At a well attended event on 8th November, with a strong endorsement from Mayor Rees, Happy City launched it’s suite of wellbeing measures and policy tools. Liz Zeidler and the Measurement & Policy team introduced the Happy City Index, Happiness Pulse, and Wellworth Policy Tool.

Detailed results from the Happy City Index ranked the 9 core cities according to overall conditions for wellbeing, sustainability and equality.  Each has a scorecard offering detailed analysis which you can see here.  Bristol and London took pole positions, with Nottingham, Sheffield and Liverpool bringing up the rear in one category each.  Digging behind these headlines reveals lessons and opportunities to improve conditions for wellbeing across the UK.

The final report of the Happiness Pulse Pilot study were revealed, demonstrating just some of the numerous ways this digital tool can be used to understand and measure wellbeing for businesses, organisations, communities and, if used at scale, whole cities.  The team shared a tiny taste of the multiple ways that the Pulse can help guide better decisions at a local level – to focus action and resources where it’s most needed.  As one participant at the event said “The ability to easily track the improvement of wellbeing is massive!”  View an executive summary of the Happiness Pulse study here.

The Wellworth Policy Tool prototype was unveiled – the first of it’s kind to ‘translate wellbeing data into it’s impact on other policy areas like education, health, economy and crime.  The tool was introduced with an explanation of our methods and a user guide showing how it can be applied. The tool will be piloted at scale with UK partners in 2017.

Here’s how the event unfolded on twitter where over 11,800 impressions were recorded – thank you Storify!

The top three tweets were:

Happy City (UK) @Happycityuk 6hNew funding from @innovateuk will help drive more major advances in #wellbeingmeasures progress after today’s launch @happybristol (3486 impressions)

Happy City (UK) @Happycityuk 8hWatch #wellbeingmeasures this morning to follow the launch of the worlds most innovative system unveiled by @happybristol & @Happycityuk (3245 impressions)

Happy City (UK) @Happycityuk Nov 7 “Within 10 years wellbeing will be the economy’s headline indicator” Sir Gus O’Donnell, Ex-head of Treasury #Wellbeingmeasures @BristolPound pic.twitter.com/DRV1LtLtJD (1244 impressions)