The Howies DO Lectures

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I felt like Charlie Bucket when Tom from Howies called to tell me I had won a golden ticket to The DO Lectures. But it was difficult to explain to everyone where I was going for the week. It seemed that no one had heard of this event apart from me and the guys on the Howies website. The DO Lectures are how organic clothing company Howies decided to spend their Earth Tax this year in order to engage and inspire individuals to get outside and change the world for the better.

Gaining a place wasn’t as simple as opening a bar of chocolate though, you had to send a hand-written letter explaining why you should be picked. The lucky 75 (including me) were treated to 20 lectures over 4 days and 4 nights at the Fforest Farm eco camp near Cardigan, Wales, where the Howies team are based. In addition to breakfast, lunch and dinner of the best local food, there were workshops in foraging, bread making, documentary film making, and live music from James Yorkston - all washed down with some awesome organic beer.

And all for free - you just had to find your own way there.

The DO lectures took place from the 4th to the 8th of September, but you’ll have to excuse me for not penning this blog as soon as I got back. It has taken this long to find my way back to Scotland, scrub my clothes free of dirt and process the massive volume of insight the speakers bestowed upon us.

As much as it may sound like it, this event was not just for basket weaving hippy types, but focused more on breaking down social barriers by bringing together a huge variety of attendees and speakers from activists to surfers, authors, environmentalists and teachers.

Architect Ken Yeang was first up with his talk on green design, presenting us with futuristic views of Tokyo and New York, illustrating how man could once again live in harmony with nature. The speakers that made me want to DO the most included Trevor Baylis (the old guy that invented the Clockwork Radio) who, with his forward-thinking attitude, offered plenty of advice not just for inventing but also for life itself.

What speaker Andrew Whitley made us all want to do was go out and make our own bread, not just because it’s fun, but because it tastes good and it’s a lot healthier than the adulterated factory loaf we now attempt to digest as our staple food. A chord was struck in the heart of every surfer in the tent during Michael Fordham’s talk titled ‘Embracing the Beautiful Meaningless’, which reflected on how “embracing the vacuity of surfing and other apparently pointless activities can inspire and define a boundlessly fulfilled existence”. We all agreed.

Andy Kirkpatrick speaking at the Do Lectures

Alan Carr lookalike Andy Kirkpatrick is as much a comedian as he is a great climber, and used his humour whilst talking to us about his most terrifying of climbs, and inspiring us all to climb our own mountains. From one extreme to another, Alistair McIntosh, author of ‘Soil’, believes in the power of community to change things, which he explained with reference to spirituality and climate change to a silent audience.

Whether you knew what it was you wanted to DO or not, by the end of the event it didn’t matter. Everyone who attended knew they want to DO something to help our little planet get out of this big mess it has got itself into. It’s always difficult trying to sum up an event or an idea with a quote that hasn’t been used a million times before or isn’t just plain cheesy. But I think Howies founder David Hieatt put it perfectly when he stood up at the end of the event advising us all to “Jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down…”

The lectures were all recorded so check out www.thedolectures.com where you can watch all the lectures yourself for free.

Michael Fordham’s The Book of Surfing, published by Bantam Press, is available now.