OVERHEATED LIVE is bringing together climate activists, musicians, and designers to discuss the climate crisis and their work to make a difference. There will be sessions on green practices in the music industry, the benefits of a plant-based diet, the methods of sustainable fashion, and the actions taken to mitigate climate change.
Hosts and speakers include Billie Eilish, Finneas, Ellie Goulding, Maggie Baird, Abbie McCarthy, Chiara Badiali, Daphne Frias, Einass Bakhiet, Eshita Kabra-Davies, Laura Verónica Muñoz, Mya-Rose Craig, Isaias Hernandez, Naza Alakija, Maxine Williams, Peter McGuinness, Robbie Lockie, Samata Pattinson, Stephanie Dillon, Tori Tsui, Vanessa Nakate, Wawa Gatheru, Yusuf Baluch, Sadhguru, Aditi Mayer, Dominique Palmer, Clover Hogan.
I wrote ‘Dear Fashion, we are not your Immigrants, and you are not our Expats’ in June of 2020.
This reflects a habit I have of writing content and sitting on it due to anxiety or self-doubt.
This piece has been delayed and delayed for so long. All my own doing. To make it part of a wider project, to try and amplify it with a voice with a bigger platform than my humble community. I couldn’t get the people I wanted to get behind it and realised maybe it’s too out there and provocative. Or maybe they are just in their own projects and stretched to bandwidth, like we all are. I can only control, what I can control.
Then I realised, I wanted it out there because my motivation for writing it was not for the amplification of others, but to reach and touch just a few like the ripple effect I always talk about (sometimes starting small is the best way).
A ripple so that in turn, we all might start to see how language, the way we speak and the things we say, have the power to build or destroy, stereotype or shatter ceilings, and importantly, bring us closer together or push us further apart.
If it does that for just a few listeners, I will be happy. So have a listen, tag a friend who might enjoy this, and I hope your language and communication become culturally richer as a result.
‘Dear Fashion,
We are not your Immigrants and you are not our Expats.’
I filmed this at The Møller Institute at Churchill College Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). To find out more about me, visit www.samatahome.com. To find out how the fashion industry has an impact on people and the planet, check out www.rcgdglobal.com.