Creators can't wait to change the world!
People Tree has always been a place for ‘cultural creatives’ and creators whether permanent, full time staff, volunteers and interns, freelance designers or customers.
One of these is freelance designer, animator and creative extraordinaire, Chris Haughton. We always have so much to talk about - from how to spread the word and communicate Fair Trade fashion to the world, to all the eco-political, social justice stuff. Meetings scheduled for an hour often turn into four hours!
Chris recently wrote an article for Design Boom that was also picked up by Tree Hugger, profiling his work across the board with People Tree – from illustrating People Tree’s new Fair Trade fashion franchise pilot store in Tokyo, designing cute tees, and more.
People Tree is an amazing network of creatives, and as there isn’t yet a culture of pro bono work done by ad agencies to promote Fair Trade – and only a tiny budget for communications at People Tree – creatives like Chris save the day.
When I worked for Creative Review magazine, I got to know the advertising industry well and marvelled at the huge sums of money and clever heads employed to sell rather unimportant ‘stuff’. "Why all this waste of resources promoting the unnecessary, when promoting sustainable stuff and raising awareness on social and environmental issues is so important and gets so little attention?” I began to wonder when I was 20. The truth is that money talks and money draws in more money. The poor and our ecosystem have no money to buy a voice, and communicate their message. Increasingly they lose representation. Obvious really.
There is a growing movement of creators and communication professionals who want to turn their skills to promoting social businesses, like Fair Trade, environmental and social justice (check out Adbusters - People Tree distributes it in Japan). Maybe one day there will be more pro-bono creative work done by ad agencies, and media owners will fill last minute ad space with ads from People Tree gratis.
We have a few nice ads prepared for this season by a volunteer marketing genius, Steve. Steve says: ‘People Tree has an amazing story to tell. That’s why I’m working on new ways to break that story through to a wider audience.’ But as yet we don’t have anywhere to publish them – any ideas?
