Ours: Reclaiming Ownership of What Matters

Christine Berry, Caleb Althorpe (Utrecht University)

Ours: Reclaiming ownership of what matters. 17 October, 14.00-15.30 (CEST)

*This event is part of the Visions for the Future Speaker Series*

About the session: Join Christine Berry and Caleb Althorpe for a conversation about what a democratic economy might mean, and how we might go about building it together.  

Christine’s forthcoming book will make the case that the ‘winners’ in the UK and global economy tend to amass wealth by owning things, rather than by doing things. As the economy has been oriented around the interests of these ‘landlords’ (both literal and metaphorical), we ourselves have become dependent on them to go about our daily lives. If we want to achieve good lives for all within ecological limits, we urgently need to reclaim control through democratic ownership solutions which put meeting human needs ahead of extracting rent.

By telling the stories of people already working to do this – from community land trusts to fan-owned football clubs, childcare co-ops to global knowledge networks – the book will paint a picture of what a democratically owned economy might look like. But it will also seriously engage with the challenges of scaling these solutions, arguing that only a new social contract between state and community can hope to displace the power of the landlords and build an economy fit for us to live in.

About the speaker: Christine Berry is a writer, thinker and changemaker based in Manchester. She has been described by the Guardian as “one of the central figures” in the new economics, and her work has also been covered by the Economist, the Financial Times and various other major newspapers. Christine’s recent work has focussed on how we can build a more democratic economy, and in particular on the need to democratise ownership. She is currently working on her first solo book, published by Verso and provisionally titled Owned: How our lives became assets (and how to reclaim them). She has previously served as Principal Director of Policy and Government at the New Economics Foundation, and as a trustee of the charities Rethinking Economics and the Finance Innovation Lab.

To register for this online event, please use this registration form: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/jf4Z3MAhTq

Any additional questions about the Vision Speaker Series, please email Catarina Neves at [email protected].