So nice to meet you! We’re Sally and Helen.
Sally’s an environmentalist, writer and award-winning founder. She’s also guaranteed to be the shortest person in any room.
Helen’s an educator, designer and award-winning author. She’s also a gold-level clumsy noggin who’s guaranteed to be the one who face-plants on entering that room.
We’ve both got kids in our lives: Sally has a son and Helen has a nephew. And we want them to have a brilliant future on this amazing planet.
We’re great believers in imperfect environmentalism. No one can get everything right all of the time. And trying to is just a highway to paralysis.
It’s about finding actions that fit in with you and your family. Creating small ripples of change that’ll help us all ride a growing wave of action*.
* As a business based partly in Australia, we’re legally obliged to use at least one surfing analogy per 1,000 words.
How we built Be The Future
Our business started with a hashtag, evolved with an email, and now runs almost entirely on an intricate understanding of UK-Australia time differences.
Before we met, we were both living in the UK and working for #tacklethecrisis, a campaign about spreading climate positivity.
Because we’re both pretty sure that’s what the world needs.
Something to counter the doom-and-gloom stories that make us want to stick our fingers in our ears and assume the fetal position because it’s all too much.
So there we were, being ambassadors for this hashtag, when Sally spotted Helen’s logo for her other business: Unlikely Genius.
She figured there had to be an interesting person behind that name (spoiler: there was). So in December 2020, she wrote Helen an email:
I’m looking for a witty, funny, smart copywriter and designer to help me with my idea. And you seem kind of perfect.
Helen jumped on board right away. Phew.
We got to meet in person a couple of times between lockdown ending and Sally moving back to Australia (could this founding story *be* any more pandemic?)
Sure, running a two-woman business between Yorkshire and Sydney isn’t always the easiest way to do things…
But thanks to the wonder of Zoom, Trello, and our ability to reliably set alarm clocks, everything’s working out pretty well.
Which is lucky, because we adore what we do:
Harnessing the magic of hope, solutions and top-notch punning to empower families and educators to help rewrite our climate story.
We know how tough it is to find your place in climate action. The mountain often feels too big to climb. So when people get in touch to tell us we’ve inspired them or lifted them out of a climate slump, we’re honestly chuffed to bits.
It’s why we get up in the morning (nine/eleven hours apart).
⬇️ If you love our story and our mission, check out some of the things you can get involved in! ⬇️
TOGETHER
TOGETHER is our concept for an immersive and interactive experience containing 7 climate solution themed zones, plus accompanying touring and digital experiences.
Experiences
Playful, interactive sustainability incursions to engage and empower young minds for early learning centres, primary schools and governments.
100 Days of Climate Play
Sally will be doing 100 playful climate challenges over 100 days! Helen will join her for quite a few of these wild challenges - as will many amazing collaborators ✨
A bit more about us…
a.k.a. the ‘official’ bios, sans bad puns 😂