Strategies for building new economic policies that endure

Clara Leonard | Institut Avant-garde  Carolina Ortega Guttack | FiscalFuture Zoe Elsner | ZOE Institut

How can new economic and fiscal policies both improve people's lives now and survive the next election? Drawing on recent European experience, this interactive session explores how organisations can create openings for durable reform amid political instability and rising populism. Participants will map the pressures shaping their work, test how their agendas connect to everyday concerns, and identify narrative, coalition and institutional strategies for building broader majorities. They will leave with a practical framework and concrete approaches for connecting future-oriented economic and fiscal policy with the political strategies needed to deliver it, rebuild trust and endure political change. 

Steward-Ownership and the Future of Our Economy 

Maike Kauffmann, Adrian Hensen | Purpose Foundation

There has never been a time where the relationship between money, power, and the purpose of business has been more consequential and urgent. And at the root of this relationship is corporate ownership – the code that shapes and drives business behaviour in society. In this session, we will be shaking up dominant mindsets and narratives around ownership. We will explore the living innovation of steward ownership and how it fundamentally turns conventional understanding of ownership on its head, separating power and money and drawing from ancient wisdom: stewardship of resources for future generations, accountability to community, the idea that no one truly "owns" what they hold in trust. We will highlight company examples from Signal Messenger, Patagonia, Ecosia.org, Bosch to Novo Nordisk, and together ask what potential steward ownership could hold for the future we want to build – both in the realm of company ownership and beyond.

Lessons in power-building to change the rules of the game

Laura Alfers | WIEGO, Naila Kabeer |LSE

How do we build the power needed to change the rules of the economic game? This interactive session brings together worker leaders, organisers and researchers to explore lessons from organisations of workers in informal employment, who have spent decades building collective power under conditions of exclusion and insecurity. Through concrete examples, speakers will examine three pathways to change: making workers visible through data and knowledge production, extending rights and protections, and building collective organisation and voice. Participants will reflect on what these experiences can teach broader efforts to create more democratic, equitable and sustainable economies, and identify practical implications for their own work.

Redesigning money to serve communities through alternative digital currencies

Jan Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski | The Polish Economics Network

Local and alternative currencies, from Bristol Pay to Sardinia's Sardex mutual-credit circuit, alongside Korean youth dividend programs, show how money can be redesigned to serve communities. Building on these, we're exploring systems that go further: actively rewarding pro-social behaviour through digital tools built for community organisations. This workshop opens with a short presentation, then invites participants into a hands-on discussion of core mechanisms—monetary supply, demand, transaction mechanics, and taxation. We’ll map which approaches hold promise and which pitfalls to avoid. It will directly inform our ongoing work with Polish local governments and communities putting these ideas into practice.

New mechanisms to govern concentrated wealth and power

Fernanda Balata

Against the backdrop of the world's first trillionaire, extreme wealth has become an increasingly prominent focus for new economy agendas. Yet despite growing support for wealth taxation and increasing concern about concentrated corporate and economic power – from AI to climate finance – the implementation of new governance mechanisms continues to stall. Why?

This session asks what movements should organise around beyond wealth taxation to build societies' capacity to govern extreme wealth. Beginning with a short provocation on the growing mismatch between transnational economic power and systems of governance, participants will collectively map the governance innovations, campaigns and institutions already emerging across movements and regions, exploring how these fragmented efforts might become a more connected agenda for systemic transformation.

The Prometheus Protocol - a civic rehearsal for the AI age

Alexandra Stef | Collective Futures, Hrishabh Sandilya | ReImagined Futures

AI is not just a new technology, but a new architecture of economic and political power. The Prometheus Protocol is a theatre-inspired civic rehearsal where you step into real dilemmas around AI, ownership and democracy. Beginning with the assets communities already have, and inspired by alternatives already being built, we imagine, prototype and rehearse the roles, relationships, institutions and economic arrangements that more democratic futures might grow from, before the future is decided for us. Come for the experience, leave with an open protocol to convene the next rehearsal in your own community.

The politics of a new economy 

Sebastian Mang | Prosper, Vesna Jusup | European Centre for Digital Action

Politics eats policy for breakfast. Political parties are aligning with the far right on issues, from climate to migration, dismantling hard-won social and environmental protections. Meanwhile the cost of living, voters' top concern, remains politically unclaimed. Recent progressive breakthroughs suggest it doesn't have to stay that way. Drawing on pan-European polling, campaign experience and conversations with politicians, this session asks what voters actually want and what it takes to win on the economy.

Mfumo Wa Ustawi (Weave of Wellbeing)

Joy Njeri Njihia, Cyrus Mbugua Kimani | Ntulea Africa

Our session seeks to redefine turning together not as Global North actors prescribing solutions to the South, but as a relational, peer-to-peer circle of mutual solidarity that respects a pluriverse of economic worlds. Using East Africa as our focal point, we’ll draw on African-centred economic frameworks, and translate the systemic frictions of neocolonialism into a tactile, participatory experience for a diverse international audience. The session will allow us to explore both the theoretical critique of extraction and the practical, sovereign economic infrastructure already being built on the ground in Global South nations today.

Partners for A New Economy

A funder-only session - a chance to learn from colleagues in philanthropy who are reshaping funding practices, and discuss openings for change, common challenges, and tensions we're navigating in our work.

Practical lessons for reaching large audiences with ideas that matter

Michael Mezzatesta | Better Future Media

New economy narratives don't just need better messaging – they need better strategy. In this interactive session, Better Future Media founder Michael Mezzatesta shares practical lessons from building an independent media brand that has reached tens of millions of people across social media, podcasts, and newsletters. Together we'll explore why some narratives spread while others stall, what today's platforms reward (and penalize), and practical strategies for reaching large audiences with ideas that matter. We'll also open a broader conversation: What would it take for our movement to build a powerful media ecosystem, rather than relying on fragmented efforts?

Understanding and managing inflation in the polycrisis

David Barmes | CETEx LSE, Maike Schmidt | New Economics Foundation, Damon Aitken | UCL

This session is all about rethinking how we tackle inflation. We’re seeing crisis after crisis trigger supply shocks that push prices up while slowing economic activity. With climate change and geopolitical tensions rising, these shocks are likely to be more frequent and severe, hitting low-income households hardest through food and energy costs. The standard response, central banks hiking interest rates, risks deepening instability and inequality while undermining the green investment we badly need. So we'll unpack the drivers and consequences of inflation, where conventional monetary policy falls short, and explore heterodox alternatives for stabilising prices and driving real change. No prior knowledge needed — everyone's welcome!

From emotion to collective action 

Tanja Brumbauer, Hannah Strobel | Next Economy Lab (based in Bonn)

This session invites participants to explore how emotions can become a source of collective action through a guided Deep Listening walk in a nearby park. At a time of overlapping crises and growing polarization, many people feel disconnected, overwhelmed, and unable to imagine meaningful change. While the new economy movement often focuses on strategies and systems, the emotional realities shaping society are frequently overlooked. Reflecting on the question, "Which emotions are emerging in times of crisis and transition, and how might they become collective energy to turn together?", participants will experience a practical method for building connection and reflect upon relevant questions for the New Economy movement.

Reimagining the law for an era of kinship and interdependence

Brontie Ansell, Jessica Mond-Wedd | Lawyers for Nature

This session will explore law-making techniques for the more-than-human and ecosystems. This matters because in the vast majority of legal systems Nature is seen as an object of law, mostly identified as nothing more than a resource. Where it is treated as an ethical subject, that is only ever by reference to its relationship with humans. Our legal story needs significant reinvention for an era where humans are part of the story, not THE story. This requires lawyers to learn from other professions as much as possible before attempting to design law. This session is an example of the collective power of thoughtful legal design.

Building constituencies across divides to win on affordability

Anna Schueler, Carol Peterson, Lotte Dohmen | Movement Hub

The session shares examples from Movement Hub’s work in Germany to build power through structure-based community organising that is oriented toward winning on affordability. We share the model we use to build constituencies in locations where conventional mobilising, or communications approaches on their own, have proven insufficient. Our approach prevents the far-right from dominating the local problem-solution narrative. In the first part of the session we share our model, and in the second, participants will explore power-building strategies and which best fit the goal of their organization or issue.

The transformative potential of a caring economy 

Celine Charveriat | Pro(to)topia, Georgia Nicolau I Procomun

This workshop explores how a caring economy (focused on relationality) can respond to overlapping economic, social and environmental crises. The session has two objectives: 

1) Reaching a common understanding about the relative merits and complementarities of different frameworks (e.g. caring economy vs. well-being economy vs. degrowth).

2) Identifying together with participants concrete openings to harness the concept of a caring economy within the new economy movement (through specific examples of narratives, metrics, prototypes, policy reform proposals etc.).

Practical lessons for reaching large audiences with ideas that matter

Michael Mezzatesta | Better Future Media

New economy narratives don't just need better messaging – they need better strategy. In this interactive session, Better Future Media founder Michael Mezzatesta shares practical lessons from building an independent media brand that has reached tens of millions of people across social media, podcasts, and newsletters. Together we'll explore why some narratives spread while others stall, what today's platforms reward (and penalize), and practical strategies for reaching large audiences with ideas that matter. We'll also open a broader conversation: What would it take for our movement to build a powerful media ecosystem, rather than relying on fragmented efforts?

Learning to Change Systems through Cooperation

Cristian Gil-Sánchez | Acción Pública

This interactive card game and facilitated reflection supports participants to explore how people collaborate, make decisions, and respond to complexity. Participants experience the tensions of collective action firsthand, using play as a safe space to experiment, build trust, and uncover hidden dynamics within organizations, communities, and systems. Rather than discussing collaboration in theory, they practice it in real time, reflect on their decisions, and connect insights to their own challenges. The experience strengthens systems thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and the ability to redesign relationships and ways of working to enable more effective collective action in times of complexity and transition.

Time in small groups to explore the museum’s exhibits and spaces - noting or drawing things that inspire your work and sharing reflections with each other.

As you move through the building and galleries, what catches your eye? What images, words or spaces bring a different perspective to the Gathering’s themes: new ideas, openings for change and collective power?