Like all Editions, Adventure Activism showcases an array of adventures. But it also highlights the mechanisms through which these adventures seek change. The clearer we are about these, the better we can dream up and support impactful adventure ideas.

Our first mechanism is entrepreneurship, which typically doesn’t feel like activism. But radical businesses can be powerful changemakers. A superb example is Coalition Snow: one of the world’s only female founded and owned snowsports companies, now with a supporting podcast and magazine. We really enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with Co-Founder Jen Gurecki. We also spoke with adventurer, maker, campaigner and investor Dhruv Boruah about how he supports entrepreneurship with adventure, and why we must further bridge that divide.

Photo Courtesy of Ashley Hutchinson and Greg Johnson

Next comes representation: who is adventuring. Especially for groups historically marginalised from adventure narratives, being represented is essential to inclusion. Enter Genny Brown, attempting to become the first Aruban woman to ski to the South Pole while raising awareness of Lyme Disease.

More explicitly, adventure can support campaigns. Nick Hayes - whose Book of Trespass draws on his own trespassing escapades to dissect the elitist system of UK land ownership, as the government moves to criminalise trespass - invites us to campaign against this regressive legislation. We also spoke with kayaker Dan Yates, who as a campaigner at the forefront of European river conservation knows how to mobilise the adventure community.  

Campaigning relies on storytelling - something adventure lends itself to. This month friend of Adventure Uncovered Mike Elm tells us about their respective efforts to collect environmental stories from their tour saddles. 

Relatedly, we’ve found that artists are often the most interesting adventurers, whether or not they identify as such. Art can make arguments creatively. We spoke with two photographers this month to this end. Anastasia Samoylova’s work explores landscape, and our perception of it. Benjamin Grant, Founder of Overview, sources stunning satellite imagery to visualise our impact on Earth. 

Australian forest fires, from Overview Timelapse, the new Overview book

Some adventure modes morph into communities of action, aligned with specific issues. Charity communications expert and former journalist David Lyons writes about his discovery of surfing, and the surf organisations combating plastic pollution, on the island of Coll. And Michelle Parkes, Co-Founder of Plogolution, introduces us to the world of Plogging. 

Adventure also catalyses personal transformation - a process different for everybody. Catherine Edsell writes this month about her career as an expedition leader and conservationist, and her current work leading women on transformational expeditions.

Running through all of these mechanisms is awareness raising - the most common, although often important and epic, ambition for adventurers with a social or environmental mission. We spoke with famed polar explorer Børge Ousland on his mission to ski the world’s largest polar ice caps.

It is important to emphasise that adventures, including those above, rarely fit neatly into one category. Our longform interview with environmentalist Kate Rawles demonstrates this. Her work as an adventurer, lecturer, writer and storyteller spans many of these categories. She also introduces a new one: adventure as metaphor, for how we must change faced with the environmental crisis.   

Entrepreneurship, representation, campaigning, storytelling, art, communities of practice, personal transformation, awareness and metaphor. What needs adding? We’d love to hear your thoughts as we continue to address this question. For now, we hope this Edition is a useful, if imperfect, step in thinking carefully about impactful adventure. 

This Edition will be our last of the year, although we will publish a few independent pieces and a Best of 2020 reflection. Far from winding back, this is to open up space to launch a new approach to online content in 2021 based on what we’ve learned this year. More on that soon!

Thanks so much for reading - we really do appreciate it, and as ever we welcome your feedback.

Until next time our thoughts are with everybody as winter descends.

The Adventure Uncovered Team.

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