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Branding The Environment |
In 2004 David de Rothschild, now 29, became the youngest Briton to have crossed Antarctica. Already an established internet entrepreneur, he went on to start Adventure Ecology, which brings together his love of travelling, business, art and education. The basement office in the heart of London is also a schoolroom, where dozens of children every week are rendered wide-eyed and speechless by David's stories and pictures
S: What sort of upbringing did you have?
DdR: I wasn’t really into school. I was far more interested in what was going on outside my window. I was lucky to grow up in the country, where I had the chance to go out and play all day long. I also rode – I was a three-day eventer for the British junior team and spent a lot of time with my uncle, who was an Olympic show jumper. We’d go off on horse trials all over the country, and to Europe.
S: Did you enjoy the competitive aspect of that sort of life?
DdR: I love horses, so I loved riding, and the idea of competing, of pushing yourself. I was coming first and second in the country at my level for quite a few years. It was an exciting feeling, always quite surprising: ‘Wow, I just did that!’ From there I went on to sixth-form college in London. It was one of those schools where you turn up for lessons, m
aybe – you were treated as an adult. It was a good combination of life lessons as well as school. Richard Louv wrote a book about children and what he calls ‘Nature Deficiency Disorder’. We live in school systems that are quite sterile and don’t let children understand and explore a bit more the everyday workings of life. We all
need guidance when we’re younger, but we shouldn’t underestimate the insights and optimism kids have as drivers of change, especially when looking at something like the environment as an issue. Kids are very real in their assessment of a situation. So for me it’s important to empower kids, give them the opportunity to spend time outside school and reconnect with the natural world. I was fortunate to have had that
sort of balance.
S: After university you became involved in an internet merchandising company, didn’t you?
DdR: It was 1999, and we’d had four years of only having to say ‘www’ and people would put a fortune into you. Our concept was simple: it was personalised t-shirts and merchandise for pop groups and the like. After a while I realised that this wasn’t what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. I wanted to do something with a bit more substance. The tipping point came in 2004, during the crossing of Antarctica. I remember listening to our conversations, how they were driven by self, by ego. With me, it became more and more about what we were seeing. I began to look at it from a point of view of the energy and the interest that was created by the expedition. People love a
story, and we were telling a great story. But that story was solely
about us – it was a pursuit that began and ended in a selfish place. When you have eight hours a day with your head down, pulling a sled, for 80 days, you have a lot of time to think. Taking the experience I’d had in the arena of merchandising and branding, I realised that for me the next brand to sell was the environment. Very quickly after coming back in 2005, I set up Adventure Ecology.
S: How does the gallery fit into your scheme?
DdR: The art programme is hopefully creating more awareness through storytelling in different media, and to a different demographic. On our last expedition we went to Ecuador. With us were the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, the British photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, New York-based film-maker Dustin Lynn and the American
ethno-botanist Maria Fadiman. The idea is to take a group of people to look at a location and get them to respond to the experience. Art has a great way of making you feel something. It’s like Marmite – you either love it or hate it. It makes you look outside of your box for a minute.
Read the whole story in Sublime Issue 6, page 14.
