Ideas are tender little things – it is very easy to kill them off. Our western culture has evolved upon the principles of judgement not nurture so I’ve spent a large part of my career defending them.

When we set up the internal agency at Nationwide I would go round the wastepaper baskets and drag out any discarded roughs just to see what people had deemed unworthy to show anyone else. Quite often I would find myself uncrumpling them, adding comments and leaving it on their desk for them to find in the morning. A good few campaigns started that way.

In big organisations you find yourself developing ideas behind closed doors until they are ready to face the world so to speak but they can be shot to pieces on their first outing if you are not careful. I started to try and make people aware of this at presentations. I’d tell them about the principle of ‘slow death’ and then watch them try really hard to alter their behaviour. Gardens are special places where the rules of both nature and nurture apply. Nature provides the vigour, nurture, the beauty. And as any veg grower knows, gardens can be extremely productive. And I’d rather spend my time in garden than a factory.

One of the challenges I had while working for Oxfam was sometimes having to fight misconceptions. Most Oxfam workers and volunteers will tell you that some bright spark will come along with some stupid, usually crass comment that is completely inaccurate. So I broke the ‘never be negative’ rule. After three years of Iraq, Sudan, the Tsunami, Make Poverty History etc and watching colleagues breaking their backs trying to make a difference I was getting close to punching the next person who said ‘oh you waste all the money on admin’. So I just poured the frustration into a little book called ‘The Art of Self-Defence’ and told people the TRUTH. It was done tongue-in-cheek but with absolute sincerity. It was really well received and I found out the media people sent it to all the newspapers – apparently the journalists at the Guardian loved it! I see that the guys at Oxfam have just renamed it Bin the Myths so it is still going strong.

Art Director/Designer: Kelvin Jenkins, Copywriters: Jane Ramsey, Ingrid Birchell Hughes, Creative Director: Ingrid Birchell Hughes

I am inspired by people who believe that the world has to change. All these unsung heroes. It takes some guts to try and make the world a better place. All power to you. It means pushing against the flow – usually against incredible odds. If I can help with that – help make people’s jobs easier, enable them to get the results they need, great!

I don’t believe in showing up and saying ‘hey – I’ve solved all your problems – this is the solution!’. Most organisations already have the answers, usually at the sharp end, but no one has the time or resources to ‘grow them on’ so to speak. From little acorns and all that. I do believe in guerilla acts of inspiration, I’ve usually got a pocket stuffed with rough ideas that I like to pull out if people have the time – most people have five minutes to spare for a good idea.