Date/Time
Date(s) - 21/05/2020
10:30 am - 4:30 pm
Location
The Create Centre
Our economic system is retarding attempts to create environments that enable social and environmental wellbeing. Although there have undoubtedly been improvements over the years we are witnessing a period where economic inequalities are increasing, precarious work is becoming the norm and social and personal insecurities are fuelling serious mental health problems in all sectors of society.
When combined with the prospects of catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss the present moment is one demanding fundamental system change that goes beyond the limited impacts of individual behaviour modification – recycling plastic, driving less, etc.
We need to take serious action at a range of levels. We need new ways of doing business and of making decisions that lever massive change to ensure that people, communities and the wider ecological environment are able to survive and flourish. The imperatives of economic growth need to be replaced by the imperatives of economic well-being, democracy, social ownership, responsible technology, ecological stewardship, ethical markets, green finance, and participatory and deliberative democracy.
Programme For The Day
10.30 Registration
10.50 Session One: William Morris and the Well-Being Economy
Introduction. Presentation and discussion on William Morris’s views on well-being, private property, technology, work, the economy and the instinct for freedom
11.40 Session Two: Applying a Systems Approach -Levering Change?
The well-being economy in a global context. The values of systems thinking. Tools for structural change. Politics of political ecology. Green democracy/Green revolution
12.30 Buffet lunch
13.30 Session Two: Practical Action for a World in Crisis – The Regional Dimension
Workshop groups on different themes bringing together what is happening regionally identifying – food growing, cultural diversity, meaningful work, clean community energy, local economic development and decision making, ecological regeneration, sustainable finance, etc.
15.00 Break
15.15 Session Four: Discussion, Action Points and Future Actions
16.15 Summary
16.30 Close