Would You Work For The Planet One Day A Week?

Would you give up one day a week to work pro bono activism or climate related campaigns, volunteering time, thought and your talents? 

This is the ask of Friday Future Love, an idea that has come out of the Creatives For Climate movement. 

Last month I was invited to the hugely inspiring Creatives For Climate second summit in Amsterdam (don’t worry I didn’t fly) at Patagonia HQ, where The Humblebrag, Extinction Rebellion, Good For Nothing and Fossil Free Future came together to encourage and provoke direct action amongst creatives. 

Whether that’s designing gifs and placard posters to capture social media’s attention or spurring each other to protest, reclaiming the streets with inventive temporary architecture or pushing for change amongst the corporates that hold the purse strings for so many of us.

Last year, The Humblebrag organised a conference where 22 Dutch agencies signed up to help out on briefs (sent by charities and activist groups and funnelled through Creatives For Climate) to produce artwork in all forms, for free. 

Their work appeared in print, on social and as posters on TV being carried as placards at climate protests all over the world. All in all, over 200 executions were actioned through this free network last year.

This year, the summit went one further and launched the innovative Friday Future Love campaign.

What is Friday Future Love? 

Essentially, it’s asking whether creatives (but really anyone), could work for free for one day a week, Friday, to turn their skills to helping create a more sustainable world? 

This doesn’t just have be the solo entrepreneurs, the freelancers and the start ups, imagine if we all used our grey matter for global good, 20% of our work week? 

As the speakers at Creatives For Climate reiterated several times, creativity can’t just be about winning industry awards, it has to be about inspiring action.

Extinction Rebellion London’s spokesperson, Will Skeaping, who co-edited XR's book ‘This Is Not a Drill’, made the case for systematic change (and it was pretty compelling). 

“It can’t just be business as usual. That means war, drought, famine, eco fascism and the decline of everything we know. Big tech and Jeff Bezos aren’t going to save the day. We need rebellion in your workplace, for people to support climate activism and not just in your own time. It’s about co-creation, but if your CEO won’t change, it’s time to change the CEO.

Another speaker, Mark Aink (founder of NATIVE circles) agreed, “We don't need saints to go and save the planet, we need everyone. We need 100 million creatives, we need your superpower everyday.”

It’s about community

Along with working for good and inspiring action, another systematic change that many of us would like to see, in the creative industry and beyond, is the move to more collaborative work and a bigger sense of community. After all, we’re all fighting for the future right?

This has been the theme of Dan Burgess, founder of Good For Nothing,’s work for the last decade. Focusing on empathy, kindness, generosity and openness helps bring about bigger change more quickly, as we look to help each other rather than compete for endless (and unsustainable) growth.

“These qualities are sustainable and renewable and we need them right now,” he explains. “We all have them but we need to wake them up and bring them into our work. Courage, action, imagination - that’s what we need to employ.”

“It’s about ‘active hope’,” he says. 

I couldn’t agree more. 2019 was the year of awareness but as floods and fires saw us into 2020, this year is about action. It has to be. Our house is on fire and we are running out of time to put it out.

Can you join Friday Future Love? 

• What skills do you have to contribute? 
• Who is in your network you can talk to and collaborate with?
• Who needs a hand to make a bigger impact?
• What time could you give? 

Join Friday Future Love 

What is pebble is doing?

Not ones to shy away from a task, inspired by the Creatives For Climate movement and Friday Future Love campaign, pebble will be dedicating the last Friday of every month to pro bono work and volunteering in projects around marine plastic pollution, in Margate, where we’re based. 

Sign up here for more updates and info on what we’re up to over the next few months. 

What we already do

You might not know what pebble already does to limit our impact and help our planet:

• In 2019 we gave away 1% of our revenue to charities including Marine Conservation Society, Feedback and Fashion Revolution.
• We rarely fly for work (once in the last two years), get the train where we can (including to Amsterdam for this piece) and if we do, we make sure it’s carbon offset.
• We will be introducing a new tree planting commitment that you can help us with. More soon!
• We print as little as possible and where we do print, we use recycled FSC certified card, which is carbon offset through the World Land Trust.
• All of our events are single use plastic free, including our signage - even down to elements like using garden twine not plastic cable ties.
• We don’t flyer our events, don't have paper tickets and in 2020 we will be offsetting our carbon impact and the impact of everyone’s travel.

Inspired to do more? 

Climate Strikes 101: Everything You Need To Know To Take Action

Don't forget we need your imagination

Why Our Imagination Is Key To Solving The Climate Crisis

Thinking of joining XR?

6 Things I’ve Learnt as an Extinction Rebellion Activist