would’ve just been exported or centralised. We’ve passed 67% back to farmers. We’ve created enormous impact for the local food chain and the local economy.” “Our goal now is to grow the Sussex chain and grow a hub of Sussex stores, to scale up the local suppliers, to amplify those impacts, so we’re an engine for creating community assets and societal value for the local economy, so that’s ready by 2030.” “We’ve got this vision for a kind of operating system, a ‘how to HISBE’ that’s held digitally that we can licence and partner and franchise bits of, and open-source and give other bits of, so we can help create shops like ours all over the country.” Be The Earth Foundation match-funded the crowdfunder HISBE’s successful crowdfunder AVIVA match-funded the crowdfunder “We need radical collaboration between all the people who are sowing seeds.” Better Food, Bristol Planet Organic Caroline Lucas website "There’s an incredible collaborative effort locally to build good policy and to challenge central policy by collaboration and consolidating efforts.” Brighton & Hove Food Partnership “I want HISBE to be famous, because it’s a blueprint for how it should be. So I want the blueprint to be famous, it doesn’t matter if it’s HISBE written on the door, it’s the blueprint, it’s the operating model, it’s the way forward.” Bejam’s supermarket, via Wikipedia “We had a go.” ----------- This episode was recorded in July 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27756639

Practical Bravery: COMPASSIONATE HOUSING! 08/01/2023

Practical Bravery: COMPASSIONATE HOUSING! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery COMPASSIONATE HOUSING! In this episode of The Possibility Club, we're shining a light on a company that leans into the wicked problems of both care and housing. A company that takes the role of landlord, and developer - finding and maintaining housing stock. But it is housing stock for people who need care, and who want to have a high quality of life but need adjustments and understanding. What kind of business, and what sort of business mindset, develops a mission like this - in a space others run away from? Richard's guest this week has a vision for a world in which a world everyone with a learning disability has good housing and their needs met. He runs one of the largest community benefit societies in the UK, with a portfolio of over 1200 properties and over 2,000 tenants with a wide range of needs. Meet the CEO of Golden Lane Housing; John Verge. ---------- Golden Lane Housing “It’s got to feel like anybody’s home.” John Verge via Golden Lane website “There’s 1.1 million adults with a learning disability and at least 350,000 people with autism. They live in everyone’s communities. Around about 150,000 of those will receive some support or funding from local government or their health authority, and that comes at a £6billion cost to Treasury. So this isn’t a small, niche part of the social care or health sector.” “We do do ‘new build’ but the reality of commissioning in this country is very reactive. We’ve been talking with government about more strategic planning for local authorities and health authorities to better plan. But often we’re being approached to house people very quickly.” “We have a team of really dedicated housing officers who make sure that wellbeing and safeguarding is at the forefront of our work.” John Verge via LinkedIn Mencap Golden Lane’s 2022 de-merger from Mencap, via Inside Housing Golden Lane Housing via the National Autistic Society website “We tend to buy existing properties but they need to be in the right location and community setting, so not isolated, often finding those properties is difficult and when we find that property we need to do major renovations." Aftermath of the Rochdale social housing mould death news story “A lot of failures are down to housing associations not taking into account the vulnerability of their tenants — and a blurring of the lines between social housing and supported housing.” Section 21 ‘no fault eviction’ notices “Scrutiny of new tenants will be greater than now.” Citizens’ Advice on Section 21 notices "We created a product, a solution, where we took the lease directly from the landlord. Now we’re trying to find landlords who are prepared to do not just 12 or 24 months but a longer term arrangement.” “The home, for anybody, is the foundations of building their lives in their communities.” “For me this isn’t about more money, it’s about using the money we have better. Fundamentally, and we’ve been saying this for many years, it’s about more strategic planning.” ----------- This episode was recorded in May 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27624042

Practical Bravery: CELEBRATING QUEENAGERS! 07/15/2023

Practical Bravery: CELEBRATING QUEENAGERS! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery CELEBRATING QUEENAGERS! The time for the maturing woman is long overdue after centuries of dismissal by society and the labour market. And as the 21st century seems to be a curious time for reappraising what we mean by gender, by generation, by age and by social capital - it is also a time when we no longer trust or believe in grand media narratives about how we are supposed to live our lives. Richard's guest's first job after university was working on a trade magazine about chemical storage, rising through the male-dominated newspaper industry to great acclaim at The Observer, The Telegraph, The Times and The Sunday Times where she was the magazine editor and the paper's editorial director. As well as being prolific campaigner on the representation and recognition of women in journalism, this episode's guest guest founded Noon in 2021 - a community for older women and Queenagers - the demographic that the media forgot. In this episode we talk to Eleanor Mills. ---------- “Everything that I’m trying to do now is to tell a different story about the later stages of women’s lives.” "In the 2019 census, women over forty started earning more than women under forty, for the first time ever.” “Although the menopause conversation is important and we’ve had a lot of that, the whole point of feminism for me is that women are not defined by their biology, so I don’t want to be put in a ‘hot flush box’ now I’m fifty-two.” “I feel this amazing freedom of being able to say what I like to my people without having to get permission from anybody else. Honestly that feels like a miracle, every time I do it.” “You get to a point when you’re forty-five, fifty, and you’re like, I’m just not prepared to suck up to this more senior guy, to get my ideas around him, when actually I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years, I’m really good at my job, I know what I’m doing, I can’t be bothered to do the ‘geisha’ thing anymore.” “At the top of those organisations the culture hasn’t shifted enough for it to be a particularly nice place to be a senior woman. And women are leaving in droves: for every woman who’s made a director, two leave. Sheryl Sandberg has dubbed it ‘the great breakup’.” “Even though we’ve now got a lot of women on boards, the number of women actually pulling levers is a lot less than the 40% that is a headline figure — the reality is 16%.” “I wrote a column for 10 years at the Sunday Times, but now rather than having to do that through a bundle, which is what a newspaper is, but now you can choose your own bundle. That’s what social media has done. You don’t need dead trees and huge lorries to get it in every newsagent, everyone can find you through Substack and Twitter.” “None of them are interested in reflecting an older female demographic. It would be a sea of grey-haired blokes and then they’d bung in one picture of a model on the Top Shop catwalk to, as they say, brighten up the page.” “Most of the female columnists that you’ll read will be attacking other women, because that’s what the newspapers want them to do.” "It’s increasingly clickbait. If you know anything about you a story that you read about it one of the papers, you can see how it’s being spun. Often there’s absolutely nothing in it and it’s all about spinning the line the newspaper is trying to push. Increasingly, even if you’re a journalist, the best way to get your news is to put a news filter on Google or Twitter and then you’ll pick up all the stuff that’s interesting.” “Real journalism is the stuff that someone, somewhere doesn’t want you to know, which takes a lot of skill to extract.” "What I like about Netflix doing Meghan and Harry is, no newspaper would’ve ever run that story from Harry about how the newspapers had treated him, because there was a kind of absolute self-censorship about you never talked about how the media worked. If anyone wrote that into an article, you’d know to take it out, it would never make it into the paper.” “I hope that we’ll change the story we tell about how we value older women. That there will be a whole new story and sensibility around older women, and we’ll embrace all that we are and can become, at this point.” ----------- This episode was recorded in May 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit www.alwayspossible.co.uk /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27472026

Practical Bravery: INCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY! 06/30/2023

Practical Bravery: INCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery INCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY! Beyond the cliches of big tech, and the visible social platforms most people play with each day, does the general population really understand anything about the digital transformation happening with them, to them, for them and around them? And if we don't understand what they are doing, or even who they are, can we ever measure the impact they might be having on our lives? What happens when we switch from human to AI, labourer to robot, photograph to avatar. Academics and think tanks are trying to work it out. But what about the technologists? Do they care? In this episode of The Possibility Club, we're exploring the thought process behind creating digital realities, in everyday business and services. Richard's guest is tech entrepreneur, Farhan. ---------- “Our purpose is to allow businesses to create their own reality.” "The key element that AI relies upon is the data it is receiving. AI decision making depends on the depth of data that you have received, from multiple sources.” “I just finished a couple of white papers and we’re going to apply for ten patents already, not to share our technology but to tell people in the world how this is done. What’s the point of my growth, if we don’t share that?” “We chose UK out of anywhere else, living throughout the world like US, Australia, I found UK has one thing that not a single country has, which is simple decency of understanding that here there is a need.” “Loyalty is always earned. You cannot force your team to be with you if things are going down. As CEO, the biggest thing that I’ve done to make sure my team stays with me, you’ve got to be able to listen to them. Are they able to object to you, are they able to listen to you, are you able to listen to them?” “We need to think as a whole world that what we are creating, it’s not just for us, we’re creating for future generations also. In the last 300 years we are failing as a whole world. We’ve done amazing feats, but what we have failed to do is think outside of a single century. Our planning, all the world’s planning is so limited, we didn’t our stuff together.” “Think outside your generation. What you are building is not just for you!” “When it comes to a hundred year plan for our customers, we are on a journey with them. I don’t really care about how much money we are going to get out of them. As long as they are growing, we are growing.” "Technology is successful if you are solving a problem other than what you think is a problem.” “When I was younger I worked with certain defence people. And when I went on to give my ID in Pakistan, I wrote my full name, my Dad’s name and everything, I gave all my details. And when my ID documents came back, I only had one name! And I was told not to ask any questions, just live with it. Apparently it was a mistake and I ended up with just one name. My UK ID has Farhan Farhan on it. Cyber security is a world of fun! Like Madonna, I’m Farhan!” “We all can be sad, or stressed, because these are depressing times. We are sitting in a world on fire, but we have to find a small corner where the fire isn’t burning, and then work out how to put out the fire.” ----------- This episode was recorded in March 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27329946

Practical Bravery: REVOLUTIONARY GEOGRAPHY! 06/14/2023

Practical Bravery: REVOLUTIONARY GEOGRAPHY! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery REVOLUTIONARY GEOGRAPHY! In this episode of The Possibility Club, looking at practical bravery, we will explore the role of our natural and urban environment in our lives, the need to walk and how cities could be considred as national parks. As the lines between planning, topography and health become blurred - more and more people are taking an interest in the future of offices and housing, air quality and transport, landscapes and land. The impact of a business is more rooted than ever in its footprint - metaphorical and physical - and where we're going and how we're getting there. So what if everyone just walked more? Richard's guest in this episode is a guerilla geographer, a creative explorer, and author, teacher and entrepreneur, Dan Raven-Ellison. ---------- “When you’re in a tent and you’re all cosy in your sleeping bag, that sound of rain is one of the best things in the world.” Dan’s LinkedIn page Dan’s page on National Geographic Dan’s YouTube channel UrbanEarthAdventurer “Geography exists at all scales at the same time, so whether it’s the guerrilla gardener pulling up a paving slab and making that a bit wilder, or whether it’s thinking about where you want to go on holiday, that’s all geography.” “Science and history have done a very good job of creating places where people are very aware that they’re recreationally engaging in science or history. Geography, people are playing with that all the time but because of so many boring, dry textbooks, people think that it’s something that it’s not.” Slow Ways beta website “It’s about creating social infrastructure, so in every route that someone shares, someone is saying hello to people along the way, they’re spending some money maybe in a local post office, they’re improving their own health, their own wellbeing, creating connections to nature, to heritage, they’re creating culture. So it’s this infrastructure really for joy, health, hope, climate, saving people money. So, yes, it’s a project about walking, but it’s about all these things that walking can do for us as well.” “Although it’s this idea that’s really a couple of million years old, it’s been made possible because of our ability to use fantastic technology and big data and collaboration across that infrastructure.” Right To Roam “We should have far more rights, to far more places.” “It’s important to remember that there are some parts of the world, like swathes of North America, where access is even more limited and if you were to stray onto private land you run the risk of extreme violence.” "What Scotland desperately needs is a far better path network.” South Downs National Park “When you look at the family of National Parks around the world, there are National Parks in everything from glaciers and deserts to moorlands and rain forests, everything you can imagine in terms of habitats, apart from one, which is urban areas.” “London is home to 15,000 species of wildlife, making it one of the most species-rich regions of the UK. London has more breeding pairs peregrine falcon in London than in Yosemite National Park or the Peak District National Park.” National Park City Foundation National Park City: London What makes a National Park City? via World Urban Parks ----------- This episode was recorded in April 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27154299

Practical Bravery: BREAKING TRAUMA! 05/31/2023

Practical Bravery: BREAKING TRAUMA! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery BREAKING TRAUMA! In this episode of The Possibility Club, looking at practical bravery, we'll explore this idea of staring down trauma in order to create meaningful change. At 14 she had to make her way past the mutilated bodies of her neighbours, shielding from bombs and chemical weapons attacks, leaving her home in Syria with her family. In Turkey, where she had to resettle, she broke down - and the very real trauma took its toll on her mental health in a profound way. Yet, in 2023 she is heralded around the world as a rather extraordinary entrepreneur. She taught herself to code and become one of the country's most ambitious young computer scientists. She has established one of Turkey's top free providers of online mental health and trauma support to displaced people and to survivors of natural disaster. And her impact will definitely not stop there. On this edition of the Possibility Club, it is a privilege to be talking about surviving trauma and using that to create your own measurable impact with the remarkable Jîn Dawod - Founder of Peace Therapist. “I’m a computer engineer, I’m the founder of Peace Therapist, I’m also glad to be One Young World European Commission Peace Ambassador. At the same time I’m the co-founder at Urfa Agra Women’s Co-operative. So there are a lot of things to do in life. But I also believe that we need to focus our energy mainly on one big thing, which is Peace Therapist for me.” Peace Therapist Jîn on LinkedIn Jîn on AskYourGirls Speaker page on One Young World Leaders Who Care interview (via Youtube) Urfa Agra Women’s Co-operative (via ) “I am Syrian, I was fourteen or fifteen years old when the war started in Syria. I was in Raqqa City, the city where the war started. My family suffered a lot, we were obligated to stay in the war situation for two years. It was very traumatic, even from the window of my room I saw cut-off heads and parts of human bodies on the road, because the main hospital of Raqqa was in front of our home, so that doubled the trauma I experienced.” “At first we didn’t know the war would last. Everything was unknown.” “The moment we crossed into Turkey, I thought now the war has ended for me, I thought everything would start to be better, but I didn’t know the war had just started inside of me. I had psychological problems, I couldn’t leave our home for one year. My siblings experienced the same thing. I was in desperate need of psychological support but I didn’t know Turkish.” Syrian civil war (via Wikipedia) Raqqa, Syria (vía Wikipedia) "I could see my family sacrifice a lot for us. My father lost everything he built in life, everything he wanted to make as an investment for us in the future, was destroyed immediately.” “Around of me I saw a lot of refugees were still suffering from psychological problems and not all are lucky as I was, to have a supportive family, or to have a family, a lot of them lost their families.” “I know what it is, I was there, I really wanted to do something. That was the point I started to work on Peace Therapist.” “I know what it was like, I was there, I really wanted to do something. I started to work on Peace Therapist. In Computer Engineering, I enveloped myself in mobile application development and I started to write the code for the Peace Therapist platform by myself at that time. I found my passion. I started to go after what I can do in this field. I knew what I wanted to do in this life, at that moment.” 2023 Turkey / Syria earthquake (via Wikipedia) 2023 Şanlıurfa City floods (via Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey_floods Urfa City, Turkey (usually known as Şanlıurfa) “It’s been more than two months since the big disaster and I believe people are going back to their routines. I am trying to help, especially people who lost family and friends. Me and my sister also lost friends. But we have to focus on the good things, otherwise life would not be continuing for us.” “We move around a lot. We also stayed in the car, because the flooding is always happening at night, so people are shocked, don’t know what to do, afraid, and a lot of people are having problems sleeping, eating, going inside any building.” “Not only refugees need psychological support, it’s everyone. Every human. It’s a right, it should not be a privilege. It’s important for every one of us. Life is not easy, we face a lot of problems at every stage of our life.” “Technology is so important, it’s making everything easier, but we need to pay attention to how we use technology, because as it makes it easier for us to do good things, it makes it easier for us to do bad things.” “I wanted to make them proud, I am a positive person, I wanted to develop myself and concentrate on helping others.” “The weather is becoming better. I think this is a sign of hope, and for us to work and to concentrate on the positive things in life.” ----------- This episode was recorded in April 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/27007755

Practical Bravery: HYPERFAST HUMANITY! 05/14/2023

Practical Bravery: HYPERFAST HUMANITY! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery HYPERFAST HUMANITY! Lives in the 21st century are now so integrated with the infrastructure of streaming technology that we've forgotten to question it. The variety, volume and speed of everything - from media to research, entertainment to sport, stock markets to multi-stakeholder conferences in 7 different simultaneous time zones - is constantly pushing the envelope of more, bigger and faster. So who is in charge of this? Consumers? Producers? Regulators? The special guest to explore this, is one of the UK's leading experts of streaming technology: Lee Radbourne - General Manager (EMEA), Aura Lee Radbourne via LinkedIn Aura streaming https://thisisaura.com/ Aura via Twitter Ted Lasso TV series (via Wikipedia) Massive Interactive (now Deltatre) DAZN sports streaming platform “There’s an element of loss of waiting, or anticipation. The Mandalorian for example, on Disney Plus, is released on a schedule now, almost like a linear show. Madness! What do you mean I can’t just binge it over a weekend, like I normally do? The instant gratification comes more from an expectation.” The Mandalorian TV series (via Wikipedia) “Our kids have no concept of what a device is, or what a video recorder is, or even within technology, what a server is. My favourite an anecdote I keep seeing is, you ever seen kids trying to describe what the ‘save’ button is? Trying to explain it was a physical three-and-a-half-inch floppy disc!” Tik Tok fined for breaching UK data protection law (via The Guardian) Future Of Life Institute open letter to pause AI experiments “I think it’s sensible to take a pause sometimes with technology. But I think it’s just one simple thing that’s going to change the way we deliver stuff and make stuff more personalised. We already have good policy in place. GDPR is good policy, it does protect people.” “The younger generation, they know the value of their data. So if there’s an incentive for them and it’s in their interest, they’re quite happy to share data. The reason your daughter doesn’t care is all her friends are on Tik Tok.” “Whether we like it or not, commercialism and capitalism is the market of choice at the moment and that’s how we make our money and there is value in the data.” “There’s a lot of dinosaurs out there who are set in their ways, and their goal is to make as much money as possible and they don’t care how they do it. There’s also people coming through who are now bursting into senior roles or executive roles, like myself, we grew up before the Internet, without smartphones, and we know what is important to us. That’s just what good business looks like now, you have to be conscious of your social impact. How are we going to give back?” "I’d love to get to the point where we can make a carbon neutral streaming platform.” Mobii “Unfortunately with all these things, these things take time!” “sub one-second latency” latency via Wikipedia “This is game-changing for the industry and I think it’ll really make a difference to the way we consume content.” ----------- This episode was recorded in April 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/26835228

Practical Bravery: REINVENTING SECURITY! 05/01/2023

Practical Bravery: REINVENTING SECURITY! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery REINVENTING SECURITY In every city, town and village in the UK, the safety of people enjoying a night out is often in the hands of some of the country's 400,000 trained door supervisors, bouncers, security guards. There are more than double the number of security personnel than there are police officers. But there are two important things you should know. 90% of door supervisors are men. And their job is to protect property. So the curious place where commercial business thinking meets critical social reform is this - if 50% of door supervisors were women, and if security job descriptions were tweaked to also have a role in protecting people - what would that change? -------- Lisa Baskott on LinkedIn 2nd Line Of Defence Lisa on Eyestorm TV Profile in Brighton Argus The murder of Sarah Everard (via Wikipedia, includes sexual violence detail) “I started to get that rising, sick feeling in my stomach and I thought, oh my god, they’re not going to find her alive. She’s gone.” “Women gathered on Clapham Common and we saw the response of the Met Police. It was shocking.” “I fell upon the night-time economy and the institution that is there to look after people. And when I looked at levels of policing that had fallen off a cliff and when you’re in trouble it’s unlikely to be a police officer coming to your rescue, it’s more likely to be one of those people working on the doors of venues.” “There have been roughly 400,000 door supervisor licenses issued. Until recently only 10% are women. It was hovering at around 8% before the end of last year, it’s only just got to 10%. I was absolutely horrified. Then I started to think, maybe this is the problem, right?” “We’ve got some antiquated thoughts in general at that frontline [door security] position, and we’ve got this new cohort wishing to be nothing other than their true authentic selves, and then you get this clash, right, and you get this mismatch, and nothing is being done within the industry to rectify that, to raise the awareness of people in those roles.” "I think there’s been a massive disconnect over time about what the door security role can be, and should be.” Jamie Klingler’s interview with The Possibility Club: 5 Big Questions (Apple podcasts) Jamie Klingler “This is the industry sector that is tasked with being there for you and I, if anything goes wrong. And it’s a mess.” “So off I went and did the Door Supervisor Training Course and I loved it, met some amazing people. But I also knew at the end of that course it wasn’t going to stop there: I had to get out on the frontline.” Get Licensed — SIA Door Supervisor Training Course ]“It was about needing to understand the effect that having a woman in that position would have on people. Young people would literally say ‘knowing you are here makes me feel safe’.” “If something bad happens to a woman in an event and she feels she can come to the person on the door, then we can potentially save that person from a great deal of heartache. What generally happens is a girl will be assaulted in a club and rather than go to a door supervisor, she’ll take that shit home with her. And that’s unacceptable, right?” “I realised that what I was talking about was systemic change, changing the overall narrative of an industry sector.” “I thought that ‘being heard’ was going to take a long time, and I was in it for the long haul. But the doors have opened for me. The regulator, big organisations in security, have approached me and want to hear what I have to say.” ----------- This episode was recorded in April 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/26698692

Practical Bravery: GOING OFF-GRID! 04/14/2023

Practical Bravery: GOING OFF-GRID! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery GOING OFF-GRID! It is easy to say that we are all climate activists now. Even the most traditional, fossil-fuel powered businesses will have their compostable coffee cups, car pool incentives and commitment to using bags for life. But, are we even close to getting real? Survey after survey shows that there is serious intention, backed-up by a serious kicking of the can down the road. The climate emergency needs both small and big change. Incremental and urgent. So - WTF do we do, to balance urgency and stability? How do we live both on and off grid? In this episode Richard Freeman meets Tech and nature entrepreneur, speaker, writer, broadcaster and facilitator - Dave Erasmus. ------ Twitter: https://twitter.com/daveerasmus Insta: Medium blog: “Seeing this mobile, social, technology shift coming along and thought, if this is transforming society, what are the best behaviour sets we could encourage? And so I built a donation platform called Givey to try to encourage the daily habit of giving.” “If you look at the twenty apps on the front of your smartphone, it’s a nice thought to say what do they say about me? Who am I? What do I engage with every day?" “When the VCs finally took the company off me (which is another story) I ran out of map, I ran out of direction. Internally and externally I had nowhere to turn, no-one to turn to, so I ended up finding my way into the woodland.” "What I found there was a gentle momentum, a life beyond purpose, a way of being that was outside of goal setting and goal achievement. Kind of a life beyond narrative.” “I found this whole other space of human being, rather than human doing.” “I was living this hyper-local life between the woods and the pub but I had this community globally, with people sending me socks from Australia and giving me advice through my YouTube videos. This wasn’t off-grid living, there was a lot more space created for the ‘off’ but I was still benefiting from being ‘on’. This lifestyle didn’t fit in either of the worlds.” YouTube: “I guess that is my answer to the “New York grind” story. I don’t see it as sustainable, I don’t see genius ideas coming out of that constant grind, that echo chamber.” “I had all the options, this is what I chose to do. As it happens, I’ve probably neglected financial capital, I’ve probably optimised too long for social and intellectual capital, ie having time to learn and be with friends, and that is a constant balancing act.” “The research all shows that earning more than £70k a year, there’s no correlation between happiness, wellbeing and money above that. We all need a certain amount not just for basics but for some luxuries and agency and choice, but above and beyond that there’s no discernible correlation.” “Possibilities come from open awareness. From seeing the glimmers on the edge of your peripheral vision. Things that you can hear in the background. And that antenna is not up if you’re driving towards a goal. That’s not where you find new emergent possibilities. So for me, putting your foot down, then taking your foot off, being ‘on’ and then being ‘off’, and learning how to go back and forward is where we get ultimately most efficiency, although ‘efficiency’ is a reductive word for what I’m talking about.” Wilderness Farm Instagram: “I’ve probably had a day’s worth of difficult conversations with smart people, which have cost me money, to invest in myself and my self narrative and find that and get that iterative process. It is hard to do on your own, you do ideally need friends or relationships that help lead you into that place because brands — and your boss — are marketing at you all the time, and they’re pretty damn good at it by this point.” Filippo Landi — ‘Boy’ (Spotify link — from the album Upside Down) Dave Erasmus poetry EPs (Spotify link) “Make a name for somebody else.” — Steve Cole Broadplace — company Dave set up at 19 “Ultimately I want to be me, I want to be original.” “The off-grid part of life is needed more than ever at the moment, in order to recover our relationships — workplace and otherwise — to a place of creative balance with productivity, so we can make our organisations sustainable.” New business about listening to the ocean — ----------- This episode was recorded in February 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/26548416

Practical Bravery: DEFENDING MOTHERHOOD! 04/01/2023

Practical Bravery: DEFENDING MOTHERHOOD! The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery DEFENDING MOTHERHOOD! New mums are worried about leaving children with other people; about juggling new responsibilities, childcare and bringing the whole self to work. They are worried about the cost of childcare and about flexibility for emergencies, illness or anything that else that means child and mum need to be together. And if your work is linked to your self-esteem and your purpose, to your motivation and identity - then time away from it and not thinking about can crash that confidence - especially given how much a business and its processes can change in a year. And then the guilt - why should any of this get in the way, when having children is a privilege and a choice? Whether you're looking through the lens of productivity or performance, culture or compliance - the HR strategy of any business, whether there are 20 of you or 2,000, should be to be an organisation in which people can be their best. There can be great positive impact in seeing maternity support as an opportunity to rally round, upskill, demonstrate collective empathy and recognising that there will be some new perspectives and priorities that could actually be helpful. You have an opportunity to genuinely transform an employee's life for the better in ways that almost certainly foster loyalty, close connection and creative thinking. It is hard for small businesses, but so is everything. Lean in and collaborate with affected staff rather than hide behind policies. How can businesses help with childcare - which is the number one barrier and concern? It could be through tax relief and salary sacrifice, or just by being flexible on work start and end times. In this episode Richard Freeman meets Motherhood defender, entrepreneur, charity leader, agent provocateur, organiser of The March of The Mummies and author of The Motherhood Penalty: How to stop motherhood being the kiss of death for your career - Joeli Brearly ------ Pregnant Then Screwed “We exist to end the motherhood penalty — essentially we mean the gender pay gap.” “We all talk about the gender pay gap and often we don’t even mention motherhood but we know that the pay differential between men and women who don’t have children is absolutely tiny, and it’s as soon as you get into those childbearing years that the pay gap widens. By the time your first child is twelve years old, a woman’s hourly pay rate is 33% behind a man’s. We want to close that gap.” Twitter: @pregnant_then_screwed Twitter: @joeli_brearley Joeli Brearley — The Motherhood Penalty (Simon & Schuster Ltd) (via Hive) Joeli on LinkedIn “None of this is about blaming men. If we fixed these structures and systems so they worked a bit better, we would have more equality.” Joeli writes for Harper’s Bazaar — ‘the motherhood penalty is crippling women’ Maternity Leave by Country 2023 Parental Leave via Wikipedia “Through the creation of capitalism, you needed somebody to create the next labour force. You needed somebody who was procreating, reproducing the labour force, looking after that labour force and doing the other bits of work that are required to sustain capitalism, the unpaid labour.” "Change is slow because the whole structure is patriarchal. Really, we need to burn the whole thing down, everything needs to be burnt down and start again.” Judith Kerr — The Tiger Who Came To Tea (via Hive) Stella Creasy reprimanded for taking child into Parliament (via The Guardian) Stella Creasy on The Possibility Club (via LibSyn) “Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy because we just do it, and don’t question it.” BBC admits it got it wrong with its ‘Can Women Really Have It All” headline, around Jacinda Ardern’s resignation (via The Journal) “We know that last year we helped women secure £1.3million in terms of settlements after experiencing discrimination or in a tribunal case.” “The campaigns we run are not little tweaks, they’re not easy things to fix: this is about radically changing the way we live and work.” "I get my kicks from the services we run. I get messages all the time saying without you I would have fallen apart. I do get kicks out of the campaigning as well but campaign is losing, you know, campaigning is bashing your head against a brick wall.” Early Years Alliance “The money that the government gives to the childcare sector, they underfund those places by about £3 per child, per hour, and don’t give those nurseries opportunities to make up that shortfall, so those costs have to be passed down the chain. That’s why you have childcare professionals on minimum wage. We’ve had 20,000 nurseries close since 2015.” “Of course we talk about it from the perspective of the mothers, and some providers don’t like that. They think that we should be talking about it in a very different way. And we think, come on guys, we’re in this together!” “The fact of the matter is, this argument will be won off the back of parents, it won’t be won off the back of providers. Because we’re a bigger group! We’re making that noise, we’re making that point repeatedly.” Mary Agyapong ‘felt pressured to work’ (via BBC News) ----------- This episode was recorded in January 2023 Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts For more visit /episode/index/show/thepossibiltyclub/id/26408685

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