The stairs at Postane
The stairs at Postane
Hi, I’m Sammy, Bertha Foundation’s Communications Manager. I bring you things like Bertha Stories and - back in the day - the Bertha books. Last month I attended a Bertha Accelerator in Istanbul, Turkey, and it muscled me out of my comfort zone.
What’s the Bertha Accelerator? It’s a residency program for those working in social justice to come together to work on and learn about a challenge they’re facing in their work, all aligned by a unifying theme. This 10-day Accelerator brought together 18 participants from 12 countries. The group included comedians, organizational comms people, lawyers, investigative journalists, authors, documentary filmmakers, photographers and playwrights, centred around the theme of hope-based storytelling as a tool for social change.
Given that I run communications and regularly write stories for a social justice foundation, we thought this was an excellent and unique opportunity for me to learn about storytelling for social justice from the other participants and experts at the accelerator who, coincidently, are also the kinds of people I normally write stories about as well as one of Bertha Foundation’s key audiences.
Like an onion, there are lots of layers to what I learned at the accelerator - from further developing my approach to storytelling, to getting a greater understanding of the work and context of storytellers, activists and lawyers from around the world, to the theory behind hope based communications, to how to ask yourself - and others - the right questions.
In this story I’m going to focus on one experience in particular and that's getting to sit down with Dan Ilic. This was probably where I got my biggest and most useful learning, as well as the simplest: don’t overthink things. Mindbending, I know.
Dan is an Australian presenter, comedian and filmmaker (he is also a Bertha Challenge Alumni and responsible for this, this and this) and one of my fellow accelerator participants. The opportunity to sit down with Dan, my CEO and I realized during a debrief of the trip, represents one of the core aims of the Bertha Accelerator: to create space for connection, reflection and collaboration.
Dan and I actually sat down to talk about something different. We were chatting during one of the sessions - somewhere between taking notes and whistling “Let it snow” together in harmony - and Dan mentioned content camp, a program he was working on to help train the next generation of content creators. I wanted to know more; creating content has become more and more important to Bertha recently and we’re very much still learning how to do it in a way that works for us. Content Camp, I thought, could be the answer to figuring that out. It wasn’t.
Dan and I whistling "Let it Snow" together in harmony.
Dan and I whistling "Let it Snow" together in harmony.
After the session we had some free time, so Dan and I sat down to talk. Content Camp was a topic for about a minute, then conversation quickly devolved into discussing Bertha’s communications strategy, what we do and what we want to do and why. We want to do a lot: have functional, lively social media, an up-to-date and engaging website with regular longform stories for both digital and print and clear and helpful internal comms for our teams. We want to do all of this so Bertha communications are useful resources for those working in social justice, the same reason we developed our programs. However, there is no communications team for Bertha Foundation comms and the above is a lot for one person to build, manage and maintain.
Dan did not tell me that I was trying to do too much (well, he didn’t tell me twice), instead he told me to not overthink, not to overcomplicate. He told me to be disciplined; to simply be organized with my time and stick to the schedule. Block out one day a week to bulk create content and during that day set clear boundaries with my team - no being pulled into other pieces of work and no responding to emergencies, which is much easier said than done but at the same time it isn’t. Blocking out time and doing other more fluid work around that is possible, I’ve just got to make it possible. What I learned from Dan was both empowering and humbling. I can do a lot but I’m getting in my own way by being too available and not having a boundary - harsh but true and something to keep in mind always. And so, if there’s one thing I’m taking from the Bertha Accelerator it's changing my entire approach to work.
When Dan said to block out time, he was talking about blocking out time to make content. However, Bertha’s social media isn’t quite ready for that much attention as our website needs an overhaul first - something that has been on my to-do list for a while but hasn’t moved at pace because other more urgent pieces of work keep popping up. So, as an outcome of my learning from Dan I’ve become stricter with myself: I’ve blocked out bundles of time to do the website build every week, I’ve paused projects that don’t need my attention right now and every piece of work I consider will be organized around the website build. I’ve turned what can be considered as a non-urgent project to the biggest part of my role right now and made sure it consistently has my attention.
Ultimately the Bertha Accelerator did what it was created to do; it enabled me to work on and learn about something connected to my work in community with the other participants. Time out and time away was needed to reflect and better advance my work back home, and this is what I got from the Accelerator.
Watch this space for news on the April 2026 Bertha Film Accelerator!
If you're interested in finding out more about the Bertha Film Accelerator email contact@berthafoundation.org with the subject "Bertha Film Accelerator enquiry" and we will give you an update once we have one!
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