In 2014 SUII ran a series of programmes around understanding, measuring and promoting wellbeing in collaboration with the Scottish Government, Scotland's Futures Forum, Carnegie UK Trust, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Audit Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage, David Hume Institute, SCVO and Oxfam Scotland.
The programme was seeking to address three broad questions:
- What influences individual and societal wellbeing?
- How best to measure wellbeing and what influences it to help shape and guide policy and practice?
- How best to promote and embed improved wellbeing
Programmes addressed the key issues around social, environmental and economic wellbeing with the aim of making a contribution to the development of policy and practice in Scotland and elsewhere, including the development of Scotland’s National Performance Framework, ‘Scotland Performs’.
The work built on the growing international interest in this area including: the Scottish Government’s work on child well-being, the Carnegie UK Trust’s ‘Shifting the Dial in Scotland’ report, the Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi work on behalf of the French Government, the Oxfam Humankind Index, the OECD’s Better Life initiative, the Office for National Statistics, the New Economics Foundation and the Social Progress Imperative.
The programme comprised 15 knowledge sharing events and workshops involving over 500 participants, including a conference and exhibition in the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.
Find out more about the individual programmes via the links below.
Follow-up blog
Wellbeing: increasingly a crucial public policy goal (Apr 2018)
Four years after after our Wellbeing programme, SUII Director Charlie Woods reflects on the continued attention being dedicated to conceptions of wellbeing in research, policy and practice.