Episode 7, Game Changers and Transition Makers: Painting ESG

Elena:

Hello and welcome to ESG Matters @ Ashurst. I'm Elena Lambros, the Ashurst risk advisory climate change and sustainability partner.

Welcome to this latest episode of Game Changers and Transition Makers. In this series, I'll be speaking to entrepreneurs around the globe who are at the forefront of driving the sustainability agenda through innovative business ideas and company startups. In this episode, I'll be joined by Chris Pensa.

Chris is the founder and creative director of Pensa Events, a boutique corporate events consultancy based in London. Chris's creative approach always delivers something special for his progressive corporate clients who want a unique way to engage their most-valued clients.

Chris began his career in the art world, and he's now one of the UK's leading street art experts and street art historians. Chris is also a former competitive figure skater, which led him to create Street Art On Skates in lockdown, the world's first and only live-streamed street art tour on rollerblades, an experience he still hosts for clients all over the world. So, without further ado, let's jump in and hear the discussion.

Thanks Chris, for joining us today. We're so happy to have you on the podcast, so welcome.

Chris:

Thanks for having me.

Elena:

So, I thought it would be really good, I think it's always nice for our listeners to understand. Could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what your business is?

Chris:

Sure. So, I started my career as a British art expert and auctioneer at Sotheby's in London. And I'd come from a degree in art history, where I studied at the Courtauld Institute. And my time at Sotheby's was a really a wonderful part of my early career and amongst many highlights of that time, I became the first person, kind of accidentally, but anyway, nonetheless, I became the first person to catalogue an artwork by the then unknown artist called Banksy for sale at auction back in 2005.

Elena:

Yeah, wow.

Chris:

Which was a really interesting and amazing moment for me personally. It sort of marked the moment that my interest in street art and graffiti was kind of piqued, but it also marked the transition of graffiti from street to gallery, which was a really seminal moment, I think. And in that early 2000s, the urban art movement, as it were, really came up, and I was very lucky to have a ringside seat. And I spent seven or eight very happy years at Sotheby's. But in 2010, I left Sotheby's to set up my own business, which I'd always, at the back of my mind, dreamed about doing. Initially, I set up a behind-the-scenes arts club for young collectors and art lovers, where I would leverage my contacts and unique access to the art world to little pop-up events for collectors that would... There would be four a month, and they would pay a subscription fee and they would have access to all these really special events.

But that very quickly became a boutique corporate events consultancy because many of my members and collectors were young lawyers working in London for example. And we started to, quite organically, started to do private events for them and their clients. And so, the business sort of naturally morphed into a boutique events consultancy, which was targeted exclusively at corporates and their clients.

So, that's where I am today. Aside from that, I still, I suppose, keep my hand in with my graffiti and street art roots because some of the sort of events that we do, particularly in the summer focus around street art, because I'm not your average street tour guide. I have a very unique angle and connection to that world. So, I do connoisseurs' walks, I do workshops and all sorts of things like that in the summer. So, I still very much do that. And increasingly, the themes of ESG and sustainability and environment actually come into my world quite heavily, largely because that's what my clients are interested in or certainly exploring that. So, there are lots of interesting avenues that my work takes me.

Elena:

Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. And so, when we start thinking about your clients now and the need that you're trying to solve and you started touching on ESG, would it be helpful to maybe just outline some of the events that you run and just how that works, and how people kind of start to engage with them?

Chris:

Absolutely. So, I mean, if we just look at ESG for example, I'll be working on briefs with clients that might take me to creating panel discussion, for example, with some leading voices in the climate conversation. And we'll do that perhaps with some of the clients who might be on the panel too for an audience of their own clients, and it'll be in a really amazing space in London that has a huge screen, so that we can show some really inspiring images and videos and stuff as part of the conversation. For example, there's an amazing rewilding project. I don't know how many of your listeners are actually familiar with the UK. But in Sussex, which is about an hour and a half south of London, there is a three and a half thousand acre estate run by an amazing couple, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree.
Isabella is a writer and a climate activist of sorts. And they inherited this three and a half thousand acre estate, which had been farmed for many hundreds of years by their family. And about 20 years ago, they decided to just let the entire estate go back to nature and not farm it. And people thought they were crazy at the time. And fast-forward 20 years, and they have the most amazingly diverse ecology there. They have species of butterflies and free-roaming herbivores that have not been on that land for hundreds of years. So, it's a really amazing thing. And we do rewilding safaris there. We take a walk with Isabella and have a lunch with her, and she does a book signing. And the whole point of that exercise is to get people out of London, out of their London bubble, London mindset, or any inner city mindset, take them into nature and to have those conversations about how we can make an impact on the environment either personally or with our clients or with the work that we do actually in a space that is relevant to that conversation.

So, it's interesting that a lot of those conversations, I guess particularly at maybe governmental level, for example, will happen in a meeting room. And my view is how can you really, for example, learn to love something that you can't see? So, when I think about how I approach life with my children, for example, if you don't take young people who, let's face it, are the future, if you don't take those people into nature, how can you expect them to protect something that they don't learn to love? So, I'm interested in that, not just with my children, but with my clients too. So, we do all sorts of things like that. But the ESG point comes up, even, believe it or not, in my street art adventures. So, there's a mural in Southampton, which is again, quite a large city south of London, where there's a relatively new mural that has been painted with CO2-absorbing paint.

Elena:

Oh really? Sorry, I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't heard of that.

Chris:

No, I mean it's a relatively new concept, but I mean innovation is happening wherever you choose to find it, right? So, there's a workspace in Southampton called Bold, or The Bold, and an amazing street artists called Nerone has used a CO2-absorbing line-based paint that naturally absorb CO2 as it cures. And yeah, I mean it's slightly difficult to sort of pinpoint exactly how much CO2, but they estimate that 145 pounds of CO2 is absorbed annually, which is about the equivalent of three mature trees.

So, considering that that's just a way that you paint the outside of a building, but actually could potentially have a really interesting impact on the climate, even if it's albeit in that little area, if that paint was, and I'm not advocating for this paint, I'm not a shareholder in this company, but if you painted all buildings with paint that could actually do something good for the environment. And obviously, we can probably get into all sorts of conversations about even the production of paint is perhaps not environmentally-friendly, there are a whole load of pitfalls we can fall into. But, as a principle, there are things that we can do as businesses and as individuals in our daily lives that can actually make quite a big impact.

And I suppose that's interesting for me because if you just read the papers or scroll through Twitter or just pay attention to what's going on in the world, whether it's the environment, or the politics, or the economy or whatever it is, the world can feel like quite an overwhelming, intimidating place. And it's reasonable to think as an individual, "What on Earth can I do? What can I, sitting here in my house in London, do to solve these huge global problems?" And the truth is, as an individual, you probably can't do much if you're just trying to solve those problems. But what you can do is if you can look around your life and make little changes in whatever way you can, that's how you can create real change. And if everyone did that, then obviously we have a huge amount of power and these sorts of things are the sorts of things that I've talked about with our panellists on climate panels, for example, lots and lots of times. So, I think there is a way that we can make change happen, but often, it's about looking closer to home than perhaps at what governments are doing.

Elena:

Yeah, I actually love both of those examples. I love the rewilding example and I love what they're doing there, and taking me through there to really feel it and see what you're protecting.
And also, even the example of paint, you're right, there's so much innovation, there are so many things you can do and they're only little, but each one adds up in their own way. And I think that's what with your company, if I think about what you're trying to achieve and what you're talking about, it's really about that power of art to create that sense of community and social inclusion, which is actually really important around developing ESG and delivering on some of those commitments because it really starts at that community level and making people feel like they're part of the change in some way.

Chris:

I think that's exactly right. And I mean, my business is a people-based business, so I'm interested in people, I'm interested in human behaviour. My role to my clients is to help them make the very most of their own client relationships by creating opportunities to get together with their clients in a way that is not just spending money in a restaurant, or... There is a place for those things, of course. Sometimes you have a relationship with a client where you just have a coffee with them every few weeks, and that works. But when you are spending allocated business development budget, for example, to put on events that you invite your clients to, my role really is to try and push my clients to think, "Well, why don't we do something different? Why don't we surprise them? Why don't we try and inspire them? Why don't we try and challenge them? Why don't we try and maybe provoke them a little bit?"

Not because we're trying to be provocative for the sake of it, but because actually when you make yourself vulnerable, which is again a whole other topic we could discuss about to what extent you can be vulnerable with a client, because obviously, your persona, particularly as a lawyer, or for me, as an events consultant, you want to be on a call with your client and them feeling like you have this, or you know all the answers. And actually, to be able to say, "I don't know the answer, but I'm really willing to try and find out. And let's go along together and do this thing together. And maybe it'll throw up some challenges or some interesting questions that we can discuss together." And actually, at the end of all that, the aim would be that you know each other much better, which is the number one goal.

And I think that's what our clients would say, feedback-wise, is that we don't do run-of-the-mill events. We do interesting, special events. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to have extraordinary budgets to do something special. You just need to approach it with an authenticity and with a creative mind. Because whilst my background was very much in the art world, I think what I try and do is apply creativity to the business world, which often feels like, whether it's true or not, lacks that sort of sense of creativity. For example, if I'm doing a street art workshop where we have two or three of the UK's probably most famous artists painting a mural with me and my clients, one of the first things they always say is, "We're lawyers. We're not creative."

And I always disagree with them. Say, "Creativity is a fundamental human attribute." Like singing. People say, "I can't sing." It's like, "Can you make a sound with your voice? It might not be appealing to everyone, but you can sing." And I feel the same with graffiti and creativity. It's like encouraging my lawyer clients to understand that even if they don't see it this way, if they weren't creative, they wouldn't be good at their jobs. And they are fantastic at their jobs, so they must be able to problem solve, be creative. And when they then get to the end of the workshop and they see what they've created together, they're always surprised. And I'm not surprised, but they always are because they just didn't feel like that was in their toolkit, but it very much was.

Elena:

Yeah. No, it's a really good perspective to bring to some clients and to some... Lawyers are probably in some pretty high-pressure jobs, so unlocking that creativity and thinking about what else you can do and what are you doing on a day-to-day basis is probably pretty inspiring and important for them.

So, in terms of what you would doing with your clients and with their clients, what would success look like to you?

Chris:

That's interesting because I think for me in answering these questions, because I'm a self-employed consultant, it's very difficult to separate professional goals, I think for me anyway, with my personal goals and my personal life, because my work is so much part of my daily life. I work from home, as many of people now around the world do. So, on a professional level, I am really trying to continue building a business that has a unique reputation in my field, and that is business development and strategic client relationship management. So, I often get called my client's best-kept secret, which might sound like I have an issue with marketing, but I like it that way. I like to be someone who my clients feel I'm at the end of a phone or an email. And whenever they call me or email me, they're going to get some kind of creative response that will solve the problem that they're looking to solve. And I really love that.

So, I have excellent relationships with my clients. Obviously, like any business, I'm always looking to widen my client base, of course, but I really want to do that sustainably. Because my business development goal, I suppose, is to do as much work as I can physically cope with without having to employ a business partner or anyone else, because actually, I really enjoy being a kind of a lone wolf in that sense. Whenever I work on an event, I'm always working as part of a team, but they're a team that I assemble on a project basis, if you like. But I really like being my own boss and not having to manage anything other than my life and my time. So, I really want to continue doing work that excites me and excites my clients and pushes me, and pushes them and is creative, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think also, success in business alone wouldn't for me personally be success. I have three kids, and I'm really committed to being a present, active parent. In terms of if I think about my father, for example, he wasn't present. And without turning this into a kind of family therapy session, I'm trying to balance the things that I care about. Yes, I care about my work, but yes, I also care about my family, my relationships and my friends and my interests and my creative pursuits outside of my work. However, all of those things in your life all feed into each other.

So, it's not good enough to just be, for me, an excellent parent, but just struggling to pay the bills. It wouldn't be good enough for me to just be getting, I don't know, £5 million of investment and feel like I'm smashing it, but actually, I never see my kids, or I never have time to kind of... One of my personal interests is cold water swimming. So, if I couldn't go for my daily cold water to swim with one of my swimming buddies, that means my day hasn't been a success because I've failed to prioritise the things that make me happy and productive and successful.

Elena:

I think that you've probably outlined how I feel about my job every day and my family and my kids, and trying to get that balance right between what's really important to you, and it is really hard to be successful in one area without the others. So, that was just such a great explanation of how I'm feeling. So, thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that with the listeners. I'm sure everyone can relate to what you said. So, then if you then take all of that and you think about, well, what then is key to re-imagining our current systems, how are we actually going to change the game in this space, what do you think would be critical to that?

Chris:

Yeah, again, I'm going to give you two answers, really. I suppose I'm going to give you my sort of professional perspective and my personal perspective. Again, I think to track back to that kind of idea that re-imagining current systems like, one of my clients once said to me, "Imagine trying to get the US overnight to drive on the left-hand side of the road, overnight. Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if you literally just didn't give them a kind of lead-up period or any sort of..." Just said, "Okay, on Tuesday, we're now driving on the other side of the road." That feels like an impossible task that would just lead to absolute chaos.

However, someone who was kind of a genius in comms and infrastructure and planning would probably say, "Okay, there is a way... If driving on the other side of the road was critical, say for example, saving the planet, if we had to make some kind of impossible-sounding change in order to save the planet, could we do it? Well, yeah, of course we could." Because people think that systems and governments and laws and rules and stuff are not made by humans. Systems don't exist. Humans exist, and we enforce the systems. So, again, on systemic change, Rupert Read, who is an amazing professor and one of the leading voices in the climate debate or conversation in the UK, in a recent event that we did said, and I'll never forget it, he said, "It's easier..." and I think he was quoting someone else, but nonetheless, this is where I heard it. "It's easier to imagine the end of the planet than it is to imagine the end of capitalism."

When you think about that, that's kind of a pretty profound thing, which I think holds some truth. I think it is easier to imagine the kind of destruction of our planet to a point that we can't change it than it is to imagine a new way of thinking, but that's to suggest that capitalism exists on its own. Capitalism, it's a concept. It's not a thing. It's not a physical thing that you can touch. It's a way of humans going about their lives. So, again, I think that tracks back to how you're in Melbourne, I'm in London, what can you, Elena and me, Chris, do in Melbourne and London to fight against the destructive consumer culture that we live in?

Well, what we can do is decide to buy less as individuals. We can decide to buy less. We can decide to think more carefully about what we buy, and rather than maybe buying something on Amazon because it can be delivered by one o'clock the next day, why don't we try and find a second-hand shop? Or why don't we put a WhatsApp group on our streets and say, "Does anyone have this?" Or, "Does anyone have that?" Borrow stuff? Why do we always need to buy something shiny and new that probably was created in a way that was destructive to the planet? Can we reduce our household waste?

These sorts of basic things. I've got three kids, there's five of us living in our house, and we really make a concerted effort to have one small bag of non-compostable or recyclable waste per week.

Elena:

That's very impressive, by the way.

Chris:

Well, no, but you can do it. You can do it. Of course, you can. But it's not as if that's not depressing. When you walk around your street and you see someone with six bags of black rubbish, you're like, "Oh, does that make my one bag just a kind of drop in the ocean waste of time?" And of course not. But that whole thing of, well, what difference does it make if I choose to eat 70% less meat a week because look at what X, Y, and Z, or countries are doing this. And it can feel a bit depressing, but I think you've got to just try not to get swamped and drowned in all that noise. You just got to try and live your life in a way that you feel is in line with your values and just try and...Yeah, because it's in my head, because I'm a parent, raise good kids. When I think about what I'd like my children to go out into the world being, I don't need them to go and be this hugely successful X, Y, and Z or speak six languages. I want them to go into the world and to be inquisitive. I want them to question everything. I want them to think, "Why do we do that?" Or, "Could we do that another way?" Or I want them to go out and understand that life is a balance because yes, I do want them to kind of care about nature, but I also understand that they need to pay rent, or buy a house, or do all these things. So, it's a real balance about how you take agency in your life and value the little things that you can do versus trying to chip away the vast things that just feel overwhelming.

Elena:

Yeah, absolutely. And there was quite a lot in that. So, many ideas, which I love to hear about and I always love hearing about what people are doing and think about ways that I can improve my own life as well. So, is there anything else that you want to talk about in terms of what's your own personal commitment to net-zero in the next 12 months?

Chris:

One of my clients actually, which I really liked the idea of and I might try and implement this, but he set himself the task for a whole year, not to buy anything new.

Elena:

Oh, wow.

Chris:

And obviously, that doesn't cover food, of course. But any sort of tangible objects or things. He did it a couple of years ago, and it was really successful. I think it was such a kind of interesting journey. What did he learn about himself and how did that affect his behaviour even now to this day? So, I would say I'm interested in trying to do something like that because I'm aware of the consumer nature of the world, which just gets more and more and more heavy every year and every day. The ease with which we can buy things and have them in our hands, it doesn't sit comfortably with me. So, yeah, I like the idea of that.

I think just, again, professionally, my goals for this year are to try and keep pushing my clients to be the very best version of themselves they can be... It's very difficult because some of my clients are multinational corporations, but trying to encourage them to be as sustainable as we can. So, even on a very micro level, if we're doing, as I am, a big ballet performance at St. Paul's Cathedral later this year, and we are going to make the cathedral look very beautiful with a lot of flowers. Rather than just spend this money and grow these flowers and put the flowers in and then just literally throw them away. We're trying to work out ways that we can donate them to a local children's hospital, or just try and extend the life of everything as much as we can. And some of those things will have a short life anyway. Some of those things will have a longer life.

Try and buy a good pair of shoes and make them last 10 years, or buy a cheap pair of shoes and buy one every year. Just a basic kind of, I suppose ethos, which actually, if I think about my grandparents' generation. They very much would cook a roast chicken on a Sunday and make that chicken last all week. They'd have soup and they'd have pasties. And even just with a basic food item, just not just being so disposable, thinking more creatively about that. And just on a personal level, I think just again, trying to raise my kids in a way that they are awake and aware that every action has a consequence. That's the key thing, isn't it? There is no such thing as an inconsequential act. It might not be obvious, but there's always some kind of reaction to an action. So, those are my personal goals.

And also, I think just making them really realise, which is a hard line to hold, because they obviously are getting to a point where they have peer groups and they see what their friends are doing and where their friends go on holiday, for example.

And I'm really keen to make my kids understand that you don't need to get on a plane to have an adventurous, inspiring holiday. We can just get on a train and travel to different bits of the UK and see our friends and camp in their gardens. We're lucky, we have lots of friends who have lots of places that we can go make the most of. So, I just want them to not think that three skiing holidays a year and a month in Barbados is the norm, because personally, I don't think that's a sustainable way to live.

Elena:

Yeah. No, there is a lot in that in terms of the way that you think about and the way you approach your life. And I think one of my favourite things that you said is trying to make everything last longer and make it more sustainable, right? I'm a big believer in that, and you can always do it if you think about it. And whether that's holidaying, whether that's fashion, whether that's food, it's a way, just a way of living that you just make choices around. So, my final question for you is if you could provide listeners with just one action to take away, what would that be?

Chris:

Well, having focused a lot of this chat on my personal kind of views, I'm going to finish with something professional, which is that if you are listening, whether you're a lawyer or whether you are a client relationship manager or whatever you do. If you have some sort of client-facing role and you are interested to explore a more creative, engaging, rewarding for everybody way to stay connected to and deeper relationships with your key clients in a way, this is important, in a way that's truly authentic and meaningful. Then you should call me, because I would really love to help you explore ways in which you can do that in a way that is in line with your personal, professional values and will hopefully inspire, engage, and challenge your clients.

Elena:

Thanks, Chris. That's a great way to end. And I think definitely some of the things that you've spoken about that you've done, I'm sure you'll get some calls. I'll be calling you when I'm next in London.

Chris:

Please do. Well, actually, on that point, I mean, just to say you don't have to do that while I'm in London. I think one of the biggest shifts that I experienced in lockdown and still stays with me and my business today is the livestream element of my work. So, I mean, only last week did I do a livestream Street Art On Skates. I should probably explain what Street Art On Skates is, but a street art tour for a group of clients in Hong Kong. Because I created these livestream tours in lockdown when no one could go outside, and I was able to talk about the street art out there on Zoom while people were just in their homes or in their offices. And again, even before Sotheby's, in a former, former life, I used to be a competitive figure skater. But in lockdown, when I was thinking about ways I could do these live stream tours, I started doing them on foot, and I was a little bit frustrated about how little ground I could cover.

And I literally had a light bulb moment 4:00 AM one morning, and I woke up and I realised I should do them on my roller-blades. So, I set up Street Art On Skates literally the very next day. And within about a week, I was doing live stream tours on my roller skates of Shoreditch in London, and it just really sort of blew up. And I make little short videos once a week or so of me skating around talking about interesting pieces of street art, which you can find on my graffiti page, which is House of Graffiti on Instagram, and you can find all those videos there. But even now, I still do live stream tours for clients. So, say in the US or in Hong Kong or wherever that is, you can live stream to a little slice of London without actually being here. So, that's pretty cool too.

Elena:

That is actually very cool. So, thank you. On that note, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure hearing from you, so thank you again.

Chris:

You're welcome. Thank you very much.

Elena:

Thank you for listening. I hope you found this episode both worthwhile and insightful. To learn more about our podcast, visit Ashurst.com/podcast. This Game Changers and Transition Makers miniseries follows on from our 30 for Net Zero 30 series, and I would encourage you to click on the link in the show notes to find out more, including details of PENSA Events. To ensure you don't miss any future episodes, subscribe now via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And while you're there, please feel free to leave a rating or a review. In the meantime, thanks again for listening and goodbye for now.