GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
In Nature We Trust, with Mark Funnell
Join us for a brilliant conversation with Mark Funnell, a passionate environmental advocate and the Communications and Campaigns Director at the National Trust. Discover how his deep-rooted love for nature, cultivated from childhood, paved the way for a career dedicated to environmental stewardship.
From navigating the National Trust through cultural debates to honouring Britain's natural heritage, Mark shares invaluable insights on staying true to core values and through his experiences at the Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, and DEFRA offers a unique perspective on how organisations can balance tradition and innovation in the ever-evolving landscape of conservation.
We also touch on a poignant moment that captured the nation's heart—the felling of the iconic Sycamore Gap tree. Mark recounts the powerful public response and the National Trust's meaningful Trees of Hope initiative, which transforms a moment of loss into one of collective remembrance and renewal.
And as we discuss the potential of cultural heritage and nature to unify, Mark talks about the role of humor and positivity in fostering inclusive dialogues and effective campaign strategies for environmental action.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Danla from Mira Agency Istanbul.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Mark Funnell, who is the Communications and Campaigns Director at the National Trust and also the chair of Avon Needs Trees, the charity creating lots of new woodland across the Bristol Avon River catchment.
Speaker 3:So, Mark, I think the way Damla says Avon is quite exotic and exciting, isn't it?
Speaker 4:It makes it very, very exciting indeed, yeah no, exactly.
Speaker 3:So Mark was formerly a director of communications at DEFRA, the UK Department of the Environment, and also former head of communications at DEFRA, the UK Department of the Environment, and also former Head of Communications at the Forestry Commission, which was when we were first lucky enough to work together. So, mark, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4:It's really good to be with you. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 3:Brilliant. So what we're going to do is we like to kick off with a bit of an origins story, if that's all right, Mark. With a bit of an origins story, if that's all right, Mark. So what led you down this lovely woodland path to become a campaigner and communicate to Champions Nature and eventually ending up at the National Trust? Give us your backstory.
Speaker 4:Right. Well, I have always been lucky enough to get out into nature a lot growing up, and I think that's. David atterborough famously has said you know what you don't experience you don't care about. And I definitely got to experience a lot of nature when I was growing up, so woodland walks in fact. I live now about a mile away from somewhere called lee woods on the edge of bristol, and I can remember tramping through there with my dad, aged about two, and him bribing me onto the next bit with suites of various descriptions. So it's all the way back there.
Speaker 4:I think it started, but I think when I left university and I guess I was already an environmentalist and I got into working for a magazine company and although I loved it, uh, when the first environment job came up, it's all the way back in the year 2000, working for the environment agency. That was it really. I really found that this was something I cared deeply about. My first project was about climate change. Slightly depressingly, I went back to that project and realized that just about nothing has changed in 25 years, uh, in terms of we know all about this thing, uh, and frankly we should be doing a downside more about it. But it gives you an idea that this stuff kind of runs deep in me.
Speaker 4:And so I went on from the Environment Agency to work, as you say, for the Forestry Commission, where we met for the first time and I have to say, steve did one of the most amazing presentations futurology presentations on scenarios that got everyone absolutely thinking lots of long term amazing thoughts. So that was, I, I think, my first brush with you. Steve is very good brush. Um. Then on to, as you say, work for the top department for environment, food and rural affairs. I did various roles there, including interim director of communications, working interestingly to liz trust at the time, which is probably a whole other podcast, and then I have been at the National Trust now for four and a half years. So I started right in the middle of the first COVID lockdown, which is again a very interesting experience.
Speaker 2:Well, I hear a lot of passion in your voice and I can't agree more that Steve was and is always the showman around here and is always the showman around here. Staying with the National Trust for a moment, mark. How do you steer and protect a brand that could genuinely be described as being pretty much a national treasure for the people of Britain?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's both a real privilege and slightly scary at times. I think the first thing I would say is one of the best things about it is people really, really care about it, about the brand, about the organization, about what we do. Now with that comes your word, a lot of passion. So we get people who, whatever we do, aren't always going to like what we do, and sometimes we have really really strong views about what we do, both positive and negative, and I think that's a good thing to have because you know it just goes to show that people do care about you know, the nation's heritage, the nation's nature. You know, and they really do care about us and our long legacy. So, um, you know and they really do care about us and our long legacy. So we've been around for almost 130 years now, um, so that definitely is part of I think your, your ongoing calculation is how you make sure you span that huge audience of interest as best you can.
Speaker 4:But you always are conscious the fact that sometimes, whatever you do, people are not going to like it, and I think we have tried really, really hard over the last four or five years, as we've gotten into this awful thing called the culture wars, of trying to make sure we hold very true to our values as a charity and not get buffeted and blown off course. And actually sometimes that is hard because you can be, for example, having a huge amount of negative media coverage in, say and it's always the same media outlets Daily Mail, telegraph, express, spectator, gb News and yet you've got to remember that this is just one part of a very big spectrum of views about you. It can feel really noisy and it can feel actually quite jarring, but actually we've done all the research and insight work on this and that's one of the things that's really helped us in that last period and it has demonstrated that it is not actually hurting us, our brand, our reputation. It's a very noisy minority of around about eight to ten percent of, uh, the population represented through those media. And even then, um, that doesn't mean you can't have a conversation about this stuff and in fact I'd always say you know your detractors, your greatest critics, sit down and talk about what they're concerned about.
Speaker 4:Where is that kind of fear, uh, coming from? That you are changing something they care greatly about. There's always room for conversation. I suppose the final thing I'd say about it is that go back to our kind of ground roots principles, why we were founded, and we were founded to be a campaigning organization and to not be afraid of doing the right thing by our charitable purpose, and to not be afraid of doing the right thing by our charitable purpose and to really hold true to that. So a lot of what we've dealt with in the recent period has involved just standing our ground and being really clear about why we're doing what we're doing and just not wavering in the face of what's come our way. And sometimes you know that's classic kind of media rebuttal type stuff. We've adopted an every broken windows policy where every single time there's a mistruth or a something that's misleading out there, we will challenge it. But I think it's also about remembering that we're here to do something as a charity that's set out in our objects, and just reorientate ourselves to those objects.
Speaker 3:Wow, I do think so often, mark, of your job and just what a kind of incredible as you say privilege but also terrifying job it is. So I'm very impressed. So I'd like to move us to a major national story that you've been incredibly close to, mark. You know what's coming, and that's the Sycamore Gap tree. And for our international listeners who don't know this story, there was a tree on National Trust land, sitting in a gap in the landscape next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, which was so iconic that it was widely seen as Britain's most photographed tree, and then one morning, just over a year ago, it was felled overnight, causing genuinely a national shock. Mark, did you want to pick up the story from there and tell us about that national response that was so extraordinary and the clear emotional resonance that was shown around Sycamore Gap Tree and perhaps what it tells us more widely about our relationship with nature?
Speaker 4:yeah, it was, uh, and actually still is an extraordinary story. So, first of all, it's the biggest story we've ever dealt with at the national trust. You know we run all the numbers on it. There's never been a bigger story for us, and, and so that gives you immediately an indication of just how much interest there was. I remember, actually within minutes of it, first being seen as the tree felled and it going on the wires by a fluke. I actually saw it, I saw the Hexham local paper coverage of it and just thought immediately this is going to be absolutely massive, because I've seen the tree, I've seen it a couple of times and it is an extraordinary place.
Speaker 4:You know, hadrian's wall, bleak, beautiful, but this remote tree in this dip, perfectly framed, I mean absolutely iconic and beautiful to look at but somehow desperately alone and really reminding us, I think, of the fragility of nature, um, and the fact that you know, know, this incredible tree was so photographed, as you say, but also appears in things like Robin Hood, prince of Thieves, the movie with Kevin Costner, and so it kind of almost entered the not just the nation's psyche but the kind of global psyche actually, and we had a huge amount of international response to the story and people from all around the world, you know, desperately upset, desperately, you know, concerned about, you know what had happened and why, and and I think what we really very quickly wanted to do was just was just harness some of that, to really feel and understand that because, you know, this was a nature and is a nature story and a heritage story because of, of course, hadrian's Wall UNESCO protected site, but actually it's a very, very human the story, because of those emotions, and I think we immediately recognized that rather than, you know, make this a kind of a big national trust thing, we wanted to make it a big people thing. So what we did is we immediately opened up, within a few days, an exercise of listening and to get people's responses, memories, tributes, thoughts, uh, and there just was the most extraordinary deluge of stuff, um, and you can imagine everything from poems to people recollecting how they got married there or being proposed to there or you know how they'd have formative experiences in their lives at that place Channeled, all that sort of back in so that we could really think about ideas as to what to do next. And that took the form of various things. So one of the biggest things was just on the one-year anniversary of the tree being felled. A couple of weeks ago we launched what we've called Trees of Hope, which is fortunately because of some of the material covered from the site. We've been able to grow a number of seedlings from the felled tree and those little seedlings have become little saplings and they're actually quite tall now. They're about and by the way, this is not good for the listeners I'm motioning that they're about four, maybe five feet tall now so that we can gift them to the nation and so that they can be there in memoriam of people who really had a connection with the tree and want to remember something particular and a couple of the stories. Actually, one's um tina's haven, which is fairly near to to hadrian's wall on the east coast, where a young lady who had a history of drug addiction, her mum, as a tribute, and we with the national trust with her, have created a, a site for nature on the coast there. We're going to plant one of the trees there.
Speaker 4:There's another story, which is Fergus's story. 12-year-old boy died of bone cancer. Lives just outside Bristol here. Actually, he and his dad were going to go and walk the wall and that had to be cancelled due to COVID. He died fairly recently. Again, one of the trees will go to him and his parents Again, a publicly accessible site, and so we've tried to to really make bring that emotion uh through, uh and thinking about how can this be put now in service to to the nation. Um, so yeah, it's been an extraordinary year and a bit a real roller coaster actually, and I think everyone involved with it has felt very touched by, very moved by it. I went up actually myself a couple months ago. I find it profoundly moving looking at this stump. Um, the other brilliant bit, just to end actually, is that there is some regeneration already evident around the tree base, the stump, so lots of little sprouts of growth, which which is fantastic, I mean. Obviously it will look very different to that iconic tree but it just goes to show how incredible nature is.
Speaker 2:There is something about the trees and our collective imagination. When I hear this story about the sycamore gap tree and I hear the responses of your nation actually international response to it, and then it just resonates with another story with me, like over a decade ago, the Gizi uprising in Istanbul. It started with protecting a bunch of trees. I mean, they just wanted to tear down a park in the middle of Istanbul. They just wanted to tear down a park in the middle of Istanbul, and then all Istanbul and then all Turkey was risen against everything and it just grew and grew and grew.
Speaker 2:And I remember those days the government officials were just asking oh, this can't be just about a tree, this is espionage, but it was actually the beginning. Be just about a tree, this is espionage, but it was actually the beginning was actually about the trees. So there is a very genuine attachment of our imagination and our self-image in the story of trees. So I just wanted to ask you, thinking of those two stories together, actually how do you think we can manage to get that link and turn it into a powerful tool for climate action?
Speaker 4:question. Actually, your example reminded me, in turn, of what happened here in Plymouth in the UK, where a bunch of trees were felled and the community were absolutely appalled because these were much beloved street trees and they didn't stick coming. I mean, there wasn't that, you know, uh, no of engagement or awareness raised around what happened. They just woke up one day and the trees were felled, and we've seen it in other communities, you know, in sheffield and elsewhere that, um, I, I think we are all deeply, you know, if we're talking about our origins as a species, we are deeply, deeply, uh, interconnected with with the world of trees. I think there's something about just that reminder of how they are the ultimate miracle solution to so many things that are so wrong at the moment. So they are obviously incredible, ingenious solutions to the climate crisis. They suck up carbon, they store it, they lock it up, even if you fell them, and they regrow, know that carbon is embedded in that timber. Um, but also they are, of course, uh, really, I think, symbolically powerful for all sorts of cultural and historical reasons, and you look at any faith, you look at the story of igrasil, the tree of life, you know the ash tree, you know norse mythology, for example. You know again, when we had ash die back outbreak, uh, back in 2012, it's still sweeping through the ash population of trees in this country, you know again, there was so much powerful storytelling that occurred around that time, reminding ourselves of the place of that tree and in many cultures and histories, I think, I think it is just about uh, reminding people that it's one of the big solutions and the charity that you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 4:Avonlea's Trees is a tree planting charity. And do you know what? One of the things that so many people say when they come up and plant trees is that I not only feel like I'm a part of that solution in terms of climate action, but I feel like it's so good for my mental health to be doing this because I can't. It's so hard to think of things you can do in your life to really be a part of what feels like you know, big, big solutions. Um, and, of course, you know, planting that tree, you come back in 20 years time it'll be a mature tree. You come back in 50 years time and your children do. They'll see that legacy, and I think everyone talks about that. The plants trees.
Speaker 3:Amazing, and I am going to move us on from trees. But you're so right, matt, I love the fact that they're a habitat, they produce food, they're a building material, a climate solution, reduce the risk of flooding. It's just extraordinary, isn't it? All in one beautiful bit of nature. But let's move on from loving the trees.
Speaker 3:Three hugging for a minute, and I just wanted to go back mark to, uh, your brief mention of culture wars, because, um, do you? You have been pulled as the national trust towards that kind of slightly crazy space of of culture wars, and and I know your partner has been involved as well online, I noticed that, and we don't need to go too deeply into that, because that wasn't the point of my question. What I wanted to ask you about was for us as communicators if you could write a brief for the communicators of the world what should we be doing through our practice and through the communications that we deliver, to bring people closer together and counter division, polarisation and culture wars? Because, in many ways, we are the creators of culture and so, therefore, we can't absolve ourselves from complicity in this. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 4:complicity in this. What are your thoughts? Yeah, again, it's a profound question and a really really good question, I think. I think we've all observed how, uh, just so much more polarized the debate has become about so many issues of our times, you know, and that's partly about money and that's partly about commercial models in the media, it's partly about political agendas and power, but it's about many, many things that I think you can find antidotes to.
Speaker 4:We've always said, actually at the National Trust, that we believe that cultural heritage and nature are two things that unify people. Can go to any national trust property, for example, and you will not find people who are having a big argument about something you know that they're looking at or you know an experience in nature they're having. You will find people just blissed out, you know, or just inspired or just having a really good time, and so I think that's something that we remind ourselves of constantly, and actually the storytelling that we then seek to do around what we look after is very much about that. It's really about making sure there's a place for many different narratives. You know a rich sense of a sort of tapestry, if you like, of history, and when we released our report four years ago, as we did that, looked at the link between our properties that we look after and historic slavery and colonialism, that that was one of the kind of things that lit the touch paper in the culture, wars and. And yet that was just about facing into a set of truths around those histories, many of which were unacknowledged and many of which actually, in being unacknowledged, meant that an awful lot of people that felt that they really didn't think the National Trust were for them in so doing, suddenly felt that we were.
Speaker 4:And so you know. Much as you might say, well, wasn't that awful because you know you had a lot of backlash, etc. Well, actually I would count that, with so many people got in touch with us to say so glad, actually just acknowledging these different aspects of history. So I think there are many answers to that. I suppose my final thought is, in dealing with these things, don't give in to the hate, you know. Don't become a hater and actually see what's happening and try to treat it with a degree of levity and humour where possible, and irony, because some of it is risible. I mean, it may be very kind of harmful and unpleasant, but actually I think sometimes just doing that Michelle Obama thing of going high when they go low or not taking it too seriously and moving and bridging to something much more positive. That's what we've tried to do.
Speaker 2:Amazing what you said about how people just have good times when they are in nature or when they are visiting a very historical place. It just rings a bell in my head that resonates with the idea of imagined communities of Benedict Andersons. So when you are in front of that tree stump, the Sycamore Gap tree stump, there is nothing left to be imagined and drawn and framed. You have the history and the nature. Nature and everything is there and you're a part of it. So it is hard to hate at that moment. Maybe, and maybe this is the place where we, the good communicators, I might add have to play on. Maybe we have to make people imagine these kind of communities. So, coming to this question, I always have a way to bind this with a question In doing so, because I know that you have a role in campaigning. You have a role in corporate communications, but also you're a campaigner yourself. So in doing so, making a highly effective campaign for good, what are the key ingredients you think that we should add?
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a slightly boring and slightly prosaic part of the answer, I think, which is just about getting the fundamentals right you know what are your objectives and being super clear about those and your audience, and knowing your audience and knowing how, therefore, you are going to reach them in the ways that are going to be resonant to them. And I always think doing the kind of homework properly and the kind of foundational work on that stuff is so important, because a number of times I've seen a piece of work go wrong because that has just not been done well is countless times. I think I think there is, um, clearly something about agency. People need to have something to do and feel like they're a part of a solution, and I think you also need to find a way to be able to play that back to them because, let's face it, if we're all really time poor and we have constant demands on us to join this or get involved in that, I think if you are going to be movement building, you have to have that sense of playback so that people can see they've made an effort for something and actually this is where it's getting, and I think you can then build on that over time as well, I think there is actually.
Speaker 4:I was going to mention an example on that, which is when we were involved with rspb and wwf last year on a campaign called save our wild arles, which was off the back of the tv series wild arles bbc tv series.
Speaker 4:We um, we learned a lot through that, because it's quite complicated doing a kind of partnership campaign, but one of the things that was good that came of it was restrictions on fishing of sand eels off the north coast and the north sea here in the uk, which is the food stuff of puffins, and of course, there was a part of one of the episodes that was about puffins and puffins were really suffering and struggling because of sand eels uh, you know, being overfished and, and I think if you can also point to tangible things that have changed as a consequence of of campaigning, I think that's really really important too, and sometimes they can seem like you know relatively small things in the scheme of things, but when you think about you tie that into the story of the puffins, which of course, everyone remembers just how unbelievably cute they are, for a start, but also it speaks of something bigger, doesn't it?
Speaker 4:Which is, you know, obviously unsustainable fishing, overfishing of our oceans. You know, and how you know, small steps can actually be part of something bigger. I think that's also important amazing.
Speaker 3:Well, mark, I don't want to do a shameless plug for another episode, but we had a previous podcast episode on ocean science diplomacy I would recommend you listen to. Um, I think almost our most listened to episode. It was extraordinary. I had no idea. Anyway, mark, we're out of time, so we have one last question for you before we wrap up, and that is this Our network is ironically ironically called Do Not Smile, because we know that we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So our question is what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:oh, I mean my, my whole family here, make me smile a lot, and that's partly because we take the mickey out of each other a lot, uh, and all in a really nice way.
Speaker 4:Thinking of an object. So there's a tree at a place we look after even these trees called great overwood, called the pablo oak, and it's around about a thousand years old and it is the most stunning oak tree you have seen. It's incredibly, incredibly good condition and it makes me smile partly because of that. But it also makes me smile because there's a story which is that, um, the jazz musician who lived locally, a guy called acker bilk and his mate, uh, was smoking a fag at the top of the tree and people were disturbed, uh, and actually managed to leave one of the facts burning and it basically burnt out the inside of the tree or set alight and yes, that's kind of not funny, but actually the tree has had the last laugh, because the tree is just fine and it just tells you something about the resilience of nature, and so that that tree certainly makes me smile ah, wow, mark, I I tell you what.
Speaker 3:I didn't see akabilk coming. I just did not see akabilk. Uh, I think my mother and father's favorite jazz musician. I think I grew up with the sound of Ackerbilk in the background. That's been an amazing conversation, mark. We've got so much to think about and we could have gone a lot deeper. I feel we're on the edge of a philosophical juncture there, but we're going to have to wrap it up, so Damla over to you.
Speaker 2:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Geist podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, mark Damla, see you soon.
Speaker 4:See you, thank you, thank you, bye.
Speaker 1:Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
