[P2P-F] Fwd: Celebrating the Future at Bristol's New Economy Summit

Fri Oct 16 12:09:49 CEST 2015

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jules peck <jules at flourishingenterprise.org>
Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 3:39 PM
Subject: Celebrating the Future at Bristol's New Economy Summit
To: jules peck <jules at flourishingenterprise.org>

Hi all I thought you might be interested in my latest blog. If you like it
tweet it and circulate it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jules-peck/celebrating-the-future-at_b_8293118.html
Celebrating the Future at Bristol's New Economy Summit
This week I had the great pleasure to be one of the hosts of a wonderfully
energetic and creative two-day summit on the new economy in Bristol, asking
what the future could look like for money, business, ownership, cities and
much more.

The event drew 180 people from Bristol, the UK and places as far flung as
Brazil, Spain, Greece, Chile, Thailand, Germany and S Africa. The diversity
of people made the event a powerful mix of ideas and practice, with
attendees from the worlds of social enterprise, business, local and
regional government, academia, think tanks, social movements, faiths,
finance, higher education, healthcare and philanthropy.

[image: 2015-10-15-1444893626-7370885-BNES15_122asMarkSimmons.jpg]
<http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-10-15-1444893626-7370885-BNES15_122asMarkSimmons.jpg>

The aim of the event was to explore and celebrate the explosion of new
economy experiments that are surfacing all around the world in response to
the great challenges of our times, poverty, environmental meltdown and
systemic failures in everything from finance to trust.

We also wanted to showcase and celebrate practical examples of the way
Bristol city bioregion - home to initiatives like Happy City, Bristol
Pounds, Bristol Prospects, Real Economy Cooperative, Transition Bristol,
the Real Economy Lab - is responding to these challenges with new economy
innovations.

A stellar line-up <http://bristolpound.org/bne2015-programme> of speakers
over the two days included; Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation, James
Berry from Bristol Credit Union, Fran Boait of Positive Money, Bristol's
Mayor George Ferguson, Tony Greenham of the RSA, Catherine Howarth from
ShareAction, Diego La Moneda from Economy for the Common Good, Constance
Laisné of Altgen Youth Coop, Ed Mayo from Cooperatives UK, Amanda Feldman
from B Lab UK, Ciaran Mundy of The Bristol Pound, Dan O'Neill from
University of Leeds, Jules Peck from the Real Economy Lab, Kate Raworth of
Doughnut Eonomics, Molly Scott Cato MEP, John Thackara of Doors of
Perception, Sarah Toy from Bristol city Council, and Liz Zeidler from Happy
City.

You can explore the event as it unfolded yourselves through photos and
tweets on the event's storify
<https://storify.com/BristolPound/bristol-new-economy-summit-2015?awesm=sfy.co_s0yQE&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_campaign=&utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co>
.

To kick off we explored 'doughnut economics' - how we can find a safe space
for human wellbeing on our highly threatened one planet and how the
'eclipsing of capitalism' which Jeremy Rifkin
<http://www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/> and Paul Mason
<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun>
have
recently described, and growing band of next economy movements and
experiments is responding to these challenges.

[image: 2015-10-15-1444893827-2016210-BNES15_201asMarkSimmons.jpg]
<http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-10-15-1444893827-2016210-BNES15_201asMarkSimmons.jpg>

It was clear during the two days that Bristol is very much a beating heart
of UK (if not global) innovation on these issues. So it was fitting that in
his slot Bristol's Mayor George Ferguson, who has long been a strong
champion for all things new economy, threw down a gauntlet and invitation
to us all to use Bristol as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation
on next economy thinking and practice. I expect many of us will hold him to
his promise to support Bristol staying at the cutting edge of these issues.

One thing that was very clear throughout is that Thatcher was wrong - there
are alternatives, they are all around us if we just tune into them. We
heard from leading thinkers and practitioners from across the worlds of new
economy ownership, finance, enterprise models, the future of cities and
their bioregions. We explored what a new p2p 'commons' ownership world
might look like and heard about the hundreds of enterprise models around
the world already working in a p2p, collaborative and commons orientated
way. A host of other issues were surfaced and debated including things like
citizens incomes, alternative currencies, interest free money, credit
unions, community land trusts, open-cooperatives, the Chamber of the
Commons and much much more.

Diego De La Moneda described what a new Economy for the Common Good
<https://www.ecogood.org/en> might look like for businesses and local
government and how hundreds of companies and a network of Cities from
Santiago in Chile to Barcelona, London (and soon hopefully Bristol) are
putting the Economy for the Common Good vision into practice in a Global
Hub for the Common Good <http://www.commongoodhub.com/>.

Breaking with traditional 'listen and learn' style conference formats, the
summit used 'open-space' social technology and discourse sessions
throughout, and was focused on everyone sharing their thoughts and plans
and collaborating in break-out groups and feed-back sessions to look for
ways we could all work together for the common good. And this wasn't just
about talking - by the end of the two days there were long lists of new
initiatives people had hatched up over the event.

One of many highlights of the event for me was hearing Sarah Toy from
Bristol City Council talking about her vision for what the City can do and
indeed is doing to put Bristol in the vanguard of sustainable, liveable and
new economy cities. With Bristol being this year's EU Green Capital
<https://www.bristol2015.co.uk/> and being one of the $100m Rockefeller
Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities initiative
<http://www.100resilientcities.org/cities#/-_/>, I'm hoping Bristol can
help show other city-bioregions leadership and inspiration in modelling
what a city for the Common Good can look and feel like.

[image: 2015-10-15-1444893967-4052707-BNES15_234asMarkSimmons.jpg]
<http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-10-15-1444893967-4052707-BNES15_234asMarkSimmons.jpg>

Judging by the energy in the room over the two days, feedback from
attendees and the amount of twitter activity
<https://storify.com/BristolPound/bristol-new-economy-summit-2015?awesm=sfy.co_s0yQE&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_campaign=&utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co>,
I think its fair to say the audience enjoyed the event as much as we hosts
did. To be honest the only worrying thing about the event was the number of
people who are now asking us to repeat the summit on a regular basis........

*Jules peck is convenor of the Real Economy Lab
<http://www.realeconomylab.org/>, which is building an open-space,
open-access platform to act as hub to support the coming together of a
global movement of movements on all things 'next economy'. His co-hosts at
the summit were Angela Raffle, Simone Osborn, Peter Lipman, Dave Hunter and
Ciaran Mundy. Thanks to Mark Simmons for the photography*
All the best
Jules
Convenor, Real Economy Lab <http://www.realeconomylab.org>

e: jules at flourishingenterprise.org
m: 07920844802
w: www.flourishingenterprise.org and www.julespeck.co.uk
t: @citizenjules
'Aspire not to have more but to be more' Archbishop Oscar Romero

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