Chapter 1: The story of how Earthly came to be ~ Sophie Chatz
The concept of Earthly was born in winter 2019, out of a strange combination of disillusionment and hopefulness. With environmental catastrophe looming, I was reminded through conversations with a friend of the power and potential of storytelling. It can traverse the globe and shift dominant opinion. As we’ve seen with Black Lives Matter, a tipping point can come about very suddenly and have a major cultural impact. That movement rode a colossal wave of social media all the way out to shore. The stories that we tell are everything.
Our website launched just before the pandemic landed on our home soil, and in those four months since, an unbelievable amount has changed. It’s been a period of deep societal shifts, when norms have been uprooted and long-held structures have come into question. It is an unsettling time, but also ripe with possibility. When old concrete cracks and breaks apart, green shoots push through.
In June, Jack Adair Bevan joined the fold as co-skipper. He has an incredible talent for seeing the essence at the heart of a project and brings amazing depth to storytelling as well as brilliant, beautiful, inspiring creative direction rooted in purpose.
He’s an award-winning author, writer, brand strategist, co-founder of The Ethicurean in Wrington, as well as being an all-round lovely human. We have known each other for many years from time spent living in Bristol and share radical visions for the sorts of projects we want to create.
I think perhaps what's special about Earthly is the collective and a collaborative way of working: we aren’t like traditional comms agencies, not at all. Our supportive and interconnected ecosystem includes restauranteurs, artists, economists, sustainability consultants and activists, working together with common aims. This community and our wider network of contributors makes us more resilient, more connected and more able to feed out important messages globally.
We aren’t on a mission to ‘save the world'. But we will begin to imagine, design and build something better. What we need now is the courage to cut what’s no longer serving us, and move out of our comfort zone into the bright sunlight of a new, unfamiliar, emergent world.
Chapter 2: New beginnings ~ Jack Adair Bevan
It has been a real joy to find myself amongst the talented folk of Earthly. The shared goals and positive intentions of the collective has been a grounding influence in a period of such uncertainty.
I can remember the moment that I was first made aware of the website Sophie had designed and launched. It resonated so strongly with me that I knew that I wanted to be part of it. Sophie’s approach comes from a place of care and a genuine desire to imagine a brighter future for all. After we had worked closely together on two brilliant projects we were certain that we wanted to continue on a shared path. The time since I joined Earthly has been full of inspiring conversations with businesses, organisations and charities who are all set on moving forward with shared values and vision of the collective.
I am really proud to be bringing an Earthly approach to the drinks industry. The world of drinks has been an area of expertise for me, along with food and food production, for many years and it has never been more important to carefully consider every aspect of their production, from the ingredients and the soil that they are nurtured in through to the bottle on your table.
I love building things, whether they are physical objects made of wood, tactile in the hand or drinks that sit delicately in a fine glass, a picture that teases out a fond memory or a story that welcomes a long forgotten feeling or smell. From writing and creating plays and seasonal celebrations, while I was part of The Ethicurean, to learning the stories and folk tales from the people I met on the west coast of Scotland. I have a deep love for the myth and magic of story telling. From sharing good stories comes connection and from here a deeper understanding of the world around us. I relish the opportunity to help good people build good things and am so happy to be able to do this as part of the Earthly Collective.
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