About The Empathy Project
The Empathy Project is a cultural project addressing the urgent need to reframe human relationships with animals, towards ways that benefit all.
The project was developed in response to the depth and scale of animal suffering on the planet today and to the belief that, where animals suffer and are exploited, inevitably, humans suffer and are exploited, too.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in animal agriculture, now recognised as a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, ecological destruction, human slavery, indigenous deaths and animal cruelty.
In our work, animals are brought to the foreground, both in terms of what they endure and who they are, as thinking, feeling, loving individuals.
This approach - a form of radical truth-feeling - aims to cultivate compassion and ignite deep-rooted change.
As we move deeper into climate and ecological breakdown, new, more compassionate ways of being in this world will be more necessary than ever.
The Empathy Project believes that, if we place the lives of others (those we have Othered) alongside ourselves, we will set in place the restorative cultures that will support us, the natural world, her animals and our children, in difficult futures.
The Three Pillars of The Empathy Project
PILLAR ONE: LOVE
The first pillar celebrates not only the wonder of animals but also, the deep love most humans bear for our animal kin. In this work, the individuality of animals and their experiences as mothers and children, companions and teachers, victims and protagonists are brought to the foreground.
Radical truth-telling - about who the animals are and what they endure at the hands of humans - is key. The aim is to challenge the myth of human supremacy by cultivating active compassion towards all living beings, encouraging ideas of stewardship.
Iteration: Each article from The Empathy Project seeks to fulfill the conditions of Pillar One. Later this year, The Empathy Project will be co-creating a schools programme centring empathy for other animals.
PILLAR TWO: GRIEF
We don’t act unless we care; we don’t care unless we know. The Empathy Project encourages a visceral recognition of and grief for the animal and human lives lost as activators to greater compassion and to systemic, concrete action.
One hundred billion animals die each year in animal agriculture; billions more die in rituals and hunting, for fashion or beauty, in individual acts of cruelty and abandonment. Without understanding the extent of suffering and its causes, all responses to the multiple emergencies will be partial.
Iteration: The Empathy Project is producing a film in which 13 campaigners are interviewed about their journeys into animal advocacy. Launch date: Autumn 2025.
PILLAR THREE: RECONCILIATION
What old/new ways of being become possible if humans live in true symbiosis with the natural world, one that includes not just those beings we find charismatic and easy to love (tigers and trees) but also those whose lives we have capitalised for too long and who rarely enter our everyday lives except as objects of use (pigs, cows, chickens, dogs).
The Empathy Project’s third pillar explores and celebrates alternative visions, unleashing imaginations to create more compassionate futures for all.
Iteration: On October 25th, The Empathy Project hosts a full day workshop visioning new futures of Multi-Species Flourishing with artist Ruth Ben Tovim at Kairos London. Book tickets here.