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About This Guide
Drawing from our growing body of work—online and in person—the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Ireland presents this guide as a living resource to support the thinking, people, and practices shaping the transition to a Wellbeing Economy across the island of Ireland.
This is an invitation to engage with one of the most promising and hopeful global conversations of our times. One that extends our understanding of liberation and flourishing to the challenge of rendering our economic paradigm accountable, deeply democratic and rooted in care.
This guide places the arts and culture at the heart of change. It explores the vital shift in our collective “social imaginary”—the deep narratives, values, and worldviews that shape how we live, relate, and organise our societies. Legal, policy, and financial reforms are essential, but they must be accompanied and driven by a cultural transformation—an invitation to imagine and enact a different kind of future.
The Cultural Creatives Guide offers tools for connection and transformation—practices of belonging, imagination, and creativity that serve life, peace, and interconnection.
At its core, this guide recognises and celebrates the rich tapestry of emergent initiatives and practices already laying the foundations for a wellbeing economy, a new economic paradigm in the service of life - human and more-than-human. An economy rooted in regenerative ways of being, producing, and relating—restoring kinship with each other and the more-than-human world.
Through creative practices, hosting methods, and stories of possibility, this guide supports the self-organisation of transformative change. It is a resource for creative practitioners, engaged artists, community catalysts and activists—North and South—seeking to co-create a future rooted in care, connection, and collective flourishing, in a spirit of inclusivity and respect for diversity.
The global Wellbeing Economy Alliance is a network of organisations around the world that are working for economic system change. Its website explains what a Wellbeing Economy is and why it's needed, and outlines ways to accelerate change.
This section brings together powerful frameworks, tools, and resources that support lifelong, place-based, and peer-led learning. It is designed to help us explore and communicate the principles of a wellbeing economy and the dynamics of systemic change.
To shift culture, we must shift the stories we live by. This section brings together tools for narrative change—inviting imagination, ecological storytelling, metaphor, and meaning-making to challenge the dominant growth narrative and envision new possibilities.
Change doesn’t happen in isolation—it grows in relationship. This section focuses on how we hold space for creative dialogue, collective reflection, and intercultural/intergenerational exchange. It supports the practice of designing and hosting inclusive spaces that nurture trust, creativity, and collaboration.
Further Resources from the WEAll Ireland Hub
Listening for the Óran Mór
Listening for the Óran Mór
With John Spillane, Nóirín Ní Riain, Liam Ó’Maonlaí, Cáit Ní Riain, John D'Arcy, The Hive Choir (QUB), Dónal Ó Céilleachair, Peter Doran (QUB), Matthew Noone (UL).
This deep dive gathering on June 24 2025 called together musicians, artists, activists, and academics to explore the cultural resonances of music, story, and performance in reawakening our ecological awareness and re-enchanting our relationship with nature. As part of a Shared Island project, it brought together participants from around the island of Ireland to share perspectives and strengthen ties.
This ‘Call to Action’ draws from the first or proto phase of our Community of Practice and attempts to capture some of the emergent conversations that continue to inform our work.
In this February 2025 webinar, we examined and bore witness to the work across the island of a new generation of artists whose work informs the Wellbeing Economy.
Highlights from our June 2024 Rethinking Growth conference. This short video, 'Rethinking Growth on a Shared Island', gives a flavour of the event, including its artistic elements.
Our Cultural Creatives Community of Practice was launched at this ‘Art of the Wellbeing Economy’ event in Dublin on December 15 2023.
Artwork on the home page by V'cenza Cirefice, Vicky Donnelly and Helen O'Keefe.
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