Building Wellbeing Together for People and Planet: A Shared Path to Social Change and Quality of Life

The UK-based Network of Wellbeing (NOW) connects people, supports projects and inspires action for the wellbeing of people and the planet—through events, network-building and demonstration projects. Informed by concerns over global justice and ecological crisis, and learnings from ethics and positive psychology, it presents an optimistic vision of a world where people and the planet thrive together—as a counterpoint both to individual models of welfare, based on consumerism, and to unduly pessimistic narratives, of doom and gloom, springing from some environmental thinkers. Critical to the perspective, which is informed both by research and the proponents’ lived experience, is a recognition of the links between individual and collective wellbeing. Equally important are insights from positive psychology on what truly makes people happy, as summarised succinctly in the New Economic Foundation’s Five Ways to Wellbeing . These, it is argued, enable a new approach to be co-created that allows for thriving within environmental limits. The Network attempts to put these ideas into practice, in partnership with others, by promoting debate (“Do Good Lives have to cost the Earth?”), by connecting like-minded thinkers and doers, through its own demonstrations projects such as the Share Shed ( https://www.shareshed.org.uk /), the world’s first travelling library of things, and its centre for wellbeing-related retreats.