One pleasant October morning in 2019, thinking designer Chris Thomason was crossing London Bridge on his way to work when he found traffic at a standstill. Extinction Rebellion activists had blocked the road junction and were using loudspeakers to raise awareness of the climate change issues they wanted people to pay attention to. Despite the cacophony of shouted abuse and honking horns, he listened for a while to their narrative before continuing on his way.
A few minutes later, the automated call of a talking truck saying “Caution, vehicle turning left” caused him to pause before crossing a side lane. He turned to see an activist on his bicycle, using a megaphone to simulate the message. As the activist-cyclist turned into the lane, he thanked the pedestrians for letting him through. Many smiled at his sense of humour.
That was the moment Thomason realised that activists—despite the disruption they cause—are (generally) regular decent human beings just Iike the rest of the population. Except for the fact they are passionate about a cause! They show that passion in a way that most other people won’t—by taking direct action. Unfortunately, being disruptive in this negative manner was the only way they knew to take action to raise awareness of their cause—and this was born out of frustration. While we may not all agree with an activist group’s tactics, we usually respect their members’ passion for saving the environment and humanity.
Activist individuals may recognise the need for global sustainability but feel powerless about it. For what can one individual do? ‘Neuro-Activism’ was borne out of this need to create an innovative way for individuals to be positively disruptive in regard to addressing sustainability-related issues.
While only a small segment of society may be willing to actively take part in demonstrations about climate change, many others will give support in other ways. Such as offering ideas to help address tough questions about climate change and sustainability.
‘Neuro-Activism’ is a way where sustainability leaders and teams can engage employees in an organisation to solve challenges related to sustainability by using their minds. To think about difficult questions and to identify interesting ways to answer them through the application of creative thinking. At Citizen Good we’ve been collaborating with Chris and applying his Freaky Thinking to the challenges we face with our clients on their sustainability agenda….
As we all know the pressure is on to drive much more accelerated impact on climate change and the clock is ticking! As of today via the climate clock (which counts down the time we have to reach zero emissions globally) we have 6 years and 15 days to reach our global goals.
If you’d like to know more about ‘Neuro-Activism’, and how it can help drive impact for your brand, lets talk.