Anna Hyde: climate activist

Everyone has a story. Meet Anna Hyde, the climate activist who’s inspired by her young son and her Islington life to put huge amounts of time and skill into turning the Islington Climate Centre pop-up into a proper community hub where people can ask questions about the climate crisis, learn about low energy and chat as they print T-shirts, join inventive workshops or just look at the info on the walls. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

“It’s Hyde, like Jekyll,” says Anna Hyde wittily when Islington Faces first meets this forcefield in the pop-up hub for the local environmental and community groups, residents and businesses that she set up with friend Bel Jacobs. She’s wearing her climate credentials on her long-sleeved T-shirt, some of them self-printed at one of the Islington Climate Centre workshops. She’s also sporting a Peaky Blinder style cap to keep out today’s torrential rain and has a chunky XR necklace. Despite being dressed to stay dry, the rain is a big worry to her. “We’ve got to ask ourselves, what does it look like for basement flats, ground floor flats and crops if we get 200mm of rain in 36 hours (as with Storm Agnes and Storm Babet in Scotland) when the UK’s annual rainfall is 800mm?”

FOLLOW Islington Faces, a new interview is published approx once a fortnight

Anna’s soon sweeping us all into conversation about what we can do. There’s a workshop to bring life back to holey jumpers with Tessa the Dresser; all sorts of people dropping into the pop up to ask what’s happening next or to find out when Climate Fresk facilitator training workshops are being run. If no one’s there then just check out the website .

 

Finding Islington
Anna grew up in the Lancashire countryside but regular house swaps at Easter during her childhood between a friend of her Dad’s, who lived in Gerrard Road, N1 and her rural home which she likens to “the town and country mice” house swap has meant that she’s known Islington for many years.  “As a child I saw the Star Wars movie at Leicester Square, that was a big wow and I remember getting some skateboards and doing slalom around the manhole covers in Gerrard Road,” she says. These early experiences eventually pulled her to Islington – after 10 years living in Stoke Newington – and she is now settled off Holloway Road.

“I really love the transport around Highbury Corner. I don’t have a car, but I don’t need one in Islington,” she enthuses.

Anna used to work as a sales and marketing director. Her credentials are cool: she was at Mumsnet (an Islington success story) and before that at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

“Sales and marketing people are rare in the climate movement. What I’m attempting to do is use communication skills that I’ve learnt in media to try and engage people and help them connect. At the ICA we had lots of festivals, so it was all about networking and connecting,” says Anna making it clear that this is what she’s trying to do now at the Islington Climate Centre. “Like the ICA we are trying to create seasons. We share loads of great ideas giving people a platform to showcase. We also have exhibitions and mending parties. There are brilliant ideas popping up all over the borough and our job at the Climate Centre is to give them a platform and showcase them.”

===========================

Places that Anna Hyde loves in Islington

• New River Walk – it’s nice for taking kids for a wander. But I’ve also played hide and seek here and been to children’s birthday parties.
• I adore the trees on Highbury Fields. At one stage I was walking up and down the fields twice a day to collect my child from nursery – and I really loved it.
• Freightliners Farm is so unexpected and cute. I also really like the planting between it and Paradise Park.
• When my child was small Arundel Square was my favourite playground. It’s where I could sit down and still keep an eye on him. It’s a really successful bit of urban planning.
• Obviously, I love Islington Climate Centre and I’m here a lot at this pop up at Angel Central Shopping Centre, N1. The whole point of the climate centre is to engage, inform and connect. Islington is such a vibrant borough of great ideas so really nice to engage with people here.
• The Island Queen pub – I love those big mirrors. Back in the day when I was visiting Islington in Gerrard Road I went here as an underage drinker. You couldn’t do that now.

=======================

Low carbon ideas here and now
Anna’s community enthusiasm stretches far beyond the Islington Climate Centre. She’s excited about Islington Clean Air Parents who’ve created a new mini forest on the corner of Liverpool and Barnsbury Road with Thornhill School and shares news that there are a number of cargo bikes you can hire including on Cally Road and some community energy suppliers including Cally Energy.

One of the most effective ways of helping the community tackle the climate crisis is by introducing them to Climate Fresk. This workshop, which hinges around climate science distilled into 42 cards based on IPCC research, is one of Islington Climate Centre’s most popular workshops. “And once you’ve done it you can become a facilitator,” she says enthusing about the way it brings a wide range of people to the pop-up.

Why climate?
Anna is a long-time campaigner, but it was her nine-year-old son who convinced her to speak up for the environment. “I was campaigning for the People’s Vote movement and had bribed my cherubic son to be a leafleteer. One day he said, ‘there’s more to life than Brexit, Mum, what about saving the world?’ I said, “alright, you help me now and I’ll help you at your school’.”

Her son was at Canonbury School and fortuitously Anna was a parent governor. She approached the head (Patrick Mildren) and suggested that he used the second school strike – inspired by Greta Thunberg – as taught demonstrating time, rather than “just letting some mums take their kids out of school to protest”. Patrick then persuaded Ambler School to join in, and soon there were 10 primary schools ready to do climate protests. This culminated in several big primary school demos at Islington Town Hall which Anna helped organise for Fridays for the Future. During the campaign students came with creative posters and speeches from Duncombe, Thornhill, Canonbury, Laycock, Gillespie, Drayton Park, Whitehall Park, Montem, Grafton and Mary Magdalene to lobby the Mayor of Islington, Rakhia Ismail, London Assembly Member Caroline Russell, Islington Councillor for the Environment Claudia Webbe, many councillors including Cllr Dave Poyser (former Mayor) and MP for Islington South Emily Thornberry as well as Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the Opposition. See this link for Islington Gazette’s coverage.

By June 2019 Islington had declared a Climate Emergency. “They said the children’s protests had been a part of the things that persuaded them,” she explains admitting that she’d warned the council, “If we don’t act on this the reckoning that is coming is going to make the cultural revolution (in China) look like a Teddy bears’ picnic,” adding that those kids were 10 in 2019 and now they are 14. “I don’t want them to say, like Greta Thunberg, ‘We will never forgive you’.”

Get involved
Going forward, Anna wants more people to get involved, of course, and especially to add the things they are doing to the giant community map covering one wall of the centre. “We want people to put their projects on the map, community projects, growing projects, children’s play projects, repair centres and where you can recycle vapes, batteries etc,” she says. “The Forest for Change is a really good example of one of those growing projects. We also want to help people with reducing their energy bills, being more energy efficient and reducing their carbon footprints – you can check on the website for events coming up.

And if you’re struggling with what to give friends or family in the gift giving season Anna says, “We now have cards on sale about how to engage with people who don’t really understand the climate yet. A set is £10.” Well that’s a definite addition to Islington Faces’ Secret Santa gift stash.

What next
Opening times and workshops run at Islington Climate Centre can be found at:

• www.islingtonclimatecnetre.co.uk
• Email: islingtoncliamtecentre@gmail.com
• Follow: Insta @Islington_climate_centre
• Twitter/X @IslingtonClimat

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola