What does a good working life look like in the 21st century?
Dr Hilary Cottam, OBE has spent the last five years exploring this question through collaborative workshops she calls 'imagininings', involving all sectors of the post-industrial workforce from gravediggers to consultants.
The same resonant themes kept emerging: the need for work that pays the basics, offers meaning, allows space for caring and play, is tied to place, and demands collective, not just individual, change.
She discovered that the challenges we face - technological disruption, ecological crisis and a lack of social justice - together provide the springboard for this change. And in the process of putting it all together into her new book, The Work We Need, she also discovered that writing, like change-making, is a slow, humbling process best done in community.
Profound, challenging, generous, inspiring - and very much worth your listen.