Hilary Cottam

How should we live: how should we care for one another; grow our capabilities to work, to learn, to love and fully realise our potential? This exciting and ambitious book shows how we can re-design the welfare state for this century. The welfare state was revolutionary: it lifted thousands out of poverty, provided decent homes, good education and security. But it is out of kilter now: an elaborate and expensive system of managing needs and risks. Today we face new challenges. Our resources have changed. Hilary Cottam takes us through five 'Experiments' to show us a new design. We start on a Swindon housing estate where families who have spent years revolving within our current welfare systems are supported to design their own way out. We spend time with young people who are helped to make new connections - with radical results. We turn to the question of good health care and then to the world of work and see what happens when people are given different tools to make change. Then we see those over sixty design a new and affordable system of support. At the heart of this way of working is human connection. Upending the current crisis of managing scarcity, we see instead that our capacities for the relationships that can make the changes are abundant. We must work with individuals, families and communities to grow the core capabilities we all need to flourish. Radical Help describes the principles behind the approach, the design process that makes the work possible and the challenges of transition. It is bold - and above all, practical. It is not a book of dreams. It is about concrete new ways of organising that already have been developing across Britain. Radical Help creates a new vision and a radically different approach that can take care of us once more, from cradle to grave.

How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state

Radical Help

'Brimming with ideas to transform the future, Hilary Cottam takes us on a fascinating journey to discover how to make work work' KATE RAWORTH, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS 'Cottam is the humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs - and this book our roadmap to a better future' JONATHAN FREEDLAND, author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST 'An act of radical hope, radical listening and radical humility . . . I loved it' RORY STEWART Work, for decades, has been debated and discussed as a narrow economic category. Instead, Hilary Cottam identifies work as a cultural force at the heart of good lives, strong communities and a sense of a shared national destiny. Crucially, in these dramatic times, she shows how we can shape this force to meet technological change, our ecological crisis and the challenges of the world's deep injustices. We can create a work revolution. Ambitious but rooted in the ideas of everyday experts - real workers from all walks of life - this is a realistic and hopeful book. Hilary Cottam has crossed the UK and the USA; she's spent time in communities considered by outsiders as 'left behind' and in places at the centre of financial and technological power. Drawing on a fascinating range of sources - historians, trade unionists, business leaders, philosophers and most originally, hours of her imaginative workshops with workers - Hilary Cottam boldly asks: how can we redesign work? Our challenges - political, social, economic and environmental - are tangled and growing. But so are the imaginative solutions. In this exciting, inspiring and optimistic book, Hilary shows us how we could work differently and live better. 'Twenty-first century people cannot give their best if tied down to twentieth-century patterns of work. Hilary Cottam provides the roadmap for the required transformation. Timely . . . guides the changes needed' CARLOTA PEREZ 'Exposes what motivates workers today - not the things most business leaders think - and shows how new thinking would benefit us all. Compelling' MARTHA LANE FOX 'Urgent, compelling and ultimately hopeful . . . Cottam demonstrates that a better future, based on reciprocity and mutual collaboration, is not only possible but its seeds are already here. Necessary and Inspiring' CAROLINE LUCAS, Green Party MP and author of ANOTHER ENGLAND

'The humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs’ Jonathan Freedland

The Work We Need

Janne Teller

Kapka Kassabova

Julya Rabinowich

Leïla Slimani

Annelies Beck

Karolina Ramqvist

Nora Ikstena

Renata Salecl

Gloria Wekker

Zsófia Bán

Ioana Nicolaie

Yvonne Hofstetter

Ana Pessoa

Saara Turunen

Asja Bakić

Silvia Bencivelli

Lisa Dwan

Maarja Kangro

Sofia Kouvelaki

Carine Krecké

Caroline Muscat

Nora Nadjarian

Bronka Nowicka

Tereza Nvotová

Edurne Portela

Apolena Rychlíková

Žydrūnė Vitaitė

In collaboration with Hay Festival and Wom@rts. Introduced by Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. ‘To be European,’ writes Leïla Slimani, ‘is to believe that we are, at once, diverse and united, that the Other is different but equal.’ Despite these high ideals, however, there is a growing sense that Europe needs to be fixed, or at the least seriously rethought. The clamour of rising nationalism – alongside widespread feelings of disenfranchisement – needs to be addressed if the dreams of social cohesion, European integration, perhaps even democracy are to be preserved. This anthology brings together 28 acclaimed women writers, artists, scientists and entrepreneurs from across the continent to offer new perspectives on the future of Europe, and how it might be rebuilt. Featuring essays, fictions and short plays, Europa28 asks what it means to be European today and demonstrates – with clarity and often humour – how women really do see things differently. ‘Inspiring, essential, honest and deeply humane... This brilliant collection takes readers on a brave journey into our beloved continent, Europe, daring to tell the stories beyond its centres of power and privilege.’ - Elif Shafak

Writing by Women on the Future of Europe

Europa28

Hilary Cottam

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