Today's interview is with Colin Vernon, Founder & CTO, Slow Factory.
What is Slow Factory?
Share your mission
Colin Vernon - Slow Factory’s mission is to create lasting cultural change & systems that center collective liberation — climate justice and freedom for all. We do this through non-traditional education, tools for critical thought and narrative change. Our core programs are Open Edu, our Fellowships for innovative changemakers, our narrative change platform and our new media platform and member-driven journal, Everything is Political.
'Everything is Political' breakdown
How does the "Everything is Political" platform contribute to shifting public perceptions and encouraging action on climate issues?
Colin Vernon - It is critical to understand that climate change isn't simply “happening” — it’s being deliberately enacted deliberately. It’s important to be very clear who is committing climate change: who is driving us towards climate disaster. In that way, simply stating clear facts about the state of the world becomes deeply politicized.
But it is also a time to build radical futures together. At this time where trust in both legacy media and mega-corporate social networks are at an all-time low, we are building EverythingIsPolitical.com into a powerful antidote to the misinformation and authoritarianism that we are seeing growing across all sectors of society.
We are doing this by creating a member-based platform that gathers the foremost progressive thinkers, and connecting our members in online and offline communities. Since we launched Everything is Political just a few months ago, we’ve grown to thousands of members, published 5 issues of our printed journal and hosted member events from London to NYC to LA. We’ll be releasing more connectivity and social features in the coming months to really open the power of our massive global network.
The Slow Factory's relationship with art
In what ways does Slow Factory utilize art to communicate the urgency of climate adaptation and inspire community action?
@Colin Vernon - Art, music and other forms of creative expression can move hearts and spirits in ways that speaking facts and figures never will. When paired with strategic communication and a massive cultural reach, we can really begin to affect societal change.
Our practice in Radical Imagination (“radical” meaning “rooted”) is firmly rooted in the truth as expressed by poet Lucille Clifton: “We cannot create what we can't imagine.”
So our systems design, our climate adaptation, our cultural resistance, must be rooted in this radical imagination, this insistence that we can imagine better systems, and then actively and urgently push to create them.
Slow Factory fellows
Can you share examples of how Slow Factory fellows have advanced climate adaptation initiatives within their communities?
Colin Vernon - Our fellows are climate researchers, political advisors, forensic scientists, cultural critics, designers, journalists; Indigenous, Black, Arab, Asian, Latine, European. From re-wilding semi-public lands with guerilla forestry in Lebanon, to tech-powered urban nature design in the UK, to natural textile dyes, to Indigenous forest defenders from the Amazon — we root climate adaptation and resilience squarely within the larger movements of resistance to extraction towards sustainable futures.
Garment to Garment
How does the Garment to Garment program address climate adaptation through sustainable fashion practices?
Colin Vernon - Garment to Garment supports designers of the Global Majority whose practice revolves around design for disassembly and upcycling, refining their practice & sharing knowledge. In a systemic sense, creating systems around waste re-use is a key ingredient to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and overproduction in general. At scale it can have a meaningful impact on our ability to function within planetary limits.
Investor Support
How can investors support Slow Factory's initiatives aimed at sustainable systemic change and climate adaptation?
Colin Vernon - EIP is currently inviting select investors to join us for our pre-seed round, growing from our first few thousand members to launching our full tech-enabled contributors platform, global ambassador network and our next wave of growth.
Our Fellows and Open Edu programs are under a 501c3 nonprofit, so investors with a DAF or other philanthropic funds are welcome to join our movement.
The long-term vision
What is Slow Factory's long-term vision for integrating climate adaptation into its mission of collective liberation and systemic change?
Colin Vernon - We are all, every human on earth, called right now with urgency to redesign all human systems in order to prevent a catastrophic near future. We can do this only by fundamentally changing how we think, how we interact with each other and the systems under which we live.
These systems are not going to evolve in a monolithic, command-and-control way — those systems are currently under accelerated collapse. The new systems are going to be broadly decentralized and based on broad systems of mutual support. Slow Factory and EIP’s world is growing and will be just one piece of the massive shifts that are taking place. The new world that is emerging, painfully, from under the destructive paradigms of the past few centuries, is going to be driven by ethics, and an unflinching dedication to collective liberation. Not for a chosen few, but for us all. Join us.
Unbound Summits' mission focuses on connections, new insights, and unbound CDR opportunities. Find out more about Slow Factory here.
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