Projects
Some projects just don’t fit into a box.
“We live in a space between worlds; the world as it is - built on extraction, scarcity, and disconnection - is unraveling. And yet, as one world unravels, so too can another begin. This is the space we inhabit at Scintilla Centre: the space between collapse and emergence, between the world as it is and the world as it could be. Our work is to equip changemakers with the skills, wisdom and community to navigate this liminal time - not by waiting for the old systems to fully crumble or the new ones to fully form, but by developing the capacities to lead the transition itself." - Scintilla Centre
Creativity and Process as Infrastructure
Phase 1 of a multi-phase creative process.
Challenge
Traditional marketing tactics and pain-point-to-solution strategies weren’t working for Scintilla. Wisdom develops over time through engagement with ideas, frameworks, knowledge, and internal and external reflection. What Scintilla offers is uniquely relevant to the current moment, but difficult to package as a business.
Approach
I led Scintilla’s founder Laura Hartley through a multi-month creative process. We laid out her content, frameworks, and messaging, disrupted patterns that kept her stuck, and challenged common tactics that were working against her. We used her frameworks to build offerings that embodied the teachings so people who engage with her work are experiencing the frameworks even before they learn about them.
Through all of this we embodied one of Scintilla’s core teachings - we cannot create change by mirroring the same energy we want to disrupt.
Phase 1 of this project was about storytelling, rooting an abstract concept into something more tangible, beginning to shape their language, visuals, and flow of information in a way that embodies and helps people connect to their ideas and mode of operation.
“Having an ideas-based business, I hired Emily at a stage of needing to reimagine what my work might look like. I was feeling tired, uninspired and disconnected from work that used to light me up. To say she helped would be an understatement. As a result of working together, I was able to deepen my thinking, connect how people encounter and experience my work, and imagine what architecture might support it - all while falling in love with my work again.
I’d spent a long time looking for the kind of support Emily offered without knowing what to call it or if it even existed. While there’s an abundance of ‘business’ advice and teachings out there, there aren’t so many places that help you engage creatively with problems you may be facing, how to bring an idea to life, or help you develop your craft - all of which Emily does.
She is simultaneously able to hold huge amounts of vulnerability, create a really safe creative environment for ideas (even terrible ones!), to think about the journey and experience of those who engage with my work, to keep the bigger picture in sight and to hold anchor when I’d go off on tangents. Perhaps most brilliantly, Emily was able to tease out new directions and ideas from the least likely places. From ideas to colours to images to words, she ties every part of the business together.
Working with Emily was one of the best decisions I’ve made, and I cannot recommend it enough.” - Laura Hartley
The Kennedys
On a whim, I applied to the Kennedys. It’s a 7-month program by the world-renowned ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, which they describe as “an experiment, disguised as a school, hidden inside a creative agency.” After decade being in the nonprofit space and applying for grants, I was intrigued by the application process itself, which consisted of the following three questions:
Tell us about yourself
Explain the history of the universe as briefly as possible
Make a triangle