Hello and welcome to Far Nearer, a reporting project by me, Hazel Sheffield.
I am documenting local projects and people building alternative economic systems in the UK.
What does that mean?
In the last decade, it has become clear that the economy doesn’t work for everyone. But in pockets of the UK, people are working to create new systems that do work, either by creating jobs for local people, helping people get a stake in the economy – like a house or a share of a company – or helping them with support like childcare or training.
I am creating a map of this activity at farnearer.org to explore how local economies are changing in the aftermath of austerity, Brexit and most recently coronavirus.
I am also taking a closer look at these projects, exploring their sustainability and scalability through film, photography, data and text. So far, Far Nearer stories have appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, Huck, Wired UK, the Long+Short, the i paper and other publications that you can see here.
I’d love to hear from you if you are involved in this work too: hazel@farnearer.org
Far Nearer is funded by the Friends Provident Foundation and Power to Change.