intro:
Welcome to the eighty third episode of the WonderSpace podcast, which is a creative expression of a family trust called Panapur. My name is Steve Cole, and since September 2020, I have asked the same six questions to over 80 people from around the world. People like Kate Fletcher and Matilda Tham, who are both professors and designers, who came together to launch an action research plan for fashion called Earth Logic. A plan that proposes a shift from economic growth logic to Earth Logic, which protects protects the health of our planet and all living species before everything else. This week's wonder space comes from the fixing the future festival in Barcelona, organized by our friends at Atlas of the Future.

intro:
An amazing event that drew together the future curious and the future fixers from orbits such as conservation, fashion, business, music, food, theater, film, and politics. The festival finished with delegates and speakers united in singing an Elvis classic conducted by Brian Eno from Earth Percent. We wanted to capture the stories of hopefulness amongst the wonderful spectrum of people at the festival.

Speaker 1:
Joe Murphy from Good Chance. I live in London. I'm here in Barcelona. I'm in a moment of hope because I've just listened to Brian Eno make at once a very deep but very obvious observation that in the music industry, we're really used to taking percentage cuts. So why can't we give a percentage to the earth and to people and businesses that are doing great things for the earth?

Speaker 1:
I hadn't realized it, and I'm ashamed to think to say that, but it's really inspired me. Thank you.

Speaker 2:
Shuna, I'm living in London. And my story of hopefulness is a lady I've known for about eight years called Scylla Elworthy. She's been three times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and her business is peace. And just before COVID, she understood that there was gonna be a gate catastrophe. She put a booklet together.

Speaker 2:
As a as a result of that booklet, she's running training courses on how to resolve conflict. That's the first time in her forty five years of trying to solve conflict that actually the courses are making enough money for her to run a charity called the Business Plan for Peace, which is how we get peace from the bottom up all over the world.

Speaker 3:
My name is Thijs Hansen. I'm from The Netherlands, and I live in Barcelona. And my story of hopefulness is a company that makes all some sort of all sorts of materials out of mycelium, which are the spores of mushrooms. And I've now been doing, you know, since years, like, they make foam and material packaging and even leather made out of mushroom. So I think there's a big future for companies like this.

Speaker 4:
Okay. Hi. My name is Natalie Swan. I'm from The UK, and I work for a company that called NatureMetrics that provides biodiversity data. My story of hope that I'm taking away from this session is is seeing rewilding and the movement of rewilding really taking center stage in in conservation.

Speaker 4:
You've got the reintroduction of bison in in Europe and these kind of more innovative, creative approaches to restoring ecosystems. I'm really excited about where it's gonna go.

Speaker 5:
Hi. My name is Mike. I live here in Spain. The stories I heard yesterday in particular from Lucy from the Zerba, the youth land trust, the work they're doing, crowdsourcing money, the drive and the ambition and the sheer joy in what they're doing, that's the hope. It's it's transgenerational and thanks to them.

Speaker 5:
I think we're gonna be on the right track.

Speaker 6:
Hi, I'm Piave. I'm from London. I'm also co founder of Connecti and Lastyarn. And my story of hope comes from recently buying Adjabad's book and called Consume. And I have been following her for a while.

Speaker 6:
I love how outspoken she's about. Social issues are the things she cares about, and being at this festival has shown me that actually everybody can use their voices and be very outspoken about the things that they care about.

Speaker 7:
My name is Mike Dixon, and I'm a partner in our generous genes. Encourage everybody to be generous. And my story of hopefulness is one particular person called James Thornton, who's the founder of an organization called Client Earth, who are an amazing group of lawyers who sue companies and countries that damage the planet. And he is the most amazing man. He started it with five people and now 350 people all over the world using law to defend the planet.

Speaker 7:
In other words, the earth are the client of his law firm.

Speaker 8:
My name is Caroline. I'm from The Netherlands. And my story of hopefulness is the magic that nature brings us. And particularly now, I want to mention truffles. Everyone knows the mycelium of how mushrooms work.

Speaker 8:
But there's something very very magical in truffles and that they can bring to human beings which when you eat them, they will show you your connectedness to yourself, to nature, and will also allow you to help you to repair any disconnection that has emerged because of your life.

Speaker 9:
I'm Joe Robertson, co artistic director of Good Chance. And my story of hope from the fixing the future conference that we've been at this week is the amazing work of the North Sea embassy. We just heard Caroline talk about this beautiful moment of people arriving on a beach off The Netherlands, and there is the embassy of the North Sea, a little desk with the three flags. And you go and you meet the the embassy staff, and you get a fishing rod and you cast out sea. And, actually, it's not a fishing rod.

Speaker 9:
It's a it's a a way of listening to the sound under the ocean. And that that that that crack in the in the sort of the the tectonic plates of mundane life where suddenly different things happen, where art happens, where it transports you somewhere, transcends something, that that felt the the sort of epitome of hope and what what what thinking differently can achieve. That's that was mine.

Speaker 10:
My name is Karishma Chagani Nankani. I'm from many places in the world. I was born in Casablanca, but I'm from India. I've lived in London, Paris, now in Madrid. And my story of hopefulness in the world is an ancient folk sale about a forest fire in a rainforest and all of the animals, the big, small animals are just rushing and rushing and rushing out.

Speaker 10:
And there's this little hummingbird that keeps going in and out of the forest picking up a drop of water in his little beak and trying to put out the fire. And a mammoth or I don't know what animal is mocking him and then another one is saying, but what are you doing? You're going to die. And he says, I'm doing my part. And it's a story that was told by an illustrator that I think changes the world in her own way called Kitty Crowther.

Speaker 10:
And she shared it when she was winning the Astrid Lingrid Prize for children's literature. And it's something that I've stuck with well, that stuck to me for a really long time that gives me hope. So

Speaker 11:
My name is Bea Wilson. I'm from the organization TasteDead, which is food education. And the other organization that I want to say is fantastic is one called Chefs and Schools, which takes professional wrestling chefs and encourages them to change career and become a school cook. And they train up entire kitchens of other school cooks to feel more empowered in their job. They use fantastic ingredients.

Speaker 11:
They make them use delicious food for kids on the same budget that every school book is working on, and they're currently feeding more than 20,000 children in London every day. And I've eaten their food so delicious, and it's very inspiring to know that better school food really is possible.

Speaker 12:
I'm Steve Fuller. I'm from The House, based in The UK. My story of hopefulness is meeting Joe and Joe from Good Chance Theatre. And, actually, our conversation was about hope, and should we replace that word with possibility? Because there's a brilliant tension between what is possible.

Speaker 12:
That could be good. That could be bad. But it's tangible. It's real. And I think we need some reality about what's ahead of us.

Speaker 13:
My name is Anna Barnabas, and I'm from a small town outside Barcelona called Igualada. And my story of hopefulness is a guy called Aki who founded Coral Life, and he used to come to my classroom and inspire my kids every year to the point where I would have kids saying, when I grow older, I want to be saving the corals like he does.

Speaker 8:


Speaker 2:


Speaker 11:


Speaker 14:


Speaker 2:


Speaker 14:
in Barcelona. My hope for the future is very much in education and in the education I work in, which is the International Baccalaureate Organization, and seeing the children getting the opportunity to change the world through actions and voice and choice and ownership and really being empowered to make a change and a difference for everyone.

Speaker 15:
Hey. I'm Iggy. I'm originally from Poland, living in Barcelona. I was listening to TED Talks, and I heard this guy. He was talking about innovation and supply chain management, and I don't know nothing about that.

Speaker 15:
But I realized what the guy was trying to do was to literally put trackers in the entire supply chain of few products. I was so inspired by this idea that we can take the piece of technology that didn't exist, like, five years ago, ten years ago, and now we can put it in the very important places and track something that's been untrackable. So I reached out to this guy and I told him, hey, Marcus, I wanna work with you for free. Next week, I was on a plane to Mexico and we we did a project together. It really made me hopeful about the state of the future.

Speaker 15:
You know, if we get the right people, the right technology, and the right mindset, anything is possible.

intro:
Designer Dan and I loved our time at the Fixing the Future festival. And to finish, we wanna raise a glass to Kathy Runciman. Fixing the future is largely the fruit of Kathy's love and belief in people and her skill in connecting and telling compelling stories, which you can find at atlasofthefuture.org. What is your story of hope ness that is not your own? About a person, business or nonprofit who are doing amazing things for the world?

intro:
We would love you to consider recording yourself in under thirty seconds, sharing your story on your phone through your video or the voice memo or recorder app. You can then simply upload the recording to the link on our website, ourwonder.space. Start with your name and where you are from, and then share your story of hopefulness in under thirty seconds, and we will look to include them in future episodes. Let's continue to search for and find ways of sharing wonder and stories of hopefulness. We need them like never before.

intro:
Thanks for joining us.