Looking Sideways: 10 Things
A special Db Fund Creative Exchange, a must-watch documentary, and Natural Selection Surf lands at last.
1. Db Fund Update!
Entries for this year’s Db Fund are now closed - and I’m happy to say we’ve had HUNDREDS of brilliant entries this year. Turns out there’s a hell of a lot of people out there with burning creative ambitions, and who are mad keen for some help to take their idea to the next stage. Well, we’re here to help.
With the entries in, it’s time for the next step - whittling these entries down to a shortlist of finalists so we can start working with our judges to choose our eventual winner.
And what judges we have! This year, we are incredibly fortunate to have Chris Burkard, Luis Medearis and Pacha Light joining us on the panel to select our Fund winners.
To celebrate, and mark the judging phase, we are holding a special Db Fund Creative Exchange with the trio on Wednesday February 26th'; in which we’ll discuss their own approaches to creativity, and learn exactly what they’ll be looking for when it comes to choosing the eventual winners of this year’s Fund.
As ever, our Creative Exchanges are free, but we’re expecting this one to be completely rammed - so sign up here and get your questions ready.
2. I’ve currently trying to get Lucy Walker (director of Mountain Queen and The Crash Reel) on the show for a chat. Her essential documentary on LA’s fires is now free-to-view - go check it here.
Use my code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for massive ski rental discounts and snowboard rental discounts from my pals at Intersport.
3. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has axed thousands of federal US Forest Service and Department of Interior employees, to leave the future of America’s public lands in disarray.
4. More idiosyncratic creative wonder from the great Jamie Brisick.
5. Natural Selection Surf happened and the reviews are solid. (As somebody who watched Zoolander with anchor Ed Leigh at least 100 times in the early 2000s, I’m just impressed he managed to get through those entire broadcasts without once inadvertently referring to ‘the Claymation dude’.)
6. Wright Thompson’s The Barn is the book that has impacted me the most this year, and he’s talking in London next month. Tickets here.
7. Wavelength Magazine is under passionate new ownership, with the brilliant Bella Rose Bunce in the editor’s chair. Order your copy here to support independent surf media - we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
8. A Few Rules For Predicting The Future by Octavia E. Butler, the visionary sci-fi writer who eerily predicted our present discombobulating, Trumpian reality.
9. Finally, two works on the Congo that I found enlightening about the current state of the world (especially Trump’s blatant play for Ukraine, Greenland and Canada’s natural resources): a special Rest Is History series on King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal Heart of Darkness regime in nineteenth century Congo (the Heart of Darkness episode, above, is absolutely brilliant)….
Use Db Journey discount code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for a whopping 15% on any purchase.
10. … and Cobalt Red, a devastating book about how the west’s voracious appetite for cobalt, the key mineral for the ‘green’ transition, is wreaking even more devastating havoc on the country (and its children) today.
Sounds rough about cobalt, we do need to extract more fairly - and maybe it's covered in the book but worth pointing out that renewables have less mining requirement than fossil fuels https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-less-mining-fossil-fuels The state of extraction of oil in some places e.g. Niger Delta is grim https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/jun/01/oil-pollution-spill-nigeria-shell-lawsuit yet generally get much less coverage than lithium and cobalt
Also, can't believe NS Surf happening has passed me by! I guess downside of trying not to go on social media much ATM... Cheers for pointing it out
Love, love, love the Jamie Brisick short!