April had an accidental theme: the gap between how systems should work and how they actually do.
April had a theme, even if we did not plan one. A cow that outwitted a government licensing system. A funding movement asking who gets to decide where money flows. A legacy platform reminding families what they leave unsaid. A data dinner in Manhattan wrestling with what is real in an age of AI.
The thread running through all of it: the gap between how systems are supposed to work and how they actually do.
Working with The CLA, we submitted a waste carrier licence application on behalf of a cow called Beau Vine. She was approved in five minutes with no ID and no checks. The stunt sounds absurd, but the point is serious: the same loopholes are exploited by criminal operators dumping waste across the countryside every day. The Daily Mail took it to a national audience.
We also worked with Octopus Legacy to place a full double-page spread in the Mail on Sunday on what families leave too late when it comes to financial planning.Important work, handled carefully.
During Skoll Foundation Forum week, our team supported Urgent Action Fund Africa and TrustAfrica on their London roadshow, with a panel at SOAS on Pan-African and feminist funding, followed by a cocktail reception in Oxford. With Western aid retreating, our clients are leading the conversation about what comes next.
When the UK announced cuts to climate aid, Somalia needed to be part of the conversation. We helped place a letter in the Guardian from Abdullahi Osman, CEO of the Hormuud Salaam Foundation, setting out plainly what those cuts mean on the ground. Climate resilience is built through action, and the UK cannot respond to the flood while dismantling the dam.
We also hosted a dinner in Manhattan with World Data Lab. The conversation kept landing on the same question: in an AI-saturated world, how do you know what data to trust? No algorithm has cracked that yet.
On the awards side, we picked up a Silver PRmoment Campaign Award for our work with Choose Love, in the Low Budget Campaign of the Year category. A direct question to the government on Gaza, an open letter to the Prime Minister that he responded to, and coverage across 17,000+ articles in 34 countries, all on £8,000.
