Community invited to help shape Worthing

As part of Global Doughnut Day, which took place on 13th November, Worthing Borough Council hosted an afternoon of networking, talks and group discussions on Doughnut Economics to see whether this global model could be adapted to the local area and work with the council’s economic principles.

Attending on the day were businesses, and local employers including South Downs Leisure, Shoreham Port and the University of Brighton, as well as representatives from charities and organisations including Community Works, Climate Resilience Centre Worthing, Guildcare, Greater Brighton Economic Board, Transition Town Worthing and Worthing & Adur Chamber of Commerce.  

During the event council leader Cllr Dr Beccy Cooper and Cllr John Turley, Worthing’s cabinet member for resources, introduced the core aspects of Doughnut Economics and explored how they could be applied to the council’s principles of being fair, green and local. This was undertaken alongside watching the informative introductory videos from Kate Raworth.

There was a chance for attendees to network with each other as well as delve into the principles in more detail through table-top discussions.  These focused on:-

• What changes could be made?
• How can our place be as generous as nearby nature?
• How can our place respect the health of our whole planet?
• How can all the people in our place thrive?
• How can our place respect the wellbeing of all people?
• How can we strengthen community networks which respect the health of our local place?
• How should all local organisations align to work within the boundaries of the doughnut?

Cllr Cooper said: “Doughnut Economics aims to meet the needs of people within the needs of the planet, which mirrors our ambition to create an economy that is fair, green and local. We want to explore how this, and other complementary approaches such as community wealth building, can feed into our policies going forward. 

“As a council for the community, we want our businesses, residents and community groups  to be involved from the start. It was great to see so many people come along for the first event and hear plenty of lively and insightful discussions taking place.”