My journey began in a town called Walsall, in the Black Country of England. An unglamorous place; the 1980’s weren’t kind to it. As a boy I used to hang out by the canal until one day I saw something that changed my life, a Kingfisher. That beautiful flash of neon blue and pink in a place of decay and despair changed everything.

Largely due to the influence of the Kingfisher I became interested in the environment and studied Environmental Science as my undergraduate degree. But there was always something else at work for me – a desire to create change. This duality between the wildness that sits on the edges of things and the desire to co-create ripples of change within systems of power has been constant through my life.

I grew up playing next to the M6 motorway, so when Richard Branson took over Virgin Trains and said he wanted to grass over it I got on-board, I'd wanted to do that for years.

I ended up sticking around in Virgin for 15 years. It was a good place to get busy in the work of change. I worked on purpose-led brand building for the Virgin Group, latterly as Global Head of Brand Strategy. Here I was responsible for launching new Virgin companies around the world, whilst advising and supporting the unique ecosystem of over 100 Virgin brands to better embody the brand values.

I helped the brand navigate the financial crash in 2008 and delivered the first ever major repurposing of the global Virgin brand strategy, designed to better encompass the needs of people and planet. I also had the privilege of working with the Desmond Tutu Foundation – probably the best gig in the world. … and a long way from that canal bank in Walsall.

After a while, and the birth of my daughter, it was clear to me that I needed to solve new, different problems. Crossing this threshold was a big moment, leaving behind all that Virgin offered was huge, but I knew I needed to be looking for things out there on the margins of things, the edgelands, where all big cultural shifts happen. It has been a long and winding trail since then.

This was back in 2012 and the time when I first met Dan through a shared love of house music and the power of creative activism. I co-founded the Brighton chapter of Good for Nothing bringing together creative talent from across the city to rapidly co-create outcomes to cause-led challenges set by social and environmental charities and not-for profits. 

It was also about this time that I heard the sound of the Kingfisher again, the call of the wild.

I studied at Schumacher college with WildWise through their first Call of the Wild course. We  explored environmental education, rekindled my own wildness and opened me up to new ideas like Deep Ecology, storytelling and how we can begin to form a playful, meaningful relationship with the more-than-human world, with all life. Most of all it helped me remember who I really am. It was transformational.

I wanted to bring my experience in brand building and creative movements together. The crew at Good For Nothing had just started The Wild Network, a collective movement for rewilding childhood. I stepped in to help grow it.

The Wild Network is a collaboration of many of the UK’s biggest conservation and children’s charities and together we made a feature length film Project Wild Thing, which has been seen by 1.5 million people worldwide, and changed the way that people and organisations think about the importance of time outdoors and the barriers to it experienced by many.

Remembering that in nature as well as human systems real change happens on the margins, I have been building the idea that the cutting edge of ‘rewilding’ is not in pristine environments, but on the edgelands and canal banks of urban environments - Kingfisher style.

Through the programme Reclaiming the Wild Commons I have been exploring the principles and practices of wildness as a tool to support placemaking, urban design and human connection, in communities where inequalities are at their highest.

Increasingly my work has been drawn into the work of systems shift and in particular supporting the move from systems change not as an idea to be understood but rather a process of inner evolution. It is this work that now takes up most of my time and that has led me into Becoming Crew with Evva and Dan.

The scale of shift required to navigate these tumultuous, mysterious times is huge, but it increasingly feels true that the only way forward is to do so in collaboration with the more-than-human world and by tapping into the deepest sense of what it is to be human in these times. 

It is this work of soulful activism where I feel most alive. I bring together Deep Ecology and processes like The Work that Reconnects to deepen our connection with all life.

As a carrier of the Way of Council I hold spaces that are deeply soulful and grounded in community. As an apprentice to story and alumni of the West Country School of Myth I work with story and mythology as a form of creative activism, waking our deepest selves to the wonder of the wild world.

Part human, part bear, I live deep in the Dart valley, in Devon with my wife and two wild children tending the little patch we call home.