A new year, a new Government?

Photo by Florian GIORGIO on Unsplash. Photo shows the Houses of Parliament.

The start of a new year and already there are the familiar rumbles of a General Election. The feelings of general unrest seem to be growing, amidst a time of climate anxiety, global boiling, economic upheaval, and broken or overburdened support systems. Resulting in an increase in the polarity between surviving and thriving, with a lack of long-term strategy around our collective wellbeing.

Last year, we released our Creative Wellbeing Economy paper, where we made a case for a deeper, more long term reconnection with core values across the whole of our lives, with a particular focus being wellbeing for people and planet.

Why we need the CWE framework 

Here in the UK, the measurements of wellbeing are collected via the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) ‘Measuring national well-being (MNW) programme’. This data slice aims to bring together how people are doing on a personal level, as well as in their respective communities, and an overview of the nation’s wellbeing as a whole. 

The latest data shows that from January to March of last year, 5.8% of adults rated their life satisfaction as low. This showed a decline in life satisfaction when compared with 4.6% of adults in 2018. Further, between 2020 to 2021, 23.7% of adults in the UK reported feelings of anxiety and depression. This shows a clear decline compared with 17.8% between 2015 to 2016. Further, 70% of those surveyed felt that they had no say in what the government does in Great Britain.

Our interpretation of data taken from ONS MNW Programme.

Evidence, moreover, confirms the wider social and psychological benefits of environmental action as countries which do better in terms of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are ranked higher in happiness and wellbeing. In 2021, our Cleaning Up Fashion report signalled the need for a more holistic approach to support transition away from purely economic measures of business success and towards a ’wellbeing economy’, which prioritises care at all levels of society. 

Yet last year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a u-turn on a number of key policy proposals for net-zero measures. This came despite the IPCC ‘Climate Change 2023’ Synthesis Report, citing that “global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years.” 

To embed the benefits of a wellbeing economy requires incentives that focus on the social as well as economic benefits of, for instance, design for longer product lifetime, reuse and repair, extended producer responsibility, and consumer education. The research around the wellbeing economy and placing creativity as central to this methodology is at odds with the current political system, but offers us an opportunity to develop a roadmap which reframes the narrative toward a more regenerative, purpose driven and community minded economy. 

While climate change is a thematic issue throughout the aforementioned report and our work, this inertia suggests that far too many of us are existing in the vulnerable reality of survival mode, facing a cost of living crisis, economic uncertainty, career stagnation and social anxiety in the current economic and policy climate.

This extends itself to a lack of value shown by the government towards adopting a STEAM education curriculum and a future proofing of creative jobs and skills, with wellbeing at its very core. A curriculum which embeds key skills and critical creative thinking as the backbone of a long term vision supporting a values system based on thriving, not just surviving.

Our CEO Tamara Cincik said:

“If we cannot make the case for a deeper, more long term reconnection with core values across the whole of our lives – education, housing, business practices and community – then we run the risk of allowing populism to grab control of the narrative, where failed linear economic business models which crash and burn the economy and our climate, only to profit the very few with short term goals and gains, at the expense of 99% of us.”

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