A huge fan of the great David Attenborough, I had a dream to be a documentary filmmaker as, like him, I believe we have a social responsibility to our planet and all life on it.
He tackles the natural world and I am fascinated by the human condition.
My love of the arts gave me an idea to intertwine puppetry arts with real issues, since puppetry has the power to reflect the human condition and is also an engaging way to communicate key messages or historic events.
Puppetry and animation, in particular, enables us to connect on an emotional level, expand our imagination and offer concise insightful information, by creating scenarios and cultural environments that might be harder to produce with real people.
This idea developed into two independent films;
- Master of Puppets (a film about a puppet troupe from Myanmar trying to evolve the art-form to address more current affairs), which screened on all routes with Singapore Airlines in 2012 and,
- In 2014 Magic In Our Hands (again following a puppetry artist, this time from a community in India, who was using the art-form to raise awareness on issues of sustainable consumption and management of electronic waste) available on Amazon Prime.
Despite this small success, I realised my dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker wasn’t a viable business. More recently, I remodelled Hart In Media to support brands and businesses with their communication needs, focusing on brand values, corporate culture and social responsibility.
It upsets me when our ego’s or desire for personal gain or company profit impact people or the planet in a detrimental way, so I believe that organisations who align their vision with Global Sustainability Goals are the ones who will have the greatest impact of long-term sustainability and loyal stakeholders.
We all face challenging times at some point in our lives and this, I believe, is part of being human. If we can all connect at a deeper more empathic level, we might be able to solve some of the bigger challenges we face as a global community.
Social responsibility is about a company’s commitment to carrying out their business in an ethical way yet I fully understand that to stay in business, a company must be profitable. This leads many of us to make decisions based on profit rather than purpose and so it can be easy to turn a blind eye.
I believe a company that measures its success on purpose instead of only profit will have measured results in all areas
- better brand recognition
- greater ability to attract and retain staff
- employee wellbeing
- and future sustainability which can help the environment and save money too.
But these results cannot be measured in the short-term, so for me, it’s about educating leaders and stakeholders to make conscious and informed choices in purchasing and other business or consumer actions. The outcome, I believe, will be long-term sustainability and loyal stakeholders.
This realisation has led me to launch a coaching service to support clients and individuals, whose stories are emotionally and psychologically painful and which have blocked them from living from their highest wisdom.
For example, I’ve worked with survivors of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation, the LGBTQ community, children living with Type 1 diabetes, those living with Parkinson’s disease as well as topical environmental themes, such as electronic waste.
Having spent over 10 years working on my own personal growth and spiritual development, I’ve been told that I’m a good listener and really able to hear what message is being conveyed, offered in a safe non-judgemental space. My innate ability to delve deeper than most make me easy to talk to and for participants to reveal things about themselves that they might not have spoken about with others.
For most of my adult life, I have struggled with abandonment issues, difficulties in relationships and low self esteem, and so discovering a new technique called Emotional Acceptance, taught to me by my personal coach, has had an astounding impact.
I haven’t got all my shit together but it’s important to me to speak up about issues we all face and get involved in the community. I used to hold my tongue for fear of rejection or judgement and think “what’s the point, who will listen?”, but now I don’t want to feel suppressed. It’s important to share thoughts, views and insights because helping and supporting one person might not change the world, but it could change the world for one person, and this has a mushroom effect.
I think that we are in a transition stage as human beings, times are unsettling, and many won’t know how to cope with a new shift in paradigm. It could even be argued that human beings are the next species to face extinction so, rather than wait for someone, somewhere to somehow fix the problem, I think it’s more important now than ever to take responsibility for ourselves and our environment.