Conference
Local Futures continues its unique and ongoing collaboration with the city government of Jeonju. On the 8th and 9th of November, 2018, we cohosted the fourth Economics of Happiness conference in a row in Jeonju City*.
Since the first landmark conference in 2015, resulting in the Jeonju Declaration on the Economics of Happiness, the local government, headed by Mayor Kim Seung-soo, has been committed to:
“shift[ing] its administrative system away from a paradigm that prioritizes growth and development towards one that puts people first [and] to create an economy that works for the people and makes local communities happy”
The conference focused on three threads: urban regeneration and the active involvement of residents; local food and Jeonju´s food plan and policy, with special focus on producers, and; local finance strategies, including a local currency pilot project.
Furthermore the event served as a next step in a process of cross-pollination between the Japanese localization/economics of happiness movement and that of South Korea. This process commenced last year, when several members of the economics of happiness organizing committee in South Korea, took part in the Economics of Happiness World Forum, in Tokyo in 2017. This time around, two key change-makers from the Japanese World Forum, assisted in Jeonju, to share about localization trends, strategies and initiatives in Japan.
The two-day conference program included a mix of keynote speeches, panel discussions and workshops organised around the three threads of local regeneration, food and finance.
Download our official event poster here: Economics of Happiness Conference Jeonju 2018.
International speakers included:
Junko Edahiro (Japan)
Co-Founder of Japan for Sustainability and President of the Institute for Studies in Happiness, Economy and Society
Jay Tompt (UK)
Co-founder of the Totnes REconomy Project and the Local Entrepreneur Forum in Totnes, UK
Takahashi Hiromichi (Japan)
Executive director of Japan´s most innovative farmers-consumer food cooperative, the PAL System
Program for EOH Conference Jeonju 2018
