George Lakoff and the Arts on Trump’s inauguration day

On the day of Donald Trump’s most recent inauguration, the veteran campaign strategist and “deep frames” scholar George Lakoff published a 17-point rallying call to resist authoritarianism, co-authored with fellow framing expert Gil Duran. Lakoff is an old friend of our work, which grew from our efforts in the mid-2000s to align his understanding of […]

Generalised prejudice is a root cause of social and environmental crises

Social and environmental campaigning is fragmented across different ‘causes’ – poverty, biodiversity loss, racism or climate change, for example. Yet a single driver lies beneath multiple forms of social and environmental injustice. Unfortunately, the fragmented nature of most campaigning means that this driver – the strengthening, at a cultural level, of “extrinsic” values of wealth, […]

Bridging the values gap: reimagining journalism through human connection

Last month, a friend and colleague shared an article with me that cited a recent study conducted into ‘journalistic values from an audience perspective’ in Chile, the results of which recognised the “importance of the human touch in journalism”. The two academics; Mellado and Gajardo, uncovered a profound disconnect between how journalists perceive their professional […]

The Big Thing People Miss When Thinking About Values

January will mark five years since I started working at the Common Cause Foundation. A key reason why I wanted to join the organisation was its unique mission – shifting cultures away from competition, inequality and oppression, and towards regeneration, equity and harmony, by celebrating and elevating the intrinsic values that underpin our care for […]

Save the human animal earthlings

Many years ago Amnesty International ran a marketing campaign with the strapline “Save the Human”. When I first noticed it on the tube, I saw it as an attempt to encourage people who donate to conservation charities to pause and reassess their priorities. Before donating to help save the tiger, or the bees, the slogan […]

To unpathed waters, undreamed shores*

Over the past few years there has been rising interest in the transformative power of social (sometimes referred to as collective or public) imagination and the idea that we urgently need to invest in imaginative practice if we are to see real and ambitious solutions to global problems like climate destruction. Thinkers, like Geoff Mulgan, […]

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