If Not More: Imagining Life Beyond Growth

The idea that more is always good is so fundamentally baked into us that, often, we don’t even stop to consider why that is. From ‘personal growth’ to expanding audiences, territories or businesses, growth is the fundamental principle to strive for. We also know that endless growth is impossible on finite resources. Where do we look for true alternatives, rather than simply versions of the same story?

Authors Rebecca Tamás and Adrienne Buller share a conversation with creativity at its centre. What does it fundamentally mean to live sustainably, and where, to what species and cultures, do we look for inspiration? Why is degrowth so often excluded as a real option? What kind of imaginative leaps do we need to look beyond the dogmas of ‘more’, to real thriving places and lives?

Our speakers:

Rebecca Tamás is the author of the poetry collection 'WITCH' (Penned in the Margins, 2019), which was a Poetry Society Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick. Rebecca's essay collection 'Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman' (Makina Books, 2020); was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University, where she co-convenes the York Centre for Writing Poetry Series.

Adrienne Buller is a Senior Fellow at Common Wealth, a progressive think tank dedicated to building a sustainable and democratic economy. Her work focuses on the intersections between the financial system and ecological crisis, and her writing and research have featured in The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New Statesman, Jacobin, and Dissent Magazine, among others. She is the author of The Value of a Whale: On the illusions of green capitalism (Manchester University Press, 2022) and Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis (Verso, Sept. 2022)