The Post-Growth Challenge

Calling writers, artists, designers and video makers!
Can you make a Post Growth Policy Package?

An initiative by Steady State Manchester in collaboration with the Manchester Meteor and the Systems Change Alliance.

The Green New Deal has become a key reference point for those seeking a viable economic, social and ecological future. However, most versions are flawed, failing to recognise the problems of rebound, economic colonisation and the power of incumbent corporations.  A family of alternatives exists, variously described in terms like ‘degrowth’, ‘post-growth’, the ‘steady state economy’ or ‘the simpler way’.  But perhaps due to their complexity and their truly radical implications, their proponents have not caught the public eye like the Green Dealers have.  What if it were possible to succinctly portray an attractive policy package, that could be almost lifted “off the shelf” for political campaigns and manifestos?  Could it be done?  Our Post-Growth Challenge has been posed to find out.

What?

A cooperative challenge to find a better way to present the post-growth alternative.

Why?

Over the last two years, various Green New Deals have become very popular. This demonstrates that a set of policy ideas can be effectively communicated by combining them into one positive package.

In contrast, the ideas and proposals of the degrowth, post-growth and steady state economy movements can appear complex, vague, negative and unattractive. Can we overcome that disadvantage by trying to do what the Green Dealers have done and present a Post-Growth Deal? There’s one way to find out – let’s try it!

How?

We invite you to present your Post Growth Policy package.

It needs to be presented in straightforward, concise, easy to understand, and attractive terms, without denying the real difficulties involved in reducing the material and energy throughput of our economies.

This could be done as,

• A short policy briefing – of up to 600 words (you can use appendices to go into deeper detail).

Or…

• You could present it in graphic terms, as an ‘infographic’, a cartoon or a comic strip, for example.

Or…

• You could make a short video (max 5 minutes) to get your ideas over.

Or..

• Maybe you’ve an even better idea for how to present it– the choice is yours.

Who?

Anyone who is interested in creating an economy that can sustainably support life on Earth.

We anticipate two classes of entry.

A)   Those focussing on a post-growth future in the specific context of Greater Manchester.

And

B)    Those with proposals for national or inter-state (European Union, ALBA, Mercosur, UN, etc. etc.) implementation.

When?

Send us your entries by midnight, GMT, Sunday, 28 February, 2021.

How and where?

Entries should be sent to steadystatemanchester[AT]gmail.com

Articles, briefings, stories, or infographics should be sent in the form of an email attachment. They can be wordprocessor documents ( .odt, .doc, .docx), pdf files, or image files (.jpg, .png, ..gif, .svg). Please keep attachments to less than 2 megabytes in size. For anything larger, compress it or send as a file link (e.g. using dropbox, box, spideroak, google).

Videos should be uploaded to a video hosting platform and a link sent to the above email address.

We will acknowledge entries.

Prizes!

“Everybody has won and all must have prizes.”

All participants will receive a printed copy of our pamphlet, “The Viable Economy … and Society”. The entry that we like best in each class will be presented with a tee-shirt with the Steady State Manchester logo¹. Wear it at events, or wear it in bed: we don’t mind!

Most important, though will be that we will publicise the best entries, through our various local and international networks.

In addition we might invite the creator of our favourite Greater Manchester entry to jointly nominate a local post-growth organisation for a small grant.

Rights

All entries will be made under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This allows anyone to share the work in its original form, so long as they give proper attribution to the creator.

1  So long as we have your size available.