Dan Burgess
Personal website here
Over the last 25 years I’ve worked and practised as a DJ, facilitator, design researcher, communications strategist, writer, campaigner, co-designer, activist, artist and learning guide.
In 2006 I fell down a climate change hole while researching a project for Nokia, I’ve never really come back up.
I spent the following 12 years working intensely with courageous brands, NGO’s, campaigners, foundations, activists, artists, designers, social entrepreneurs, scientists, ecologists, wisdom teachers and place based communities.
Prototyping, co-creating and launching campaigns, platforms, products, creative collaborations and movements attempting to slow down the destruction of our living Earth and to put life at the centre.
I’ve collaborated with teams in many different types of organisation - including Nokia, Google, Patagonia, Finisterre, The UN, The Global Goals, Ecover, Boston Tea Party, Girl Effect, RSPB, National Trust, Marine Conservation Society, Common Seas, City to Sea, The Green Economy Coalition, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, Extinction Rebellion and UKSCN to name a few.
I co-founded Good for Nothing, Swarm Partners, The Wild Network Wild Labs and We Are Ocean collectives. Initiatives designed to convene people in radical collaboration, to harness community and collective energy towards meaningful change for people and nature, while pioneering new ways of working and mobilising - open, emergent, experimental, self-organising.
In 2018 I started The Spaceship Earth Podcast from the studio in my garden. The podcast was shortlisted in the climate category in the British Podcast Awards in 2022.
In 2020 I co-authored Stories for Life, which explores the power of cultural stories in shaping the design of human economic systems and our ways of relating to the Earth. An offering to support cultural narrative change - it has been widely acclaimed and continues to spread.
In 2021 I began guiding peer supported action learning programs for regenerative change makers through Becoming Crew.
My core work today is grounded in an entanglement of stories, culture, community, climate and nature - cultivating regenerative cultures, facilitating creative activism, encouraging a deepening of our relationship with the more than human world and creative experimentation in unravelling times.
I continue to host the podcast, write, speak, co-design and hold spaces.
Learning experiences which have shaped my practice:
MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility from Ashridge/Hult - 2009-2011
‘Call of the Wild’ under the teaching of Chris Salisbury at Wildwise/Schumacher College - 2013
‘We Will Dance With Mountains’ guided by Bayo Akomolafe - 2015
Guest Faculty ‘Co-Creating the Emerging Future’ at Schumacher College - 2015-2020
Part of the practice team at The Bio-Leadership Project
Peer-learning host training with Huddlecraft - 2020.
Participant in online pilot of Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet with Plum Village
Currently participating in Kincentric Leadership - 18 month co-learning journey with 80 practitioners from around the planet in an experimental field that places direct collaboration with the more than human world at the heart of all interventions, strategy, culture and ways of working.
You’ll find me in Bath, with my family. Often in the woods and the waves.
I am autistic, ADHD, Type 1 Diabetic and I’m still trying to understand what I am.