Futuresteading
This is a conversation about the future. About creating a culture that values tomorrow. We reckon a slower, simpler, steadier existence is the first step - one that’s healthier for humans and the planet. We call it Futuresteading. Each week we chat to community builders, ritual makers, food growers, health wizards and environmental wisdom keepers, gathering practical advice and epic solidarity - so we can all nut this thing out together. Join our nitty, gritty, honest and hopeful convo every Monday during our 16 episode seasons. Support the pod by shouting us a cuppa >>> buymeacoffee.com/futuresteading
Futuresteading
Ep 82 Megan O'Malley - Dancing & walking her way to a new education vision for the next world
A story teller for change, voice for young people and founder of Humiform. Megan became a professional dancer at 14, a fair fashion advocate who walked across South East Asia to share stories of good in her early 20’s and now has turned her efforts to working with kids in a way that gives them agency and a connection to the outside world. She speaks not only from her lived experience but also from a place of realness that is easily relatable and that kids gravitate towards. She asks ‘what if’, and walks her talk.
Episode Summary
- Changing her view of the world through the lens of passionate social and environmental activist kids
- Giving kids the chance to drive their own projects
- Do screens change our kids worlds
- Having parents who trusted her 100%
- Starting a full time dance career at 14 until she was 27
- Cruise ships are a microcosm of the real world where inequality is prevalent and impossible to ignore
- Leaving cruise ships once she realised her white privilege
- Why it’s so hard to live your values when the systems are set up to maintain status quo.
- The difficulty in finding time to appreciate nuances especially in the fashion industry
- The inconvenience of nuances in marketing
- Looking to nature for the diverse solutions and embracing it
- Young people are the way forward because they JUST GET IT
- Young people are powerful. They see the interconnectedness of the world
- The future our children face is vastly different to the world we faced
- Coming to terms with knowing that the world is going to change and there will be loss
- Acknowledging that change has always happened and being ok to be part of the adaptation
- Building a business as a force for good
- Businesses taking action where the government is not to create deep change
- Businesses need to give back to the world rather than just taking
- The loneliness of being an edge dweller in the things she chooses to do
- The education system is a dinosaur
- Avoiding projects that perpetuate the white saviour mentality
- Walk Sew Good - her walk across South East Asia to share stories about people creating good fashion stories
- 15k kg of clothing goes to landfill every 10 minutes in Australia
- If we were as connected to our clothing as the people she met on her walk it could change the world.
- Creating a space for kids that have no rules
- Her vision of an education system
- We don’t know what the world is going to look like in the future so who are we to dictate what our kids should be learning
- We need to ask “what is the purpose for education in our time”
- Be obsessed with not knowing things and let your thinking be challenged
References
The good place - Netflix series.
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Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters