Community

Showing up for our community

With our People + Culture Manager in place, we’ve created more structure for our volunteering time. Nearly all of our volunteering is done with other members of 1% for the Planet – so far, we’ve spent a day at South West Hospice and produced a campaign for One Home (more on that below), and helped dig a wildflower meadow for Your Park.

Making the design industry more accessible

As part of our commitment to the Good Employment Charter, we made two pledges around Recruitment and Secure work. This meant that this year, we’ve pledged to:

• Offer contracts that match actual hours worked;
• Ensure fair pay and conditions for all, including agency staff
and interns;
• Give clear communication about pay;
• Give bias training to hiring managers;
• Make active efforts to remove barriers and support diverse candidates — all to create a workplace where everyone has the chance to thrive.

According to the Sutton Trust, there are around four times as many younger adults (35 and below) from middle-class than working-class backgrounds working in the creative industries.

That’s why all work must be paid work. Unpaid internships are an outdated, exploitative practice that create a barrier to entry for the working class.

Paid work experience protects the future of art, the diversity of creativity, and human voices across classes and communities. As we solidify our work experience programme, we’ll be ensuring that all offered work experience, shadowing, or interning will be paid at the Real Living Wage.

As part of our 1% for the Planet pledge, we donated our time to the UK-based environmental education charity One Home, who help thousands of UK households adapt to a low-cost, low-carbon lifestyle and extreme weather events.

We worked with One Home to shape a campaign targeting the insurance sector – an industry both hit hardest by climate change and best placed to fund solutions – positioning insurers as the unlikely champions of a safer, greener future.

In the span of just one day, the team created the ‘Insure Our Tomorrow’ campaign, consisting of a fresh one-page pitch, video bookends for content use, and internal and partner versions of social assets and email signatures.

We flooded the creative with a sense of vibrancy and urgency, blurring One Home’s usually clean, clear geometric brand to reflect climate uncertainty. The warming gradients balance this blur, suggesting transition, momentum, and a sense of optimism – inviting action and return to clarity.

This was a fantastic chance to put our collective skills to use for a cause that urgently needs creative clarity, and a reminder of the impact design can have.