We’re delighted to welcome Clare Goff to our associate team, supporting our Communications and Research projects. Clare has a 20 year pedigree in journalism, communications, research and project management specialising in new economics, good business, local government, and communities – read more about her background on our team page. Below Clare shares her thoughts on her mission to gather stories of thriving, hopeful economies.

‘The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.’ So said American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger.

In today’s 24-hour news cycle it’s easy to feel hopeless under the weight of constant headlines detailing wars, climate catastrophe and the backsliding of social progress.  As consumers of mainstream media, we are beholden to business models that often rely on the understanding that bad news sells better than good.

At this profound juncture in history, the stories we have told ourselves, about human power, consumerism and economic growth are becoming exhausted. There is a hunger for new stories that nourish us and show us a different way of being.

I’ve spent much of my career finding and telling the stories of local economic change through talking and listening to the practitioners making it happen on the ground.

Rarely does social change comes with a fanfare or a bang. More often it happens through those ‘quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place’, to quote Rufus Jones, Quaker theologian and educator.

Across the UK, local and regional governments, the NHS and local social organisations are quietly changing long-embedded processes and structures to shift the focus of their work towards a better, more holistic, definition of progress. They are rewiring local systems, developing new collective ways of working across place, and setting the compass towards a different narrative.

Over the next few months, I will be holding conversations with and gathering stories from some of those taking a wellbeing economy approach to their place. I’ll be bringing to life the practical ways in which they are developing more thriving local economies.

The endless cycle of bad news continues. Let’s make space to hear from those laying the groundwork for new, more optimistic, stories to be told.

Clare Goff, Communications and Research Associate at CTP

If you’d like practical support to help shift your organisation, community or region to a Wellbeing Economy approach, CTP is here to help. Get in touch at hello@centreforthrivingplaces.org