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Support for meaningful work has never mattered more. And yet the two sectors best placed to deliver it are both feeling the squeeze at once. Creative agencies on one side, and the organisations driving social and environmental progress on the other.

The UK's creative industries, worth £123.74 billion in 2024, contracted by 1.3% on the year. That's the first real slowdown after a long run of rapid expansion. Around 70,000 roles went, with design and advertising among the hardest hit, and redundancies at agencies more than doubled, from 3.4% of departures in 2022 to nearly 7% in 2023.

The picture looks strikingly familiar on the other side of the table. Environmental charities and NGOs are caught in what researchers call a "vicious cycle", where thin resources hold back the work that would attract the funding to grow. Over half of charities now expect to make redundancies, and reliance on volunteers has jumped from 23% to 68%.

So neither sector is struggling alone. They're struggling together, which is exactly where things get interesting.

This tension sits at the heart of what we do. The organisations doing the most vital work tend to have the least capacity to tell that story, just as the agencies built to help them are stretched thinnest. Meanwhile, 70% of executives expect climate change to shape their company's strategy over the next three years. The intention is there. The capacity to act on it isn't keeping pace. Purpose-driven work needs creative support now more than ever, and the traditional agency model still sits out of reach for the people who need it most.

That's the gap we've spent this year learning to bridge. Most of our work already touches environmental causes, but we realised our projects had to fit the reality organisations are living, especially where resource has been stripped right back. So in a year that's tested both sectors, we kept busy, redefined how we want to show up, built partnerships we're hugely grateful for, and delivered work that matters. Let's dig in...