Sustainable Working Cultures for the Environmental Movement.

The Sustainable Wellbeing Environment Network (SWEN) explores what it means to find ways of working that respond to some of the environmental movement’s biggest challenges, such as burnout, lack of diversity and collaboration difficulties.

We also look beyond that, seeking to understand how the environmental movement might become even more of a catalyst for the kinds of deep transformations that are already unfolding in so many people and places, and yet that are still desperately needed, now more urgently than ever.

The SWEN is an open network, free for anyone in the environmental movement to join and beyond, both in the UK and worldwide.

You can find out about our meeting times and how to join us here.

Our Values

The SWEN’s values are not static, but constantly evolving and deepening. However, these three values seem to be something that as a community we come back to again and again as a way of working.

The first is to welcome more of ourselves. We invite all of ourselves to the work, such as our emotions, intuitions and bodies, as well as our minds. Our doubts, fears, failures and not-knowing are also valued as vital to the work we are doing together. 

The second is to make time for each other. We take time to build our relationships of trust, which in turn enables us to be more authentic, collaborative, creative and, ultimately, effective. This also means making time to face into the challenges of our working together where we find difference, trusting in what could be learned from those experiences. 

The third is to live what we hope to create. We experiment with embodying the kind of changes we hope to see in a more sustainable world, including a fairer distribution of power, and respecting the limitations of our personal and collective resources.