Pelumbra Ltd is a consultancy practice that supports organisations (and activists within them) in making transitions towards more productive and sustainable ways of working.

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The name Pelumbra is a made-up word combining light and shade. PEL is an astronomical term referring to ‘Peak of Eternal Light’ – a (so far) hypothetical place where the sun always shines, because it is near enough the poles of a planet to have almost no axial shift as the planet rotates, and has sufficient altitude to be above shadows cast by other objects. Some spots approaching this status have been identified on the moon, and others may exist on Mercury. In any case, ‘eternal’ is hyperbole – the light will last only as long as the sun – about another 10 billion years. But that’s probably long enough to represent the possibility of metaphorical ‘peaks of eternal light’ in human ideals.

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Umbra, on the other hand, is latin for ‘shadow’, and implies lesser shades of shade such as penumbra and antumbra.

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Pelumbra, therefore, suggests the conditions in which we live – more or less shadily, with an ideal of uninhibited illumination.