In today's episode, Toma Clark Haines, CEO of The Antiques Diva & Co and founder of The Republic of Toma, talks with Katie Treggiden – author, journalist, podcaster, keynote speaker, and the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a membership community and online learning platform for designers, makers, craftspeople, and artists who want to become more sustainable. This episode is a journey from Katie’s idyllic childhood growing up in Cornwall, surrounded by beaches, moors, and the countryside, going fishing after school on sunny afternoons and having barbecues on the beach for tea to the bright lights of university and then a career in advertising. However, with the disillusionment surrounding what the career in advertising was giving – as Katie puts it,“the simultaneously devastating and the best thing that had ever happened” her at that time in life, and the sudden loss of her job due to the closing of her firm’s London office; this is when Katie Treggiden really started living the design writer’s life she had dreamed of as a child.

Katie’s love for design was the spark that kindled her love of writing, and her severance package bought her six months to makeover her life into that of a full time writer and do that, which she did! Katie’s story, at times, seems straight out of a movie. Her passion and perseverance are an inspiration to listeners who are on their own journeys launching their dream careers in design and antiques. When Toma saw Katie Treggiden’s latest book title–Broken, and the subtitle Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World, she knew she must have this longtime colleague and friend on The Business of Antiques podcast. Broken “celebrates 25 artists, curators, designers and makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favor of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.” 

“I think the environmental crisis brings up a lot of feelings and emotions and you can’t create a space that is addressing the environmental crisis without holding space for those emotions you know I talk a lot about,” Katie explains. “Defiant hope and that’s not about passive optimism – that’s about waking up every morning and choosing to believe in a better world and acting accordingly but you can’t do that by bypassing the fear, right? You’ve got to hold space for the fear and hopelessness and the defeat that we all feel and then enable people to move through those feelings and empower them with what they need to take action.” This episode leaves listeners empowered and inspired to carefully and thoughtfully craft their own best lives harnessing their defiant hope to spark meaningful change as Katie Treggiden has. Learn more about Katie, Making Design Circular, tackling the environmental crisis, and more at katietreggiden.com.