— Naryan

Mycelium matters!

— Naryan

Less stuff, more joy!

— Naryan

A better economy sounds like a beautiful song sung by joyful people, on regenerative land honouring Indigenous knowledge.

— May

— Naryan

This Festival centres Canada. We welcome other voices from around the world to join us!

— Naryan

— Rose

The writing is on the wall...

— Rose

We need a different economy as the current one drives us to loneliness, despair, and apathy. We can choose conservation over consumption, cooperation over competition, and meaning over money. ~ Joyce

— Joyce

Festival for Re-imagining the Economy

Two weeks online & local · co-created by everyone who joins

The economy is a story.
It's time we wrote a new one.

Across Canada, people are already building something different — rooted in wellbeing, not extraction. The festival is where we bring it all together: pooling research, frameworks, and lived experience into a shared, evolving picture.

📅 2 weeks, August 12–26🪶 Pay-what-you-can, $0 option always available🌱 Every voice shapes the program

Make this festival your own

This festival comes alive when participants become co-creators, animating the two weeks with offerings that are as meaningful for the hosts as they are for the collective. This website is an example of this — once registered, you can add your own thoughts, doodles, and images to shape this festival publicly.

Plus — join our weekly ‘co-creation sessions’ ahead of the festival to meet the others who are already making the festival what it might become.

Prologue

One story we made up — and can rewrite

The economy isn't a law of nature. It's a story we agreed to live inside: profit first, growth always, consequences later. The cracks are showing — in wellbeing data, in inequality, in the places we live.

For decades, people across the country have been writing a different story — through research, cooperatives, land trusts, and communities that already live the alternative. This festival is where those threads meet.

The shift is fractal: it shows up in how one person thinks, how an organization defines its purpose, and in the policies that shape us all.

ExtractiveRegenerative

Profit-firstWellbeing-first

Short-termLong-term

Isolated effortsCollective insight

This shift happens at every scale: in how you think, in how your organization works, and in the rules that govern us all. The festival makes room to work on all three, together.

How it works

This festival is what we make of it

There's no fixed agenda from above. The program comes from sessions that participants propose — conversations, workshops, practices, and stories that fill the shared calendar everyone explores.

You bring it

Create Session

Host a dialogue, workshop, story circle, or practice — on anything that moves us toward a better economy. You pick the title, format, and capacity.

It's shared

It joins the calendar

Your session appears on the shared schedule alongside everyone else's. Participants browse, RSVP, and build their own path through the festival.

We gather

Meet with curiosity

Sessions are transcribed and summarized. Reflections afterward ("harvest") pull out what was learned — for hosts and for the wider festival.

It compounds

It enters the Commons

Recordings, harvests, and insights go into a shared library — a growing picture of what a better economy actually looks like.

Many lenses, one shift

Whatever you call it — there's room for it here

No single framework has it all figured out. The festival is a meeting place for the movements, models, and vocabularies already pointing the same direction.

This is a starting point, not a boundary. If your work points toward wellbeing and shared flourishing — it belongs here.

Once we're underway

Watch the program take shape, in real time

As people propose sessions, a live feed appears here — and as they join, a map of the community grows alongside it.

Recently proposed sessions

Updates live during the festival

Workshopadded 9h ago

'Indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') 'Economy' (Greek 'oik

Helping people understand the roots of their own indigenous 'economy' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture heritage from everywhere on earth working in harmony with each other & the biosphere. What was called the Great-good-way-of-kindness in various appelages in every nation on every continent. Described in the 'Indigenous Circle-of-Life'. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/3-indigenous-circle-of-life et le Cercle-de-la-Vie Indigene. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/3-le-cercle-de-la-vie-indigene

Dialogueadded 1d ago

DECTO x EY Ripples Canada: Reimagining Business

The economy as it exists isn't working for people or the planet , and many groups across the country are working to build something different. But what role can corporates play in this journey? Join Doughnut Economics Collective Toronto (DECTO) and EY Ripples Canada for a timely discussion on "Reimagining Business: How Companies Can Accelerate the Transition to a New Economy". The following speakers will address this topic through the lens of their research and/or experience in their own organizations: - Thibaut Millet: Partner and Leader of EY Canada Climate Change and Sustainability Services, Advisor on EY New Economy Unit - Fernanda Sesto: Project Lead, Values-Led Business, Transform Finance - Judith Bosire: Chief Economist, Vancity Credit Union - Shawna Peddle: AVP Sustainability, Co-operators Group

Dialogueadded 2d ago

Festival Info Booth

Do you have questions about this festival? Want to check out the vibe before the event? Join us at the Festival Info Booth. Feel free to drop in anytime, members of the co-creation team will be around to answer your questions and help orient you to the space.

Dialogueadded 2d ago

The Poetry of Kevin Sutton: A Mind Without Words

Together we are a part of a bio-intelligent metametabolism we call the planet Earth, yet modern economy operates from principles of individualism, self-interest, and artificial separation. What inner work is required of us as changemakers in order to shift our mindset to embrace the interconnected enmeshment of our ecological reality as a new way forward? Join Kevin Sutton for a spoken word poetry performance intended to inspire us to dream beyond the limits of what we can currently articulate and plant the seeds of an emergent garden of possibilities. This is your invitation to get comfy, close your eyes, and be taken on a journey contemplating how we will face the paradigm shift, inherent in tackling the polycrisis, with hope, joy, and determination. Kevin Sutton is non-binary, neurospicy, demi-pan-aro-ace-flux, neocryptid poet born into the Black, West Indian diaspora. Being a poet is central to Kevin’s experience of life. It breathes magic into the ordinary, speaks somatically from their connection to Land, World, and Universe, and teases mysteries loose with alchemical wordplay truly understood solely by bees, cats, and the oddest of humans. Kevin is also one half of Second Wind Liberation with Dr. Gillian Maurice who were the lead facilitators, along with Naryan Safowong, in the birth of the Wellbeing Economic Alliance of Canada. What to expect: A half hour (give or take) poetry presentation, during which attendees will be muted, will be followed by a half hour of questions, feedback, and potentially a discussion of what insights might have emerged for listeners, and how those insights might impact their changemaking. **Caveat** While the subject matter is intended to be philosophically challenging, it contains no overtly explicit content, but still may be triggering in surprising ways. You are invited to be aware of when you have reached your limit and to do what you need to do to take care of yourself. This session will be recorded and the recording made available after the festival. AI notetakers will not be admitted into the Zoom room

Dialogueadded 5d ago

Alternative budgeting

What if government budgets were participatory, rather than written by "experts" behind closed doors? What if government budgets reflected the interests of all people and the planet, rather than the interests of a privileged minority? Join us for a discussion of alternative budgeting in Canada and its role in re-imagining the economy, using the example of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Alternative Federal Budget.

The growing community

Anonymized

Join the festival to see the full map, get to know the others, and watch as the shape of us emerges.

Why gather like this

From many ideas of a better economy, one complex picture

"Difference is a catalyst for learning, not a problem to solve."

We're not here to agree on one model. We're here to see how degrowth, cooperatives, doughnut economics, and a dozen other lenses fit together — and where they disagree in useful ways.

"The work itself is where we find wellbeing."

This isn't a festival about wellbeing held at arm's length. The pace, format, and facilitation are meant to feel like what we're working toward.

"A movement grows because it's felt, not just argued."

Every session, harvest, and connection goes into a shared Commons — proof, for anyone who finds it later, that a better story is already being lived.

Real people, real work

The story is already being written

This festival is for the people and groups who are already working to transform our economy and society. A space to bring your live questions and share what you've learned over the years. It is also for folks who do not yet see themselves in the work, to discover how your experience and skills might contribute to the larger picture. This is a movement that will reach every Canadian, and each of us has a chance to bring the conversation into new places.

And should our union with the future become harvest
Should the tree we've planted
In whose shade we will never live to sit
Bear bountiful generations in her branches
It will be because
We mingled

— excerpt from Putting It All Together, by Kevin Sutton

Participants laying out blankets and mats in a circle under a large tree — Open space

A harvest board covered in colourful sticky notes from opening ceremonies — Collective wisdom

A small group of facilitators in a close huddle on a wooden floor — Real relationships

Your seat is waiting

Come help write the next chapter

Registration is pay-what-you-can — including $0 — because this story belongs to everyone. A short survey on arrival helps us connect you with your people and your sessions.

The economy is a story.It's time we wrote a new one.

Make this festival your own

One story we made up — and can rewrite

This festival is what we make of it

Create Session

It joins the calendar

Meet with curiosity

It enters the Commons

Whatever you call it — there's room for it here

Watch the program take shape, in real time

Recently proposed sessions

'Indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') 'Economy' (Greek 'oik

DECTO x EY Ripples Canada: Reimagining Business

Festival Info Booth

The Poetry of Kevin Sutton: A Mind Without Words

Alternative budgeting

The growing community

From many ideas of a better economy, one complex picture

The story is already being written

Come help write the next chapter

The economy is a story.
It's time we wrote a new one.