Faye Lewis – Head of Communications

Faye is Viva!’s head of comms and was appointed in January 2021.  

Faye ironically started her working career at the age of 15 in a kebab shop earning £2.40 an hour, or approximately the price of two Bacardi Breezers, back in 2001. Working in the kebab shop cemented her vegetarianism, though she recalls fondly being yelled at and referred to as “English girl.”

After developing an unhealthy obsession with John Milton and the great vowel shift of middle English at uni, she went on to complete a masters degree, while freelancing for as many publications as possible.

She hit the big time living in a basement without windows for £50 a week in Hackney, and enjoyed a few years as a music journalist. Then she got all sensible, working as a head of marketing for various tech recruitment corporate businesses. Following a realisation her soul had been stolen by the aforementioned tech recruitment industry, she reprioritised and made the move to Bristol and Viva!  

Faye unsuccessfully attempted to hide meat on her plate pretty much her entire life, it never ‘felt’ right eating it. But only when she started reading George Orwell and became a highly politicised ten-year-old, with ministerial aspirations, was she able to articulate why she didn’t want to eat meat with enough gusto that her mum gave up feeding it to her. She still thinks one look at a corned beef hash should have made that clear years earlier, but never mind… this pretty much coincided with the BSE ‘mad cow disease’ outbreak in 1995, which validated her points while simultaneously traumatising her. The images of poor animals burning on the news, while her mum told her of the high suicide rates from farmers that had lost their livelihood, are still horrifying. 

Veganism followed later in 2009, when the Brighton music scene brought more attention to the plight of factory farmed animals, and Faye initially went vegan approximately one second after a former girlfriend asked why she wasn’t already. 

As well as head of comms, Faye is a Viva! Podcast host alongside our head of investigations, Lex Rigby.