ABOUT

Tell us who you are!

Farah Ahmed, 30, Climate Justice Lead/Events Coordinator at environmental arts charity Julie's Bicycle.

So what do you actually do?

My job role is split. I spend half of my time working on managing events, and the other half working on our climate justice programming. This involves podcasts and short films, artist commissions, developing resources, and delivering talks and workshops.

What has your career path been?

My career path has definitely taken the scenic route to where I am now. I studied fashion at college and university, but I dropped out as I could not compete financially and I was struggling with my mental health.

I have done a lot of jobs since then - waitress, events caterer, face painter, restaurant manager. I also worked for fashion designers in my early twenties, managing their studios and shows. All of this means that I have a really varied skill set and I learn new things very quickly. Being adaptable and proactive are really valuable qualities if, like me, you don't necessarily have the qualifications that some organisations expect to see.

When I started at Julie's Bicycle I was the Company Administrator. By speaking up, being adaptable, and sharing the skills I learned in my previous jobs, I moved into a new role, Events and Network Coordinator. That role was really about supporting with the events, and also being a point of contact for the different communities and networks we work with and finding the best ways to keep people connected and share their work.

Through all of this, I was also learning about climate justice. I was attending talks, meeting activists and artists, volunteering with grassroots campaigns, and speaking at events. This helped me to push the conversation about climate justice forward at Julie's Bicycle. We produced a podcast, The Colour Green, we started to include justice in our events programming, and it is now formally embedded in the organisation and in my role as Climate Justice Lead.

What is the best part of your job?

Talking to people! The work that I do sits at the intersection of art, climate change, and activism so I get to meet some really incredible people who inspire me and keep me hopeful for a better world.

What inspired you to do your job?

I feel like it is a real calling. I eat, sleep and breathe my work because I feel the urgency of climate justice really deeply and I don't feel like I have a choice to turn away from that.

I also know that being visible as a queer woman of colour in this space is really important, as the impacts of the climate crisis are unequally shared. The more we can communicate with our own communities and platform solutions from people who are more impacted, the better our responses can be.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

Don't be afraid to speak up!

The other thing I would say is that my role is very new and niche, and not at all where I expected to be, even 3-4 years ago. If your route through your career hasn't been very traditional, embrace it and use what you have learned along the way to shape what you need from your workplace.

Finally, make sure you have a solid network around you. I could not do the work I do without supportive, generous people surrounding me. Seek out mentors too, hearing from people who have done it before is super helpful.

Final words?

When I was younger, I could not have imagined the position that I'm in. It takes courage to speak out and create space for yourself - embrace it!

Check out Farah’s Twitter below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

I'm not a huge morning person and I'm currently working from home so I get up at around 9am. I do my skincare, get a coffee and get to work.

We have team meetings at 9:30am half the week, where we chat through our priorities and anything that we need to be aware of as a team. I'll then spend 15-30mins catching up on any emails that have come through overnight or in the morning. I work better in the afternoons, so I use the rest of my mornings to do smaller or more urgent pieces of work.

One of the best choices I made over lockdown was keeping a dedicated lunch hour in my diary at 1pm every day. I am not always the best at sticking to it but the consistency and the time away from my desk is really important, especially working from home when my whole life is in one bedroom. You need boundaries!

The afternoons tend to be for slower work, like writing or researching. I also have lots of meetings dotted around throughout the day so no one day is the same.

I log off at around 5:30pm, sometimes a bit earlier, sometimes a bit later. I listen to what my body tells me it needs, so I take regular breaks, I snack, and if I need to stop a few minutes earlier or I am getting into something and need to carry on, I will do that.

If I am managing an event, I tend to join that around an hour earlier, and give myself a good break afterwards. If I'm speaking, I will give myself a good break before and after, even if it's online. I get nervous about public speaking so it's important to create space to decompress.

My evenings at the moment are not at all exciting. When the world was more open, I would spend my evenings attending shows and talks, meeting friends or going for dinner. I try to do some of that online but I really struggle with keeping focused after spending all day staring at a screen. I try to be gentle with myself and not get too stressed about missing things when I don't have the energy.

I also do some volunteering as a mentor and telephone befriendee, and I also co-facilitate Diaspora Futures, a gathering space for POC in the environmental sector, so my evenings are sometimes taken up with meetings, check ins or workshops. I try to limit these so I can give my poor brain a rest.

I'm a night time person, so I tend to get another burst of energy for cooking and cleaning quite late in the evening before I head to bed at around midnight.