Inside the Lotus Flower’s week at Cannes Lions

As a sign of our recent growth, four members of the Lotus Flower’s UK team were thrilled to have the chance to attend the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity recently.

We were able to take part through the Festival’s Equity, Representation and Accessibility  programme (ERA), which opens doors for non-profits, disadvantaged individuals and charities like us in order to boost inclusion and diversity. It turned out to be an amazing week of creativity and networking, during which we were lucky enough to attend dozens of talks and events, and hear about key cultural shifts and movements, and the latest advances in the tech and creative industries.

Fron L-R: Jess, Sarah, Taban and Anna

Thanks to the ERA initiative, our Cannes collective included our CEO/ Founder Taban, our Development & Partnerships Manager Jess, our Community Manager Sarah and our Comms & Fundraising Manager Anna. 

As always, the Festival drew the world’s biggest brands to the famous Croisette, which runs alongside the glorious Cannes seafront, and everyone from Amazon, Meta and Spotify to Google, TikTok and Pinterest had their own beautiful spaces to share ideas and practice and inspire conversation.

The Lotus Flower was primarily in Cannes to network and highlight some of the pressing issues around gender-based violence – especially with our findings from our successful GBV project with the UN Trust Fund. Insights from this project have shown us the role that tech can play in global solutions, and so Taban met with tech innovators to progress such discussions and explore possible innovations for the future. While at the Festival we also wanted to demonstrate how long term flexible funding from brands and companies can support small organisations like ours, and at the same time uncover ways of tackling global problems together.

The idea of brands working collaboratively with organisations like ours to make the world a better place was especially important as the Festival coincided with Refugee Week. To mark the occasion, Taban gave a talk at the WACL Empowerment Café, speaking to host Lisa Goodchild about her personal journey and explaining how brands can do more to give back. “We have the solutions,” Taban told Lisa. “It’s about creating discussions with us around how we can bring both sides together… Sometimes organisations and brands have a fear of doing it wrong, but I always say, ‘It’s OK, come forward and we can figure it out together. It’s a journey, we can figure out how we make impact.’”

With the Festival providing the ideal environment for such discussions to evolve, Taban continued: “There’s a massive space for brands to be included in this. How can they do it? The first thing I’d say is, think creatively. We’re in a creative space and creativity can really provide a lot of solutions.” 

Speaking of her own motivations to bringing change in the world over the years, Taban stressed that any one of us can our channel difficult experiences to do the same thing. “I believe that every individual has the power to turn their trauma and their pain into purpose.”

In another informal session called ‘Building a manifesto for equitable access’ hosted by Frank Starling and Maxine Duggins from Cannes Lions DEI team, Taban spoke more about creative solutions. “Including people with lived experience in decision-making and leadership roles is really important,” she told the audience. “If there is a room where decisions are being made then there should be people with lived experience – whatever the subject or whatever the area being worked on – they should be in that room. For example, if you’re making a policy around gender-based violence, you can’t really do that if you don’t have a few people in the room with that experience.”

Other highlights from the week included talks by the likes of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Twitter/ X CEO Elon Musk, while we threw ourselves into hearing from thought leaders and CEOs on topics ranging from AI to cutting-edge social and marketing trends, consumer engagement, the future of media – and so much more!

Check out our gallery of pictures from the week below…