Good Work Nottingham
What can we do to make Nottingham the first good work city in the UK?
Since Nottingham Civic Exchange launched in 2017, we've focused on understanding the challenges facing ordinary working people. The role of paid work is often central to those challenges. We're excited to invite you to join us in exploring how to create a place that provides good work for all. As part of our programme we will be hosting a series of public events.
Please join us to explore how to create a place that provides good work for all. What does good work mean? And what can we do to achieve it? We will be exploring these questions during our event series and wider programme of work.
In this four part series we will:
- screen a short documentary where we meet Sara and understand how economic insecurity has affected her;
- understand the current picture of employment locally;
- look at how health and wellbeing play their part in work and;
- take a detailed look at bad work and the ways we can challenge it.
Nottingham Civic Exchange is leading Good Work Nottingham with partners from across the country and the region.
Designing work that makes us healthy and happy
Good Work Nottingham shared six perspectives on this broad topic as provocations for future thinking and action. These summaries are shared in our blog. Participants were asked at the workshop to reflect on these provocations and to consider how guidance and action locally can make a difference.
A working paper called Setting the foundations for healthy work and workplaces continues to inform our work in this area.
Laying the Foundations of a Good Work City
Good Work Nottingham aims to understand and tackle economic insecurity. To do this within a place we needed a thorough understanding of the local context. Laying the Foundations of a Good Work City provides a clear, contemporary and regionalised understanding of employment locally. It will help to inform our programme of work going forward and has already begun to shed light on some of the key challenges and opportunities Good Work Nottingham will address.
Read our summary outlining the five things you need to know about employment in Nottingham
Previous events
Making bad work good
Wednesday 10 July, 10 - 4.00 pm
How does a city like Nottingham ensure everyone has meaningful and fulfilling work? Join us for a day-long conference on this important issue.
To improve these 'bad' jobs we need to understand how working conditions are shaped by both wider social conditions and characteristics that are specific to each sector. This day-long event – the final Good Work Nottingham event series – will explore a number of sectors which traditionally haven’t had a good reputation before sharing some examples of individuals and organisations who have been working to tackle bad work.
This action-oriented event will share and develop examples of best practice and strategies for change, and explore how we can work together to achieve good work for all.
- 10:00 Arrival and registration
- 10:20 Welcome and introduction to the day
- 10:30 Keynote by Dr Julie MacLeavy, University of Bristol
- 11:20 Sectoral challenges:
- Social Care: James Pike, Doctoral Student, NTU Department of Sociology
- Private Hire Drivers: Azeem Hanif, United Private Hire Drivers
- Hand Car Washes: Professor Ian Clark, NTU
- Food Processing: Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union
- 12:15 Lunch and networking
- 13:00 Tackling Bad Work:
- Worker Cooperatives: Dr Kiri Langmead, NTU Nottingham Business School
- Business Perspectives: Lucy Robinson, East Midlands Chamber of Commerce
- Campaigning on the Living Wage: Andreas Bieler, University of Nottingham
- Work in Socialist Cuba: Annie Rutter, Rock Around the Blockade
- Work in Britain Beyond the Capitalist Horizon: Dr Tom Vickers, NTU Work Futures Research Group
- 13:45 What can we do to make bad work good? Group discussions
- 15:00 Round up
- 15:40 Cake and Close
Designing work that makes us healthy and happy
Wednesday 8 May, 5:30 - 7 pm
Associate Professor Maria Karanika-Murray and the universities Work, Wellbeing and Performance Research Group will help us to understand workplace wellbeing in more depth and explore what organisations can do to create good work environments and cultures.
The current picture of employment in Nottingham - what does this mean for our city?
Wednesday 27 March, 8 - 9.30 am
What does the data tell us about Nottingham’s economy and employment picture? How far do we have to go to create a good work city? Join us to decipher the numbers and explore the employment trends across the region.
An Ordinary Working Family? and Good Work Nottingham
Thursday 31 January, 5:30 - 7 pm
Join us to begin the conversation about how to make Nottingham a good work city and for the debut screening of our film ‘An Ordinary Working Family?’.