🔆 Light: from brighter days to the thrill of living with less 🌎
Cool candles, lighthouse mini-breaks and artworks to blow your mindframes
And so, it’s January.
The season of resolutions, of making promising plans and starting afresh.
(And the less said about that sad colour the better. Though FYI – spending just a mo taking in frosty-tipped, wintry nature should help with that.)
The days may be dark and somewhat heavy but there’s light ahead. More so every day.
And light lets us see things more clearly, and in different, sometimes surprising ways (none more so than in the much-debated, potentially artworld-reframing work of James Turrell – more on that below).
And it’s what we’re all about at BRiMM: lightening up.
From spotlighting the sweetest low-impact things out there – to read, watch, taste, wear and, this week, even smell – so you don’t have to waste time fumbling about in the dark looking for them.
To proving that a lighter life – one that costs the earth, and you, less – is actually a fuller one. (And Joshua Spodek in the – free – New York Times article below is the extreme proof of that… not that we think real-life satisfaction needs to involve sacrificing dating, or eating raw vegetables when it gets cold.)
We’ve also got light on our minds because of the abundance of energy that can be harvested from it. And because we’re planning on being the first store to create new solar power whenever you shop.
Legit.
Lit.
So stay tuned for more on that in the coming weeks.
And, in the meantime, try to lighten up. In every sense of the words.
Tune in, team up and let's turn the tide.
Team BRiMM
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PS - Very aptly, the ‘Northern Lights display of the decade’ in the UK has already started, with bright colours visible from northern Scotland to South Wales on 2 January, and several more shows likely to take place throughout 2025. We’re following Aurora Watch UK for tips on where to go, hoping to marvel at ‘light’ in all its majesty.
We’ve sent this article to so many people over the years, and now it’s your turn. Visionary American artist James Turrell has been working on ‘Roden Crater’, his ode to the beauty of our planet and universe through the prism of light, for more than 50 years. Smithsonian writer Wil S. Hylton describes multiple illusions, baths that allow you to hear the frequency of space, and tea in what seems like a ‘ball rolling down a hill’. And in April 2025, the work will ‘align perfectly’, during the once-every-18.61-year Major Lunar Standstill.
Low-impact-lifestyle influencer Joshua Spodek has proven it’s possible to live off-grid in Manhattan. Which in itself is fascinating. But what we find more inspiring in this NYT profile is his recommendation to make “at least one change to live more sustainably – ride a bike, cook from scratch – and [to] see those changes as upgrades, not sacrifices.” Very BRiMM.
This chic candle holder by ceramics designer Andrea Roman is deliberately unglazed, crafted from stained clay, and can be used as a coffee cup/plant pot/jewellery container in its next life. The Hotel, Mike candle inside it also smells pretty wonderful – think marine, cut grass and spiced pepper. And it’s all created using renewable energy, and delivered in lower-impact packaging to boot.
As well as Lightkeepers, an ‘earthen cradle’ of a luxe farmhouse that overlooks the real-life eponymous lighthouse of Virginia Woolf’s Modernist classic, beautiful UK travel site Unique Homestays also includes this 1872-built former Signal Station on the very tip of Cornwall’s dramatic Lizard Peninsular.
Start 2025 off with a salty bang and prep this divisive Anglo-Italian recipe for the perfect Marmite spaghetti. Vegemite, the Aussie version Promite, or all manner of spin-off Marmite flavours can also be swapped in.
MUSIC FOR CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
2024 was a hot moment for music. James puts a BRiMM filter on the top tracks of the year. Expect everything from Argentine hip hop to Aussie pub rock via some top tapping pop. Perfect for manifesting to.
FROM THE COLLECTIVE
Christabel has got us onto Edward Bulmer, one of the first brands to pioneer natural plant-based paints, which offers compostable paint trays and planet-friendly high-quality paint tools, too // Our man Dan got us buzzing with the news that the first carbon-14 diamond battery has just been created – mindblowingly, it may be able to last for thousands of years // Charlotte was chuffed to discover Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, and his awesome, huge, textile-y installations crafted from bottle lids
WHAT’S BRiMM AGAIN?
We’re building a shop, journal and collective to prove that living within limits isn’t living less – and to put the profit to work for the planet.
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Carbon maths
The carbon footprint of an email depends what device you use to open it, but sending you this one used about 3.5g of carbon.