Doing the hard work is a big part of becoming a better business, and it doesn’t just happen on its own.

Strangely, the process of becoming a B Corp, despite the blood, sweat and tears can make the process easier. After over a year of solid toil, we completed our B Corp assessment in February 2021, and have now joined the long queue to hear a positive result.

Coming out of furlough was like coming out of hibernation.

The vast majority of The Plant had been furloughed for most of April and May 2020, but winning a great pitch and the green light for a number of new projects meant that we had to hit the ground running, and fast.

So everything’s been turned upside down. Who would have believed a month ago that all professional sports would be cancelled, all theatre, all arts institutions closed and we’re all confined to our homes, some of us working, some not.

Things can change, and things can change quickly when we want them to. Or when we need them to.

This period of enforced stasis on our culture, on our society and on our economy should give us the opportunity to reflect on where we are now, and most importantly where we want to go.

At the beginning of a new decade it’s always tempting to look forward to the future, and begin to envision what may come to pass in the next ten years.

But given the depressively disruptive nature of our current social and political landscape, we think it’s well worth looking back at the last 10 years to see where we’ve come from and what can give us hope for the next decade.

We often say to clients that our process is a bit like therapy for business. We sit you down, give you a cup of tea, talk about the issues you've had in the past, calm your nerves, and help build a pathway to a better and brighter future.

Earlier this week we had Dan Philips, a cycling buddy and tutor in Sustainable Service Design at the RCA come in and run a workshop with our team here at The Plant. The workshop was a way of us beginning to understand what lies ahead for us as an agency, and essentially a little bit of therapy for the therapists.

Last week at the Eat + Sleep conference, a hospitality design event at London's Kensington Olympia, our Creative Director, Matt Utber, gave a brief talk about Food Trends, and in particular about Ethical Eating. The aim was to highlight some of the issues confronting the planet and showcase some of the businesses and ideas that were helping to make a difference.

This summer we transformed our annual team bike ride "Le Tour D'Essex" into a sponsored cycle, raising funds for a very worthy cause:  Art2Print Studio. This community graphic design studio has been doing wonderful work creating opportunities for volunteers with experience with mental health issues. For the past number of the months, we have been mentoring Art2Print and it was our aim to support them further (given recent funding cuts) by raising £2000 to help them buy much needed software/computers for their studio.

This July, we are cycling around Essex to help raise funds for Art2Print, a community graphic design studio based at Blackfriars Settlement in London.

We’ve all done it.

Swanned into the lobby of a favorite hotel like we’re the stars in our own personal movie.  Wearing our best travelling clothes, hair and make up done, gliding through in sunglasses and an air of importance.

As hotel’s start to understand these consumer behaviors and desires, in particular the way that our experiences create a more compelling part of our identities, these personal narratives are played out in a larger scale in the stories that hotels are beginning to tell to their guests.