In partnership with RIISE
It can take a lifetime to quieten the voice in your head that isn’t serving you. Sara Bell has spent years working through that process herself, and in doing so has arrived at a clarity she felt compelled to share more widely – so others might reach it sooner.
As the founder of RIISE, a global marketplace for sustainable fashion and beauty, as well as RIISE Productions, which creates original film and TV productions grounded in environmental responsibility and regenerative living, Bell is no stranger to ambition. Her first book – It Starts With You – is part memoir, part self-help manual showing you how to replace a destructive internal voice with a constructive one, and how to create personal space between a trigger and your reaction. Together, they are a practical methodology to switching off autopilot that is designed for real life.
To mark its launch, RUSSH and RIISE gathered an intimate group of creative minds at Cassandra Bird’s Potts Point gallery. As dusk settled, candles set amongst the gallery’s brick courtyard flickered in the cool evening air. Champagne was poured on arrival, before guests moved inside for the evening’s conversation.
Set among works from Sydney artist Robby Bennett’s Beyond Darkness exhibition – an atmosphere of saturated colour, folklore and dreamlike intensity – RUSSH Executive Fashion Director Hannah Cooper opened the evening. “We at RUSSH have a strong connection to both wellbeing, and how creativity can nurture the soul and create a more balanced outlook,” she said. “It is for this reason, we connect so wholly with the story Sara Bell tells, and the wisdom she imparts in her book.”
Following an introduction from gallerist Cassandra Bird, Bell joined Saha Jones – artist, curator, writer and producer – for a conversation centred on how we learn to speak to ourselves, and what it takes to change that internal dialogue.
“Your book is a lot about the child, and the childhood experience, and how that goes on to shape your later choices in life,” Jones mused. “And how that may or may not be known to you. But if you can start noticing – you begin to chart: what are the things that are unique to you and what are the things that are patterns?”
“What makes it a powerful book is that it’s parts of your journey that are hard to express or acknowledge,” she continued, “especially in a world where we’re expected to be the best version of ourselves all the time, or that weakness becomes part of the economy of our personal brand.”
“This book is an explanation of my prison break,” Bell replied with a laugh. “I think you do need to de-layer what you’ve been taught as a child, and really understand what’s useful to you and what isn’t useful. I guess that’s what the methodology of it is about. I would like for everyone to waste as little time as possible creating the change that will make your lives better.”
“And the earlier you do it, the faster you live the rest of your life as the true version of yourself,” she explained. “There is nothing more desirable than someone who fronts up as their true, authentic self. It’s the most attractive thing that you can ever offer the world.”
The discussion moved between ideas of parenthood, self-help books, sustainability and overcoming adversity before giving way to a performance from musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist William Barton, whose rendition of Birdsong at Dusk on the didgeridoo brought a grounded close to the evening.
Guests lingered afterwards – signing books, talking through the exhibition, and moving between conversations and the gallery – before heading out into the night with the first pages of It Starts With You waiting at home.
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