Q&B Spring Gathering and AGM 2011
Mainstreaming Ethical Futures - Bringing Ethics to Economies and Businesses, to build our Sustainable World
Friends Meeting House, Edinburgh, Saturday, 2 April 2011, 9:30am - 6:00pm
Help make change happen the Quaker way (QF&P 24.56) - Take up and strengthen your own role in mainstreaming ethical economic and business change. It is good being good where we are; but how can we speak truth to power, effectively? How can we bring the sustainable, ethical approach to the business and economic mainstream?
All are welcome to the AGM and Gathering. An attendance fee of £20 for Q&B members and £25 for non-members will cover room hire, refreshments and donations.
PROGRAMME
O. 9.30 Registration. 9.45 Meeting for Worship
I. 10.00 am - 10.45 am: Q&B's AGM: Join Q&B now or on the day, to join our work of promoting Quaker principles in business and the workplace. Q&B is the recognised network for Friends in or interested in business and the world of work, plus those in sympathy with us. Through Q&B we both more easily find eachother, and find our voice on concerns we share.
II. 10.45 - 4.45 pm: The Discussion: Mainstreaming Ethical Futures - Inspiring Economies and businesses for a sustainable world. Led by: Alastair McIntosh, a member of RBS, and members of the Eigg Community: living the reality, grasping mainstreaming issues, and building vision. Our speakers will address:-
- "Small Is Beautiful" in a sustainable world: Members of the Eigg Community will tell us about creating a new local and sustainable economy and business environment,
- "Scale is Essential" to achieve a sustainable world: RBS will explore the practical issues of mainstreaming ethical practice and global connectivity,
- "Small is Beautiful & Scale is Essential" Alastair McIntosh (author of 'Soil and Soul' and 'Hell and High Water') will help us create visions of a better, ethical economy and business set up that has both beauty and scale.
III. 5.00 pm - 6.00 pm: The Q&B Lecture: - delivered by Alastair McIntosh, author of: Soil & Soul, and of: Hell and High Water
The Gathering's outputs will feed all participants, and also will feed Q&B's work for change in the economic and business world - a world which exists to serve us all, and so, we contend, needs to held in trust by and for us all, in new and creative ways.
Come and be part of the movement to help make change happen the Quaker way, via quiet processes and small circles (QF&P 24.56). Leave with new ideas and understandings to guide your own life generally - including its spiritual, economic, charitable and business aspects.
Our Questions will include:
- What could be changed within our businesses, and our economy generally, for wider benefit? How would this look in the 21st C?
- How can Friends’ spiritual sense, testimonies and principles be lived as sure foundations for more sustainable businesses - and a more sustainable national and global economy?
- What forms of business ownership, control and financing are better for distributing power and wealth, rather than concentrating it into ever fewer hands?
- How do our individual purchasing and saving decisions affect the world we all depend upon? How can we manage them better?
- Complex adaptive systems cannot stand still. Their states are patterns varying with time, either within an equilibrium or outwith a self-sustaining range. What can we do in our personal and business lives to promote a more sustainable, but not static, world?
- What framework of understanding most clearly links our own local freedoms and powers to act with beneficially changing the present, uncomfortable 20th C global economic and business reality?
To explore or question, do come. Any questions: email Tim Phillips on: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it