What do you turn down when you still need the work?
Josephine Tse, Valentina Castillo, Adriana Castillo and Rachel Lo founded the horae after meeting as remote colleagues in tech. They run communications, design and campaigns for climate and social impact organizations from Canada, Colombia, Spain and Indonesia. The name comes from Greek mythology, where the Horae kept the hours and the seasons in order.
Why Take a Listen
- Impact Careers in Communications: Four routes in, including an internship that turned permanent. They hire for proactiveness and curiosity, and they say senior comms and creative director roles still go mostly to men.
- Who They Won't Work For: They read a prospective client's reports before signing, and greenwashing rules a client out. Some of the team freelance elsewhere to cover what that costs.
- The Truck That Took On a Coal Plant: They put a mobile billboard on a truck during New York Climate Week, campaigning against a coal plant development. The plant was not built.
- Climate News Without the Dread: Every piece they publish carries something the reader can do about it. Related: the Solutions Journalism Network.
- Whose Story Is It: On a campaign for Indigenous land rights in Brazil, the message came from the communities. When a partner had not approved something, the work stopped.
- Four Time Zones, One Business: The operation runs on Notion, Slack, Google Drive and Clockify. WhatsApp is reserved for emergencies.
- The 30-Piece Trap: Believing a campaign needs 30 pieces of content to work stops more people than it motivates.
Resources Discussed in the Episode
- the horae: Female-owned creative consultancy working across climate and social change, spread over four countries.
- Clean Creatives: The pledge and the research on agencies refusing fossil fuel accounts.
- Creatives for Climate: Global network of creatives and agencies working on climate, with training and a hub to join.
- Purpose Disruptors: Advertising people organizing to change their own industry from inside it.
- If Not Us Then Who: Trains Indigenous and local community filmmakers and photographers, then helps distribute their work.
- Earthrise Studio: Climate storytelling built for the platforms people actually use.
- Studio Birthplace: Impact-focused production studio with a newsletter worth being on.
- Solutions Journalism Network: Journalists reporting on what works and what doesn't.
- Mongabay and Grist: Where the team gets environmental and climate reporting they trust.
- Climatebase: Climate jobs and community.
- Hidden Brain: Human psychology, recommended for anyone whose job is getting a message to land.
- Radio Ambulante: Latin American storytelling in Spanish.
- Book: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, for keeping creative work from going stale.
- Tools: Notion, Slack, Google Drive, Clockify, Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud.
- Connect: the horae on LinkedIn | Instagram | Josephine Tse | Valentina Castillo | Adriana Castillo | Rachel Lo
PCDN Resources
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