Image credit - Nick Night
FREE to attend, all welcome - Book HERE or fill in your details below
The DW&P
As horrific as it’s been, the pandemic has given us all a unique opportunity to share a collective experience. For the first time in over two generations we were thrown into a situation we didn’t choose, all at the same time.
One ‘benefit’ of those times was that it gave us all cause to pause and consider…what’s important to me, what actually matters to us, to really ask ourselves - how do we want to live?
Things don’t have to be as they are right now, they weren’t always this way and can be different again…
Imagine a place which, just knowing of its very existence, would give you peace of mind. Somewhere that you’d immediately think of if you were struggling, and feel reassured.
A building found in every town and city that your loved ones knew they could go to for help. Somewhere full of heroes you could depend on, waiting to welcome you with a smile. Held in the same regard as cherished family member and spoken of with the kind of pride that is evoked by the NHS.
A place that would strive to help you overcome hurdles, unlock possibilities and find purpose.
Imagine ‘The Department for Wellbeing and Potential’ - what the DWP could be if we choose to rebuild the world on the foundations of fairly distributed wealth and ‘trickle-up’ economics.
This In conversation event will be followed by a discussion with the audience responding to each of our three speakers provocations:
Caroline Richardson - Welfare Reform and Policy Researcher
Caroline is part of the Spartacus Network organisation that has researched and reported on Government policies and legislation. She has authored many reports analysing government policies on ESA, PIP and other welfare reforms.
Emma Kernahan - Head of Programmes, Clean Slate
Emma is Head of Programmes at Clean Slate, a CIC supporting low income households to be better off. She has a background in support work, focusing on issues relating to employability, financial guidance and housing.
Emma currently lives in Gloucestershire, and is a co-founder of the Stroud Universal Basic Income Lab. She writes and blogs about the UK benefits system and austerity, and her interests lie in linking effective models of individual support with policy design and delivery.
Tom Pollard - Mental Health Social Policy Consultant
Tom has worked on social policy related to mental health for over fourteen years - for an MP in Parliament, with the charity Mind, on secondment in central government, and as a freelance consultant. He is driven by his own experience of mental health problems and a passion to tackle the inequality and injustice that is often both a cause and consequence of poor mental health.
His work has focused on the disadvantages many people with mental health problems face when it comes to issues such as employment, debt, benefits and poverty; as well as the impact these issues can have on people's mental health.
In 2018, after an 18 month secondment at the Department for Work and Pensions advising on mental health, Tom decided to retrain as a Mental Health Social Worker and spent a few years combining frontline NHS and freelance policy work. Tom is about to become Head of Social Policy at the New Economics Foundation, but a four day working week will mean he can continue to work NHS shifts.
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Well+Fair State
The situation we find ourselves in is far from perfect…but it makes perfect sense!
We should not be surprised by where we find ourselves or how we got here. All the conditions that have been created propel us in this direction.
Nor should we shy away from the fact that…
We can create a different set of conditions that open up all sorts of new possibilities. The potential for pathways that could take us to different places…ones which are not nearly as far-fetched as might be first thought!
As Sandhya Anantharaman said: “Basic Income doesn’t solve every problem, but it makes every problem easier to solve”. This Event Series is all about envisaging society as it can be if we rebuild it with the foundations of a UBI. What would change and how it could be better.
We have to start somewhere though and this courageous journey begins with understanding where we are right now. So we can imagine where we’d like to be and begin shaping the world we want to live in…and pass on to future generations.