Pasties and purpose: Why Anthropy belongs in every media leader’s calendar

Opinion

The experiential agency that brings the gathering to life and a media leader who attended for the first time make the case for why this Cornish event has earned its place on the industry calendar.

Andrew Orr, managing director, TRO

When John O’Brien MBE founded Anthropy, he was responding to something specific. Brexit had exposed a fracture in Britain’s leadership class that many people could sense, but few were addressing directly. The pandemic deepened it. Here were the people who were supposed to be steering the country through its most complex challenges, yet they had almost no meaningful contact with one another. Not because they lacked good intentions, but because the structures of modern professional life make genuine cross-sector connections genuinely difficult.

O’Brien’s instinct was to remove those structures, temporarily. Not a conference, not a summit in the traditional sense, but a gathering, in a place that demands you leave your usual context behind.

The Eden Project in Cornwall is an unusual choice for a leadership event, and that is precisely why it works. You cannot arrive there and feel like you are simply attending another fixture in the diary.

TRO has delivered Anthropy since its first edition in 2022, and four years on, the work has changed in ways that matter.

The earliest challenge was purely logistical: transforming an open visitor attraction into a functioning leadership summit while the site stays operational around you, then restoring it fully once you leave. That requires a kind of discipline that has become second nature to our team by now.

What has evolved is the ambition of what happens inside those spaces. Anthropy26, which welcomed more than 2,200 leaders from over 1,200 organisations in March, included the FutureDome, our most technically complex session environment to date, incorporating robotics, virtual reality and drone technology.

But the production detail that I am most proud of is quieter than that. We deliberately source from Cornish suppliers, we introduced a live bus-tracking feature this year so delegates could follow their transport in real time, and our 40 volunteers are coordinated to manage not just session capacity but the quality of the experience between sessions, which is where much of the real value of Anthropy happens.

I was also glad to host our own panel at Anthropy26, bringing together leaders from AP Foundation, EmpowerAbility, Norse Group and Social Pantry for a conversation on prison reform and community reintegration. That session felt very much in the spirit of what O’Brien built: serious people from entirely different worlds, in the same room, working towards something that none of them could reach alone.

For media leaders specifically, the argument for Anthropy is straightforward. The questions this industry is grappling with, around trust, information integrity and its relationship to public life, do not have answers that come from inside the industry. They require the kind of thinking that only happens when you are genuinely alongside people who see the world differently. Anthropy creates those conditions better than anywhere else I have seen.

Michael Brown, senior managing partner, UM

I was aware of Anthropy from following posts about the event on LinkedIn in past years, and it was very exciting to be able to join this year. While I had high expectations, these were easily surpassed, as it is an event like no other.

Anthropy lasts for three days, and each attendee manages their time using the Anthropy app, which lets them book for the many sessions. Some sessions are larger-scale, while others are more intimate, which gives a good variety. The space feels open and friendly, and it’s easy to get talking to other delegates. The Eden Project is uniquely beautiful, and the setting surely helps put guests in a positive frame of mind, making it easier to meet others and create a hopeful, high-energy atmosphere.

I was struck by how central media was to the programme, with many sessions touching on aspects of digital media such as AI (of course), information integrity and disinformation, and social and societal dynamics around social media. The manosphere was also explored in detail over the three days, along with its role in powering it.

The joy of Anthropy, however, is variety, and, while there was much enlightening content about media, the breadth of important topics covered was memorable and meaningful. My personal highlight was a session that focused on women’s safety, which featured Jess Phillips MP, who has done a great deal to campaign for the rights of female survivors of domestic abuse. Hearing her speak was very exciting and profound.

I was lucky to spend time with clients at Anthropy, and it was great to get to know them even better in a different context. I’d recommend going to Anthropy to anyone in the media with purposeful values who is looking for inspiration and great networking.

Many corporates and advertisers were present this year, including many progressive and innovative brands, and the conversations down there are unique, given the spectacular Cornish setting, a moment of suspended reality.

Whilst less about rosé and yachts, and more about Cornish pasties and nature biomes, Anthropy is a brilliant occasion for our industry to connect, reflect, and get inspired. I’d like to think it will become an increasingly important occasion for media, and I will certainly be going back.

Anthropy returns to the Eden Project from 10-12 March 2027.