Patrick Pittman

Hello. I’m a writer, editor, filmmaker and creative business strategist. I live about half of the time in Toronto, Canada, and also out on the coast of Newfoundland, in the tiny former fishing village I originally hail from.

I’ve spent my career asking questions, figuring out new ways to tell better stories and build better communities, and help myself and others understand the ways this world is changing, particularly out the neglected edges of things. I’ve done this for pages, stages, screens, and microphones across the world, for a long time now.

Because that’s where I come from, and where I’m happy.

What I do now

These days, alongside my own creative projects and the occasional bit of longform reporting, I mostly spend my time running No Media Company, where along with my co-founder Chris Frey, we help a small global roster of clients with human understanding and research-driven strategic sensemaking, as well as producing our own movies, apps, publications, videos, and other experiments. I co-directed May Flowers, No Media's first documentary project, in 2023.

I’m proud to be a member of Group of Humans — a globally distributed community of select creative leaders and change architects, including astronauts, BAFTA winners, policy makers, designers, and some of the technologists behind the most transformative platforms and initiatives of the last few decades.

I’m also an Adjunct Senior Industry Fellow of RMIT University in Melbourne, in their Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation, helping the university and its partners imagine their way more clearly into the uncertain futures ahead of them.

Alongside all of that, I am the cofounder and chair of Nor, a registered not-for-profit co-operative and collective effort to document, preserve, and question Canadian design and material culture.

I still write, now and again, for magazines and other outlets, both in editorial and commercial capacities. I’m a bit pickier about this than I used to be, but that’s mostly, as with everything else, about working with good people on great stuff. I’m always open, if you have something you think is a fit.

What I did before

As a masthead correspondent for Monocle, I covered affairs, business and politics in Australia, the South Pacific and Canada. This work ranged from breaking radio stories on regional issues through to longform feature reporting on the politics of far-flung islands and cover features on the media industry. Over the years, I’ve interviewed everybody from Prime Ministers and Oscar-winners through to avocado farmers and seed activists.

I was also the co-editor of The Alpine Review — a magazine I always loved one reviewer’s description of “The Economist’s cooler, better dressed sister” — and the editorial and creative director of Toronto agency Totem, where I applied everything I’ve picked up as a stubbornly independent presence in the magazine world to teach big global brands a completely different approach to content strategy. At Totem, I headed-up Folio and CMA award-winning projects with some of North America’s largest brands.

Along the way, I've continued to consult regularly for creative agencies on content and strategy, and has worked with the New York Times’ T Brand Studio, Vice’s Virtue Worldwide and BBC Worldwide’s StoryWorks unit.

My first play, Prompter, was staged in Melbourne a decade or so back. More on that here, and more on stages to come.

And before that?

Back in Melbourne I was the editor of the great, cult-favourite magazine Dumbo Feather, a weird and brilliant beast that specialised in the long-form interview.

In my early 20s, I co-founded Papercut Media, my first creative agency in Perth, Western Australia. At Papercut, a small gang of enthusiastic kids at the birth of the modern internet focussed on helping clients in the arts and working for social change express themselves both in print and in what were then entirely new digital platforms. We grew Papercut to a staff of around 10 and a solid stable of clients across Australia. We did some pretty cool stuff and won a bunch of awards. I also co-founded and ultimately sold Papercut’s sister web hosting business, Pixelbox Networks.

I spent a good decade or so as a broadcaster on RTRfm in Australia, both in the political and music worlds. I was also honoured to be the elected chair of the volunteer board running that station.

I’ve also written plenty over the years for organisations like Amnesty International, the Red Cross and Engineers Without Borders. There was other stuff too. I also co-founded an amazing (these days defunct but somewhat legendary) writing community in Western Australia called Cottonmouth.