What do we care about? What are our values?

their poor neighbours, but plenty of stigma stereotypes in their heads. Seventyone people died and all that was left was enormous grief, trauma and tons of ash. Later it emerged that the fire spread due to council decisions to clad the building in cheap, unsafe, flammable material, putting the lives of everyone who lived there at risk. More than that, it was estimated that over a hundred buildings in Britain had been clad in similar material to Grenfell, violating basic fire safety regulations (Ledwith, 2020). ‘The Grenfell disaster was caused by the lack of regard that the rich councillors of Kensington and Chelsea had for their poorer neighbours’ (Dorling, 2018a: 87).

Stories such as these illuminate the starkness of the change in values, not only threatening the very nature of democracy, but questioning the moral compass of governments that sanction the abuse of human rights in rich countries where poverty is a political choice, not an economic necessity.

Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. (Mandela, 2005)

What do we care about? What are our values?

The dominant way of seeing the world is constructed by the powerful, but it has a massive impact on everyday lives in community. Ideas influence public attitudes and, subsequently, social policy in the interplay of power and disempowerment. Understanding how this happens is the basis of effective participatory practice interventions. Individualism does not encourage a way of life that takes a collective responsibility for the well-being of all. It is more likely to justify why some people are privileged while others are in poverty. Consumerism, driven by market forces, has justified levels of exploitation and greed that increase social divisions and deplete natural resources, with the consequence that life on Earth is adrift from the ecosystem on which it relies. Biodiversity and cooperation are concepts based on respect and reverence for the Earth and all humanity. This perspective comes from an awareness that there is a balance to life on Earth, that we are all part of a complex ecosystem that can only flourish in its interconnectedness.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF),1 which works with people at grassroots, and campaigns and produces research for political change at the top – a vital connection for participatory practitioners – calls for a new economy based on:

1. A new social settlement: A new social settlement will ensure people are paid well, have more time off to spend with their families, have access to affordable housing, know there is a decent safety net if they need one, and are provided with a high level of care throughout their lives.

2. A Green New Deal: The Green New Deal is a plan is for government-led investment to reduce the carbon we emit and massively boost nature, while creating good, unionised jobs. These jobs should be targeted in parts of the

UK that have most lost out over the past 40 years. A decade ago, NEF was part of the visionary group that proposed a Green New Deal and it is now part of a growing movement reviving this concept. 3. The democratic economy: We need to devolve state power and transform ownership of the economy.

The thinking behind this is that our existing economic system is failing us so badly. Based on corrupt, flawed thinking, it was designed to benefit the privileged at the expense of the poor by pioneering a free-market principle based on profit at any price. There is an urgent need for change. The New Economics Foundation questions reviving the welfare state because its reliance on state ownership does not fit with the current demand for devolved local power. A new social settlement and a Green New Deal will not succeed unless there is an active, decentralised state, new forms of democratic ownership, an ideological change to cooperation and collaboration, and policies explicitly designed for the participation of those who are affected by them. This is refreshing, radical thinking that calls for distinct change for a new political ideology.

Addressing similar issues in her ground-breaking work, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-century Economist, Kate Raworth engages intersectionally with the social and ecological crises of our times to construct a new economic story, one of a world in self-righting balance. It is a counternarrative, a new vision which asks new questions, putting the economy in context to ‘create human prosperity in a flourishing web of life, so that we can thrive in balance’ (Raworth, 2018: 287).

The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a simple visualisation of the dual conditions – social and ecological – that underpin collective human well-being. The social foundation demarks the Doughnut’s inner boundary and sets out the basics of life on which no one should be left falling short. The ecological ceiling demarks the Doughnut’s outer boundary, beyond which humanity’s pressure on Earth’s life-giving systems is in dangerous overshoot. Between the two sets of boundaries lies the ecologically safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive. (Raworth, 2018: 295)

The Doughnut Model is a highly sophisticated tool founded on both social justice and environmental justice theory, a model that inspires hope with the enormous potential to remedy the crises created by the politics of the past 40 years (see also Ledwith, 2020: 66). In the model of a doughnut, Raworth visually captures the safe parameters for human and environmental flourishing in detail. We have the ideas, the experience, the technology – what is lacking is the political will!