About the team
The Social Gym is a collaborative, multidisciplinary studio. We are building a crack team of experts and specialists who work together - sometimes repeatedly, sometimes just once - on different projects connected with social health. These include psychotherapists, social scientists, behavioural designers, campaigners, communicators and others.
We’d love to hear from you if you would be interested in joining us or working with us in some capacity.
About Kate
I founded The Social Gym because, after nearly 20 years of working for social, environmental and political change, it dawned on me that we aren’t making the changes we need to see in the world because the necessary relationships are missing. Worse, many of us are losing the skill of creating and maintaining healthy relationships. And, worse still, increasing numbers of us have had so little exposure to good relationships that we are normalising our sense of alienation and disconnection.
If we don’t feel seen or heard or valued, if we can’t get on with people, if we don’t care much about others, and, above all, if we don’t feel cared for ourselves, then we’re simply not invested in improving our world, let alone in a position to improve it.
That’s the big picture about why I think our connections matter so much, but beneath it this is as personal for me as it is for you. My relationships are the greatest sources of joy in my life, and the greatest source of heartache. I yearn for a richer sense of community. I can’t bear to hear about another “death of despair”. And I need to improve how I handle conflict.
Meanwhile as a mother I wonder what I can do to prepare my daughter for a world where relationships will be both more important and harder to forge. And it strikes me that while there are some things I can do for her directly, what we really need is a major cultural change in our approach to relationships and the way that we value them. I want to be part of that change, and I’d love you to be part of it too.