Model Activist Lily Cole and Oscar-winning Filmmaker Jimmy Chin To Headline Virtual Sustainability Festival

Creative workspace and accelerator Huckletree has announced it’s hosting Earthrise Summit, a virtual festival to unite sustainability leaders, founders, politicians, change makers and innovators from all corners of the world, to inspire people to take action.

Climate change remains the biggest long-term threat to global stability and the pandemic has made it harder to tackle, so on Wednesday 19th May, speakers including Lily Cole and Jimmy Chin will headline virtual stages, alongside fire-side Q&As, panels and curated workshops, to raise awareness and highlight the role we all need to play in fighting climate change, on a global and local level. 

Earthrise Summit will lean into the UN SDGs around Climate Action but focus on solutions rather than problems. Putting a spotlight on how we can move forward with optimism and confidence is one of the key outputs we are driving toward across the event.

Model and actress turned activist and social entrepreneur, Lily Cole, will headline the festival, with her key session focusing on ‘Optimism, Ingenuity and Tackling the Climate Crisis’. Cole will be joined by Academy Award–winning filmmaker, National Geographic photographer, and a professional mountain climber Jimmy Chin, exploring ‘Environmental Stewardship & The Human Imagination’ in his talk.

Huckletree’s Earthrise Summit 2021 festival will bring together 60 speakers across 4 stages for 8 hours to discuss, debate and showcase how we can build a more sustainable future. 

Patrick Keogh, Programming and Festival Director Huckletree commented: “We took inspiration from the past year; the global pandemic has taught us that nature and innovation go hand-in-hand and that institutions are slow to act. We believed that the call to protect the future health of the planet is too great for any business leader or any community to ignore or pass accountability on. We also believe the climate issue is so serious that it needs serious creativity. Rather than silo-ing the agenda to one sector or one institution, we need as many diverse minds collaborating and weighing in, exploding the topic, taking it to new brave areas, and creating positive outcomes that are actionable today, tomorrow not just 10 years out.”

International law firm CMS, Silicon Valley Bank, and A/O Proptech are lead sponsors of the summit, and all three will provide support and services to Huckletree’s educational programmes and members, too. 

Keogh added: “Our vision is to build a festival of ultra collaboration where artists comment on policy, climbers advise on marketing, academics get their hands dirty on product development, investors and venture partners weigh in on education. For us the event is all about raising mass awareness and tolerance through 8 hours of heated, actionable, no-holding-back collaboration and it’s open to anyone; entrepreneur or not. This is not the time to slow down. We have been building momentum off the back of our Alpha Accelerator which is themed around Sustainable Planet and the announcement of three Sustainability partnerships last month. We’re so excited to see 60 speakers take to the virtual stage for our biggest event of this kind in Europe.”