Tasha Lawton On Having Difficult Conversations And Educating Youth Audiences

Tasha Lawton Talk Revolution Founder.jpg

Tasha Lawton is an experienced media professional with over 20 years' experience in storytelling and branded, short and long form content spanning global broadcast, online and independent client platforms.

She has spent years leading teams and working with, building and developing national and international brand partnerships and stakeholder integrity both in Australia and the UK.

Tasha has written curriculum courses for Universities and more recently created and developed her own comprehensive series of curriculum aligned resources for kids in years 5-10 called Talk Revolution, covering alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, gender based violence, periods, sex, sexuality and suicide and self harm. Tasha is also a qualified Counsellor.

Tasha discusses misconceptions about educating children on taboo subjects and How Partnerships Are Strengthening grassroot social enterprises.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - Please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social enterprise, education and counselling?

[Tasha Lawton] - It was pretty much a mistake, although I guess nothing's really a mistake! I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional household, and I didn't realise until further down the track that was going to be the very thing that would help me create awesomeness for other people. It's set me up on the track of helping and supporting young people, teachers, their parents and carers to empower their kids to be able to make awesome choices. I spent time in advertising and as a Pilates instructor. I have also spent a lot of time filmmaking, and I began to think these paths still were not working for me. I was still not sure where I was supposed to be going and what I was supposed to be doing. It all then just fell into place. I was supposed to be making a documentary about periods, so I grabbed a camera, went off to India, Nepal and America and started randomly interviewing people. Don't do that if you want a career in documentary work!

The idea was when I got back and finished the documentary, I would edit it together and put it into schools. Then I realised, "hang on a minute, what is currently existing in schools around periods and menstruation?" I realised there isn't much. I thought if I just published my documentary, I would be paying lip service to the issue as opposed to actually thinking that we need to educate our kids around shame, stigma, different approaches to periods, how boys deal with them and the environment. When I started going down that track, I started thinking, "I wonder how we can communicate that best for kids to be engaged with the material, but also, so teachers and parents find it easy to deliver?"

That's where I pulled on my filmmaking experience, because I thought if we do it through video, that makes sense because that's how kids ingest all of their information. Also, if we do it in a way that is light but conversational, I could be onto something.

I created Period Talk, and then that was really well received across schools and across the whole country. Then I started thinking, "what about all these other fabulous topics everybody finds really uncomfortable to talk about? I think I'm going to attempt those in the same way." That's where it all stemmed from.

What is the toughest part of communicating with young audiences to deliver impactful conversations on these difficult topics? Where are the key gaps to provide support for young people?

What has surprised me through this whole experience is I thought the issue or challenge would be getting the kids to understand what is happening. In actual fact, the kids are epic. The kids know more than we give them credit for, and they are so ready to hear this information. It's not going to make a lot of people happy when I say this, but it's actually the adults that are the challenge. Because of the way society is and how the shame, stigma religious, cultural and traditional aspects impact it, we have created a melting pot of stuff that we all live our day-to-day experiences by.

As adults, we haven't had the opportunity to have these conversations normalised. It's not really a surprise that we find it tricky to do so with our kids.

I think the toughest part is getting adults on board because there's either a feeling of, "you're trying to tell me how to parent, I know how to talk to my kids," or "I'm really not comfortable with this conversation." That can mean the parents are thinking, “I shouldn't be having to have this conversation”, or “my kids are too young to be shown this information.” It's the adults that are obstacles! Once you get the information in front of the kids, they love it! They want to ask questions, that's what they do. They're curious. When we just connected with them in the right way, everything opened up. The realisation as well that it's more than one conversation is important. We all have this thought process of when children get to a certain age, we will sit them down and talk about all these uncomfortable things and make it really awkward. In fact, we have opportunities all day long throughout their lives to have these conversations. Even if you roll it right back to when they're babies, consent can be taught.

That's obviously a massive topic, and understanding that consent itself, for example, is way more than just the ability to say yes or no. When I was growing up, I was pretty confident, I didn't have a problem with being able to say yes or no. However, I found myself in situations where because my self-esteem was low or my lack of understanding/awareness on how to connect with people was low, I thought that I'd have to behave in a certain way to receive love. I found myself in situations where it wasn't a case of me just not being able to say no, I didn't say no because I didn't have the skills or the qualities I should have had.

It would have been way more helpful if they'd been instilled in me in terms of understanding power, gender, respect, bodily autonomy, intimacy and boundaries.

The gaps are in education, and education can start right from a very early age with babies when you refer to their genitals in the right way for example. Or, when they're playing with other toddlers, you can tell them to ask permission to be touched and to touch. We force our kids to hug us sometimes, because we think it's a bad reflection on us if our children don't want to give granny or granddad a hug. In actual fact, what are we teaching them in that scenario?

We're basically saying we are going to override someone’s natural instinct, which is that they don't want to do that. We make them, and then when they don't do it, we shame them because society tells you that it's normal. Then if you're not doing it, there's something wrong with you. You can see where it all gets murky and cloudy. There's opportunities all day long to have these conversations. When they're watching TV, social media or movies, you can just get curious and help your kids be curious and have and actual conversation as opposed to a dictatorship where you're talking down to them. I'm blown away constantly when I talk to kids.

When you level with them, see, validate, hear and empathise with them, they are just awesome. They've got so much knowledge and inner strength.

They actually just need a place and a space to be heard. To wrap that up as well, there's no blame in that either. It just is. Generations have gone before and done the best they can at the time with the knowledge that they had. There is an opportunity to change that narrative, and that's really why Talk Revolution exists.

You've recently completed the Flow Forward Social Enterprise Accelerator on the Sunshine Coast where you're based. What were some of your biggest learnings that you could share with other impact led entrepreneurs?

The fact that social enterprises are perceived as something to be taken seriously. In the past there's been a sentiment that if you're doing good, you're not really a proper businessperson. The program was a place where you can actually take yourself and your business seriously. There is an emerging community and a speedily emerging industry that is gearing itself up for people with social impact led businesses. I think that is really exciting and that's also something perhaps people don't realise yet. My biggest learning from that is this is the real deal, and you can actually do good and make money as well.

What opportunities exist for impact-led individuals like yourself, corporates or other organisations to create change?

I think opportunities are growing for partnerships, which if you're in this business is all you want to do. You want to collaborate with epic people in order to get your message across. I think the beauty of people in this space is you're not in competition with each other. You're literally thinking, "how do we lift each other up? How do we support one another to continue to build this beautiful industry where people are genuinely being helped?" Let's face it, money is not an evil thing and it's required in order to make massive change.

Combining good intentions with organisations that potentially have been seen as the bad guys in the past can create huge amounts of impact with everybody just coming together and appreciating that we're there for the same outcome.

Then you can leverage what exists and say, "okay we’ve got an idea that is open to a massive audience and something that is going to impact our employees, stocks and customers.” Let's all start working from the same mindset of wanting to do good, uphold and help. That's where impact can happen on a grander scale. I understand that chaining yourself to trees and fences can be effective, and I'm not taking that away from anybody in terms of a way to protest or create change and awareness, but at the end of the day you actually have to actions things in a way that society has been set up to respond to by using systems that already exist and then improving them to do good.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating a positive social change?

There's so many, aren't there? How you choose to look at that as well is important, because what is the definition of creating positive social change? You could argue that someone starting up their own local brewery is creating positive social change on some level, because it's showing someone else down the road who may not have the qualifications or skills that they could do it too. It also allows a place for community, and that means more people are coming out and mixing with their community. I just find there are so many ways of answering that. You could say an organisation like Who Gives A Crap in terms of the good that they're doing are amazing.

I just think anybody who is backing themselves to start something that people might see as very small are as important. It's just good people doing good stuff, and there's so many people out there who have just totally renewed your faith in human nature.

There's too many organisations, and I don't want to just plug the obvious people that are doing good stuff. If everybody looked around in their own backyard, they would genuinely see the little underground movement of awesome people creating positive social change, whether that's on your doorstep or overseas. It's happening everywhere and it's like fungi. It's under the surface and growing, but it's happening from grassroots.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I have been reading so many books, I don't even know where to start. There are your obvious start-up books, but there's a great book I've just recently read, Indistractable. It's all about how to control your attention and choose your life, and that's by Nir Eyal. Another important book for me has been The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. I love Yung Pueblo’s work, Clarity and Connection is his latest books. It's lots of little sayings and poems, but they're powerful. For my job there's a lot of psychology in the space that I work in. The Body Keeps The Score would be another recommendation. Bessel van der Kolk in this book [talks about] the mind, brain, and body in the transformation of trauma.