Meet Chrissy Levett, Founder + Creative Director at Creative Conscience, a global platform set up to empower, train and reward creative thinking only for social and environmental impact.
Chrissy Levett is a creative director, designer, speaker, educator, mother, and activist who is using creative thinking to promote sustainability and have a positive impact on the environment. There’s no surprise in the fact that the design and fashion industry is responsible for leaving behind a lot of waste with their projects. Looking at all the glitz and glam in the front, we often overlook the waste that occurs in the background, which harms the environment. Chrissy has taken the charge of changing this situation and making the industry and the consumers aware of the problem through Creative Conscience.
She is a dyslexic designer who initially worked as a creative director at a reputed branding agency in the UK. She was also the only woman member on the board of the company. On the personal front, Chrissy was going through a rough patch in her life at the time. Being in a destructive relationship with an addict, she was in a state of absolute despair. But she says, “Out of despair comes great learning”.
Coming out of the phase, she took a course on self-expression and leadership. Chrissy realized that the industry was designing and building products that weren’t actually required and consequently destroying the future. In 2012, she launched a platform called Creative Conscience to get the industry experts to use their talents for social and environmental impact. The community project worked to encourage designers, creators from all walks of life to focus their talents on people and the planet instead of an economic system that is unsustainable for humanity. It allowed her to create a community that would impact the lives of millions of people while also allowing her to find peace. She feels that the problems in her personal life instigated this huge change.
Chrissy points out that no one was concerned about plastic pollution and its consequences on the environment ten years ago. The industry was and still is, centered on capitalism. But now they have reached enough people in time to make way for global regeneration and conscious behavior change. They have teamed up with the next generation of creative thinkers for their global platform. They train and empower creative thinkers for a positive environmental change.
Elaborating on what the platform is all about, she says, “Creative Conscience is a charitable foundation set up to empower and change society through creativity and education. We run an annual global awards scheme that has inspired over 5 thousand creative projects engaging young people from more than 90 countries, and at the heart of each project is social and/or environmental impact. We have influenced change in university education systems and lectured to the 1000s across the world. It is a community-built initiative focused purely on people and the planet.”