My hopeful story is a collective called Commonwealth theatre in Bradford led by two forces of nature Rhiannan white and Evie Manning. Commonwealth is resolutely hopeful because their theatre doesn't require grand old buildings in city centres. They make radical activist Theatre in spaces like boxing rings, in people's houses and in car parks. They tell working class stories that need to be heard which I find deeply inspiring.

my story of hopefulness is Layla who was married and gave birth to her firstborn son 10 days after her husband was killed by ISIS. She fled with her son walking from Aleppo, to Turkey and then all the way to the Mediterranean. From there she went on an exceptionally dangerous journey across the sea and ended up in Lesbos in Greece. She lived in the worst refugee camp with her son and after three years was transferred to a mainland camp. After two years of living there, she learned to weave, carrying on the creative tradition of her grandparents and homeland. Weaving each day enabled her to come out of her trauma and to see that there was a life worth living. She's a fully trained Weaver now living in Germany with her son and earning a full time salary as a fully trained Weaver. There's barely anything more hopeful than that. If we treat people with dignity and respect they can flourish and re-write their story and in that we all flourish and rewrite our stories and benefit from each other's experiences.

Steve has gone to coral reefs around the world that are struggling, dying out and what he and his team have been experimenting with is recording sounds of healthy coral reefs, and then playing them in the water back to unhealthy coral reefs then seeing what happens. Incredibly many unhealthy coral reefs are literally thriving with life again, they're coming back to life just from the sound of healthy coral reefs. And so the next step is gathering all the sounds across the world of healthy underwater soundscapes and then mashing them all together to almost create a world that's not real but sounds healthy. He's travelling around the great barrier reefs and trying to see what brings them back to life. The tech is so simple. It's a little underwater microphone that's very affordable. It's being played back through an underwater speaker that they use for synchronised swimming so it's all very accessible gear and I'm thinking this is something in theory people could do themselves in their own areas. But not only that, it's giving people the opportunity to hear fish, I've never heard fish before until now. Steve's very up for working with everybody and anybody because his pure goal is for the benefit of nature and bringing it back to where it was before we started interfering. And I think if you're willing to put all of that on the line, all of your ego aside to to help the world. I just think that's an incredible project.

So my hopeful story is someone called Ibre who lives in a community called Bradford marches in Bradford where there was a very underused Park that had been the centre of quite a lot of violence. Ibre was diagnosed with cancer and basically had quite a bit of time on his hands so whilst he was in recovery, he decided to take on this little park as his mission without any permission from the council on the basis that no one cared for the land. One of the first things he did was to buy a chicken coop as something to engage young children but also the older people in the community who now come and feed the chickens. So there's this chicken coop and then he developed this park into a kind of peacock farm. So they're now breeding peacocks roaming around.

I've been so inspired by a charity called Women for Women International. I love what they do because as a news person who has spent a lot of time in war zones, you know that the war is not going to be in the hearts and minds in the long term. People don't know what's happening five or ten years later but It takes generations to rebuild a country after a war, and I love this organisation because of the way they help women to rebuild their lives. They find and train the women that have the least, the widows, those who are really struggling, and literally help rebuild a nation through the lives of these women. It's long term, hard work and it's been life changing for me to hear the stories of the women they work with.

The work that really touches me so deeply and inspires me is the work that Thomas Hubl does in the world. And in particular a project he founded called pocket project. It is designed to bring communities together across divides and to facilitate collective healing. We all know healing is really hard and I don't want to underplay the challenge but the more I learn about the work of Thomas, I am so filled with hope. One of the most powerful insights that I've had is that trauma is created in relationship and is healed in relationship. So if I can feel your pain and you can feel me feeling your pain then you're not alone anymore, so trauma survives in our bodies in a frozen state whilst it is alone. So this sense that we get that I'm alone and no one understands me is a trauma position but if we open our hearts and we're present with our heart, and we're open and we're connecting then healing starts and we can all do that which is deeply hopeful.

I think about my meeting with Albert Woodfox who is on the album. He is a black panther who was incarcerated for 43 years in a six by three feet cell for a crime that he didn't commit for 23 hours a day. The thing that struck me most about asking him about the cost of freedom, was that he views freedom as a construct within your own mind. So whether you're sat like Tim Peake, looking down at the world or held in solitary confinement, Albert's argument is that freedom is available to everyone because freedom exists in your mind. I think that in these days of political and financial insecurity it's really interesting and hopeful to take away that thought from someone that has really lived on the extreme end of life, that you can actually be free in your mind.

I see the hope that comes from people's lives lifted out of poverty, out of hopelessness. One of the brands I most admire is Tony's Chocolonely who deliver the most amazing chocolate, but they also help take people out of slavery, and relentlessly pursue a clean supply chain all the way through. So that's my definition of hope.