The Trews with Russell brand and how my personal revolution started.
So let’s go back to the beginning for a moment. 2016 I’m speaking with my friend Pam. My beautiful Bolivian friend living in Amsterdam is telling me, in typical fashion, eyes gleaming, with a passionate yet stern tone, that I absolutely have to listen to Russell Brands’ Youtube channel
The Trews.
Of course, being English and having grown up with media stories about Mr brand I wasn’t particularly interested, but when Pam gets that look in her eye, you know it’s something important. I had to give it a go. I’m so glad I did. Gone was the Russel Brand I knew from before, here was someone who was speaking directly to me, picking apart and highlighting all the things in the news that I had for so long not been able to articulate. Subjects I would never have previously been interested in were opening up to me in a way I could not only understand but were engaging and humorous.
If you were also watching, then I don’t need to explain why I was absolutely hooked from day one.
As the months went on Pam and I would get together and discuss at great length the state of the world a media, economy, politics, and all the other world affairs that the Trews gave us.
Pam had always been politically engaged but for me, this was something new. I’d never felt that I could access this level of emotion about government politics it had always bored me to tears but now I felt it was finally accessible and even more shocking it was important!
We both set about thinking up ways we could change the world but there were just so many issues, environment, children, health, grassroots projects, etc. What could we do and where do we start?
Not long after, Pam came to me and said she wanted to help some friends back home in Bolivia. They were bringing back green spaces to urban areas, helping people to connect with nature again.
Awesome! I declared, how can I help?
They needed a website. So having roped my partner into this as well we planned and built them a website for their cause.
Very good, so what comes next...?
From then on I was actively looking for what I could do to further change but for ages, I couldn’t quite get my head around it. I’m a graphic designer, I kept thinking what can I do to change the world?!
Make posters from recycled paper? I just didn’t feel I had the skills.
At the time, I had just started working with an American company that wanted to buy some of my designs to include on their kid's sock range. Turns out that this would eventually help fund both myself and my partner to travel for almost a year around South Asia and be the starting point for a complete set of work to teach SEL to children in school and at home, and when my daughter came along all the pieces just fell into place for me. It now became so important to me personally that I educate myself to be able to give me daughter the best start in life. We still don’t know the full extent of how the pandemic will effect this generation of children social and emotional skills so understanding the topic myself and doing what I can to help feels like the best I can do for my little girl.
According to the government report done in 2020 Social and emotional learning in the U.K. is overly poor. There are some good schools, but most don’t have the resources or the training to teach it well. The pandemic made it even harder, and whereas a few children benefitted from home learning many just simply missed out.
This is why The Little Star Design Studio was created. To help develop resources that are designed to be used both in and out of school. Independently or together with the activities. The message in the story can be used as a starting point for learning aspects of Social & Emotional Skills.
Currently I have created books and lesson plans on topics like; facing fears, sibling rivalry, loss and grief, and finding connection.
Only some of these topics are currently covered by the current training but all are important aspects of developing a high SEL awareness. I am now also working on a new project to help keep children safe online as education and technology is developing in new ways and will undoubtedly have an impact on children.