As we have grown in ambition and influence, we have developed our own philosophy born from this statement: Beautility. A commitment to make good choices desirable. In 2022 we began a project, this project had fairly undefined structures, other than the ambition to offer our clients and our people access to the best innovations within sustainability.

We began building a new offer for our clients which focussed on innovation for good - combining our existing expertise and identifying the gaps in our team. Given this was about innovation, we seized the opportunity to do things differently, and so we built a year-long programme of innovation for brands. Although the programme didn’t rely on this, our ambition was to try and have a number of clients run through the same programme at the same time to force a centralisation of efforts, and a potential opportunity to be able to have multiple people working together to solve much bigger problems. Quite often when - for example the number of people working on light-weighting solutions for glass, or material innovations for paper bottles - all this research could have been pooled together in order to accelerate progress.

As you might expect, our lofty ambitions were difficult to fit into multiple organisations' marketing schedules all at once, for an entire year. So we reflected and revised. In order to build this programme of innovation we had had to learn a lot, meet a lot of innovative thinkers. We had built a network of radical innovators ready to deploy - what else could we do with them?

The Beautility Collective was born! We realised all the efforts made to educate ourselves, our team and our clients could continue in another form, we realised that we had built this amazing collective of innovators, pioneers and visionaries, we still had all the tools to continue to accelerate positive change through the power of collective creativity, we just needed to change the format.

The Beautility Collective accelerates positive environmental change in a number of ways. Showcasing the best examples and discussing solutions as a collective;

• Showcasing solutions; hosting events from exhibitions through to panel talks and lectures, showcasing.
• Access to innovation; ensuring our workers have these solutions at - internal talks, and introductions etc
• Applying innovation to culture; connecting the innovators in our network with live opportunities for the brands and organisations we work with.

Across the last 2 years we have brought together the Beautility Collective members at round table discussions, showcases and panel talks to champion and platform the innovators and thinkers we believe are changing the world. At the start of 2024, we were privileged to have brilliant speakers such as Insiya Jafferjee from Shellworks and the team from Notpla speaking about the importance of Beautility in their creating sustainable plastic-material alternatives, at an event hosted at our studio. And to close the year, our Creative Partner Kate Marlow hosted Waste Not, Want, a panel talk at Solus Studio discussing the theme of Waste and Desirability with some brilliant speakers such as Dr Carmen Hijosa from Ananas-Anam and multidisciplinary Eleonora Ortolani.

The reason we put together these events is to showcase and champion the change makers we believe in, to ensure that our team is as up to date as possible within the fast-paced environment of sustainability and, most importantly, to connect the dots between innovators and brands, so apply the innovation to brands which can adopt them and help them grow.

As we solidify around our core activity as a collective, we will look to amplify those 3 key pillars - hosting more events, more opportunities to showcase and connect. And consider how else we can continue to enhance the offer of the Collective.

In 2025, we aim to expand our portfolio of events and opportunities for showcasing and connection. Among our confirmed events is Empowering Minds—a long-awaited discussion on women in construction. Co-founder and Partner Kate Marlow will moderate a panel featuring industry leaders such as Allison Brooks, Rebecca Heald, and Frederica Minozzi, with the honor of Dame Kelly Holmes sharing her personal journey and career challenges. This event will be hosted by Solus, an architectural and sustainable tile company renowned for supplying the most sustainable porcelain, ceramic, and terrazzo tiles to architects, designers, and specifiers worldwide.

Later in the year, we are thrilled to be participating in the inaugural South by Southwest Conference in London. During a fireside chat moderated by Kate Marlow, Co-Founder of Here Design, Oriele Frank, Chief Product & Sustainability Officer at ELEMIS, and Madeleine Macey, CEO of SkyDiamond, we will explore how sustainability and desirability intersect in today’s consumer landscape. Drawing on their industry expertise, they will unpack our philosophy of “Beautility” – and how this seamlessly blends beauty and utility to inspire change and reshape consumer behaviour.

We need to consider the business modelling for this programme which has broadly speaking relied on donations and a shared mission - is this sustainable? Can we continue to trade ideas and purpose instead of money or does this limit the potential of this project too much?

We’d love to understand more about how to connect with policy makers and lobbyists - connecting our activity intrinsically to those with the potential to make change on a more systemic level.

We need to talk about ourselves! This has to date been a grassroots, low key initiative and we need to begin to apply our skillset as brand builders to ourselves.

If you would like to join the Beautility Collective, or have a project you would like to discuss with us, please let us know more by emailing beautilty@heredesign.co.uk