Chrissy Levett is the founder & creative director of Creative Conscience, a global platform that encourages, trains, and rewards creative thinking for social justice, sustainability, and many other issues.  

She is also a TEDx speaker, lecturer, and educator, who believes that design & creative thinking should be used to solve global challenges and as a form of positive activism. 

Her motivation

Chrissy worked for NGOs in the field in a developing world using graphics to teach people around the issues of landmines and, and repeat getting refugees repatriated into different countries. Then, some of those kids and she ended up working in a big agency in London where she felt she was creating products that weren’t at all helping in the future. 

After going through a rough patch in her life, and not feeling fulfilled, Chrissy started on a journey of self-curiosity and self-learning. Through consciousness, she was taking time to sit and work out what you love and what isn’t working. Chrissy emerged feeling there had to be a better way of designing, building, and manufacturing products that were beneficial to the future and would have a better impact on people and the environment.  That’s where Creative Conscience was born. She ended creating a platform for the world without any media budget, no funding or anything else. But she learned she was able to change the world just with her actions. 

“And where do you start? Well, Nelson Mandela said the greatest weapon that we have to change the world is education. So if we can build from the ground up, which is what we started 10 years ago. Now, those young people are kind of infiltrating our industry as positive creative activists and they're changing organizations and agencies from, from inside.”

examples Of new thinking

Chrissy referred to a project that came in this year from Jonathan Ford, from the Danish school. He worked with the green party, the alternative party in Denmark. The project is called The Ice Poster. It changed the course of the conversation in their government. So his idea changed the election. The policy changed the conversation for that country and that is something that deserves to be celebrated. 

Chrissy believes that our current academic system is too focused on consumption and finance money and that it is time to look to other ways of thinking.  And for that, there is also a need for mentors. 

And how to become one? Well easily:  If you have something that you're really passionate about, say you're someone who has been in the corporate world and you've got some experience, you could mentor someone who might want to start a social enterprise or a business where you might have a challenge that you feel is really important. It might be around the environment. It doesn’t have to be completely specific to your fields, just something that you’re truly passionate about and help other young people.

• Creative Conscience is where people in the creative and design industry use their talents and skills to create social and environmental impact. Chrissy uses her platform to teach conscious consumption and gets people to understand that in everything they do, they can serve people and the planet while making money and changing the world.
• Through Creative conscience, she trains and supports young people and creatives from all over the world who want to make a change in the world. 
• Chrissy believes one of the ways to push for creative conscience is through education. By getting into creative schools, universities, and educational establishments and encouraging them to start building this into their curriculums, creative conscience will be embedded into our education systems and then embedded into businesses and organizations, creating positive change in the world from within.
• Over the past nine years, she has held a global competition that awards students and graduates from any creative discipline, who have projects that focus on social or environmental impact. Shortlisted projects are judged on creativity and the potential impact, while the winning project is displayed on the companies website- winners page and brought to life through their impact scheme.  Using her platform to award and support young people from all over the world, change is happening, new ways of thinking, and policies are being implemented in various countries.

Chrissy says, “If you've got an idea that is at the heart of it, doing something that is going to benefit the world, people will join in. You have to be able to bring in a community of people and collaborate and share. Now we teach things like conscious consumption. We wanted the design industry and the creative industry to come on board with the idea that they could use their talent for social and environmental impact, that young people from anywhere around the world could send us a project that was in line with our aim.” 

Creative Conscience has undoubtedly achieved global change through winning submissions from the following: 

• Paula Uzicanin: Created a project that would educate people on the fact that landmines might not be in their country, but the power for detonating them, definitely is. 
• Hatem El Akad, Ted Pedro, Refaat Rico, and Lee I: Created “Gang for Good” an effort to turn women in London away from joining gangs. 
• Leli Stella Leitner and Coco Shellim: Informing video game players of the popular game “Call of Duty” that the game pays real gun manufacturers to license their weapons in-game - It’s a video game funding real-world violence. 

Through engaging young leaders, we have begun to reinvent society's definition of education. We have promoted creativity instead of financial gain and hollow motives. Chrissy says, “In our society creativity is not really taken seriously. These projects are creating change and movements. The way that our society is set up, it’s too focused on consumption, finance, and money. We’re all creative, but we’re taught in school that we’re not good at it. We’re siloed off and told that we aren’t skilled enough to be creative.”

Have a project? Contact Chrissy.

If you’re a young person who has a project or needs a sponsor or mentor, you can connect with Chrissy and she’ll help you connect with more people who will help you with your project. They want to make your project happen! You can reach out to her on LinkedIn. Creative Conscience is a charity, so they’re regulated with the charities commissions. They are ready to use arts as a means of creating conscience and helping the world change and improve. And, you don’t have to be an artist to help! Any profession or office is welcomed to join Chrissy’s platform of change. 

Chrissy’s Website: Creative Conscience

LinkedIn: Chrissy Levett

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