ACM Newsletter 64

LISTEN: ACM’S LYNDSAY MCLAREN ON TACKLING SELF-DOUBT AND SEXISM

Battling the self-doubt gremlins that gnaw at all of us is an endless game of whac-a-mole; however hard you knock them down, up they pop again, at the most inconvenient time. The answer then is to find your own unique way for dealing with these little monsters, as ACM account wrangler, skate swami and A Land For Everyone film-maker Lyndsay Mclaren reveals from the Creative Boom guest seat. Lyndsay was invited on to the pod’s latest episode to discuss her tools for managing imposter syndrome and self-doubt as a creative, as well as her experiences of trauma and her fight against sexism in skateboarding and beyond. An essential listen for anybody who is struggling to get started.

READ: DB X LOOKING SIDEWAYS FUND: THE WINNERS 

Db x Looking Sideways Fund: the winners!

While we’re on the topic of ACM team members giving the creatively inclined a boost, agency co-founder and Looking Sideways podcast host Matt Barr has spent the past few months sifting through creative pitches like a wetsuit-clad Santa for the Db X LS fund, set up to help new creatives find a way into the industry. After whittling 300 entries (and a lot of requests to go surfing in Iceland) down to a longlist of 12, the winners have been announced. Congratulations, then, to Antoine Couturier and Eloise Curran, two Scottish film-makers documenting the impact of sewage pollution on surfing, and Jennifer Wang, a US storyteller exploring neurodivergence in action sports. Read more about them and their creative projects here.

WATCH: MY WALKING FAMILY

This time last year, marathon runner and mountaineer Haroon Mota’s Muslim Hikers would have been in the throes of organising their Christmas Day schlep up Mam Tor in the Peak District. However, the mere thought of any non-white people walking in the countryside was enough to turn keyboard warriors puce with outrage, and the group’s social media comments turned into a bin fire. Inadvertently, this also served as a beacon attracting more supporters to Haroon’s push to make the outdoors more welcoming to ethnic minority communities, and the group has since had an incredible 2022. This BBC show joins Haroon as he treks up Scafell Pike with members of Muslim Hikers, and his family.

WATCH: LINE & AIR 

Until we hit play on this nail-biter, the idea of a plane coming together with deep mountain snow didn’t seem all that clever. (You have seen Alive, right?) But this edge-of-the-seat documentary about pro snowboarder and ultralight plane pilot Géraldine Fasnacht’s penchant for finding new lines by flying to them has set us right. We’re johnny-come-latelys, obviously, because this has been going on since 1921, when pioneering Swiss aviator Hermann Geiger first landed on the Monte Rosa glacier, 4,370 metres up. Still, that doesn’t diminish the sense of jeopardy, even when watching safely on the sofa.

WATCH: PATAGONIA: WE ARE THE WATER

The relentless stream of bad news from the frontline of the climate crisis brings with it a real and present danger of people switching off and going full goblin mode. Which isn’t on really, especially when for members of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, and other Indigenous people like them around the world, giving up just isn’t an option. In this latest missive from Patagonia, photographer Dani Kahn Da Silva joins women from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s Coast Salish people, in what’s now more commonly known as British Columbia, as they defend the seas and wildlife they depend on from the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. With things getting real, this is just the sort of against-all-odds activism we need to learn from.