I’m writing this on the train from Cornwall to Hertfordshire – hoping to sneak there and back before the next intense heatwave sets in. We’re on our way to Groundswell regenerative agriculture festival, where we’re hosting the Pitch Up! Live event to showcase some of the innovative and creative ways farmers and businesses are working together for better food, nature and business outcomes across the UK.

What started as a simple brief to attract sustainable enterprises onto one farm in Hampshire five years ago, has since become a growing national movement to build circular farming communities and thriving rural economies across the UK. We’re just in the process of signing up the 14^th Partner farm, and it’s great to see how much Pitch Up! has grown – in turn growing the opportunities for positive impact.

If you happen to be heading to Groundswell too, you’ll find us in the Teapot (yes, really) at 1pm on Thursday 2 July. There will be speed dating. And we’ll be wearing our peachy new t-shirts.

MORE ABOUT PITCH UP!

STRANGER'S ROLE GROWING PITCH UP!

LIGHTING LITTLE FIRES: TICKETS NOW ON SALE

Back in April, we shared that we’re putting on a very special Firelight event on 17 September, in collaboration with D&AD.

Today, we’re excited to announce the first three speakers:

• : A brand strategist and novelist, Fauzia has led breakthrough work for the likes of Google, Apple, IDEO, and Riz Ahmed’s production company Left Handed Films. Her debut novel The Strangling Fig is out this August.

• : A self-taught artist working across drawing, painting, and sculpture, Steve has exhibited alongside Pablo Picasso and David Shrigley and sold work on all seven continents. He now writes and speaks internationally on creativity, spontaneity and not knowing.

• Yasmin Georgiou: Specialising in people-driven transformation for charities, the NHS, and social enterprise, Yasmin is Strategy Lead at William Joseph. She is also founder of Charity Book Club and a member of the Charity Change Collective. She lives in Cornwall, where she can often be found in cold water.

You’ll have the chance to connect with them in a very different way, thanks to a new format we’re rolling out for this event only. It means the number of tickets available will be limited – but should lead to deeper, more inspiring encounters.

Expect flickering light, spitting wood, candid conversations around the flames. Real-world, real-time, real people gathering in small groups around multiple fires to listen, question, share – sparking creative energy across multiple corners of a twilight garden…

FIND OUT MORE & GET TICKETS

BOSSING IT

Big news! Stranger Collective has a new Managing Director – and it’s .

Daisy joined us two years ago as brand lead, and has worked across many of our key clients including Pitch Up! (see above), Eden Project, Kodak, Arm, SeaSpace, Another Place, Creative Kernow, Agricology, Good Tuesday, Watergate Bay Hotel, Cornwall Council, The Roman Baths and The Duchy of Cornwall.

But more than that, she’s helped us think clearly about what kind of agency we want to be.

We’ve always focused on bold, purposeful work with clients who do good things and that’s what we’ll be doing more of.

As co-founders, myself and continue to be owners and creative directors focussing on strategic, creative work and client relationships – while Daisy takes on the running and growing of the business.

We all share the same ambition to work with more organisations and individuals who give a sh*t and are genuinely fun to do something meaningful with.

Find out more about Daisy and what excites her about the work she does over on…

OUR BRAND NEW WEBSITE

Right, I’m off to find the Teapot… Next Happenings landing late July/ early August…

WE’RE WRITING THROUGH THE CHAOS. ARE YOU?

Oh the juggle. For so many of us, maintaining a fulfilling work life, an enriching creative life and a nurturing homelife is the ever-strived-for feat. It’s definitely something at the heart of how we choose clients and service projects here at Stranger Collective, and beyond that in our passion projects and the culture we aim to create.

So when our good friend and long-time Stranger collaborator ’s book Mother Inc came out in April, we devoured it whole – relating to it ten-fold.

Hannah and I have been talking for a long time about the challenges of balance, particularly as mothers and writers; where time to be creative can be found when life pulls in so many directions and how on earth to make it work. This year’s Penzance Lit Fest felt like a great opportunity to speak candidly about all that, which is exactly what we’re going to do.

Together, we’re hosting a small, honest conversation about Writing Through the Chaos on 9 July at 11am, at Pixel Penzance, where we’ll talk about our writing journeys and publishing experiences, share tips and hacks we’ve learnt along the way and open the floor to hear about your experiences too.

We’d love to see you there, if you fancy it.

FIND OUT MORE & BOOK YOUR SPOT

SPOTLIGHT ON: SUN, SEA… NOT SEWAGE!

It’s hot, the swell is on, it’s not summer holidays yet (!) – which means one thing for us Strangers. Watertime. This year, however, it comes with a sobering warning from Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), about what grot is actually in the water and how our right to clean blue spaces is being completely ignored.

Campaigning to overhaul the UK’s broken sewage system for more than 35 years, SAS wanted to leap on the momentum created by Channel 4’s eye-opening drama Dirty Business back in March to highlight the flaws in Bathing Water Designation that allow water companies to keep polluting the rivers, lakes and seas so many of us play in. When they asked us to help max their impact, we jumped at the chance.

We’ve worked with SAS in all sorts of ways over the years, but this project hit hard. As keen surfers and outdoor swimmers, learning about the government’s willing disregard for our spots, sicknesses and sports was sobering to say the least. It’s a revelation that formed the backbone for the Making Our Waters Count campaign, developed with Venn Creative and rolling out now.

This campaign and cause really matter. If you’re a water user of any kind don’t let the government ignore you anymore. You do count. And you can make a difference.

Find out more about how you can be part of the movement:

MAKE OUR WATERS COUNT

FROM SEAS TO TREES…

In early 2024, we helped Plant One plant a new section of woodland at Praze-an-Beeble in west Cornwall. Today, the rowan trees have fully cleared their protective tubes and the first oak leaves are emerging. We’re supporting Plant One again this year in their mission to not just plant new trees, but create and protect new temperate rainforest across Cornwall. Find out more in ’s recent update on our impact work – and watch the vid (taken this week) to see how those saplings have grown.

TALKING SHORTS

What a joy it was earlier this month to be able to share the incredible cover of my first short story collection Hirethow, out this September on Hermitage Press.

Designed by Venn Creative with artwork by the super-talented Adrian Holmes, Hirethow explores the myriad meanings of the Cornish word ‘hireth’ in a contemporary Cornwall and ever-so-slightly off-kilter reality, where walls talk, dreams blur life’s edges, and trees, scream.

As many of you know and experience daily, finding time for your own creative projects around the day job is always tricky, but at the same time it can be endlessly rewarding. Sharpening skills and bringing fresh insights and perspectives to everything you write or make, whatever side of the table it lands.

I’ll be talking more about the process of creating the collection, short fiction as a craft and writing spaces and places over the next few months in the build up to Hirethow’s official release. More on that soon, but for now, if you can’t wait to get your hands on a copy, pre-orders are open!

ORDER YOUR COPY

DO YOU READ?

It's often said that these days people don't read, but is that true? Our friends at independent magazine club Stack want to know more about how people do or don't read, and how they feel about it. Can you spare 4 mins to do their short survey? We’re dying to hear what it reveals…

TAKE THE SURVEY

More Happenings at the end of June. For now, enjoy the sunshine (and the surf) and see you soon.

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Doing good things with good people... That feels like a good way to keep going and stay sane as the world goes nuts.

Sitting around a fire. Talking to people you don’t know. Getting creative outside… Simple, timeless things that make us feel good and spark something inside.

To kick off our new Happenings series on the Stranger Collective Substack, we’re excited to tell you about a new Firelight event we’re hosting with D&AD later this year…

…And how our new working set-up is getting us out and about more, talking to more people…

…Plus some work we’ve been doing to get our creative juices flowing in the spring air.

Read on for the good stuff…

LIGHTING LITTLE FIRES: Stranger Collective X D&AD

Thursday 17 September 2026

This year sees our Firelight event series turn 10. We’ve been lighting our fires – with around 500 people in total sharing ideas around them – in gardens, woods, boatyards, quarries and beaches all over Cornwall since 2016. A decade on, what better way to celebrate than by seeing Firelight on a national stage, as part of D&AD’s Dead or Alive series?!

The Stranger gang was beaming when our event concept (more on that later!) was chosen to play a part in D&AD’s global conversation about the state of creativity today.

We’ll be telling you more in the coming months, but for now get that date inked in: Thursday 17 September (it will be in Cornwall).

FREE RANGE STRANGERS

We have so many good memories of the studio and co-working space we used to run on Killigrew St in Falmouth from 2016 until 2021, when the pandemic had other ideas. Creative breakfasts; culture clubs; pop-ups; bookbinding, improvisation and mindreading workshops; ‘gin pong’, and even Charleston lessons one night.

Since then, the Stranger team – who live across different parts of Cornwall, Sheffield and the Southeast – has worked ‘hybrid’; partly from home, partly from a smaller office space just up the road. But in February we decided to cut the cord and go fully free range, to mix working from home (hello lunchtime runs/ swims/ dog walking) with rotating around Cornwall’s creative hubs and new breed of co-working spaces, including Pixel (Penzance), CAST (Helston), The Ladder and Krowji (Redruth), SeaSpace (Newquay), Fastnet House (Falmouth) and others.

We’re loving it so far, bumping into lots of old friends and striking up some fascinating conversations with new ones. Spend time at any of these places? Give us a shout, we’d love to say hi.

LET'S TALK!

FULL COLOUR CREATIVITY

As spring colour has been exploding in all its glory, we’ve been inspired to head outside to draw and paint – thanks to a content series we did for our lovely longtime clients: natural bath, body and skincare brand land&water. Stranger writer ’s conversation with artist and author Emma Carlisle gave us lots of great ideas and tips for getting creative in the fresh air, from picking paper to layering materials.

Want to give it a go yourself?

CHECK OUT EMMA'S TIPS

This new Happenings series – covering events, creative work and job/ collaboration opportunities – will come from Stranger Collective co-founders & creative directors, and , every 4-8 weeks or so – basically when we have something interesting to share!

PLEASE NOTE: you’re receiving this email because you’ve either been to Firelight (or one of our other events) in the past, or subscribe to the Stranger Collective Substack. If you’d like to choose which emails you get, or unsubscribe, you can do that here. Thank you.