What changes when communities, rather than policymakers, decide what prosperity means?

For decades 'prosperity' has been linked to the idea of economic growth and measured by rising GDP. These pages tell a different story about what prosperity means.

The stories here are based on research asking people from five east London neighbourhoods what it means to live a prosperous life. The research was designed and carried out by 'citizen social scientists' - residents trained to work as social researchers in their own communities - working with researchers from the Institute for Global Prosperity.

These pages have been designed to make the stories and research findings easily accessible and to show how citizen-led research can have a significant impact on the way policymakers think about action on prosperity. We hope these stories will be valuable to individuals, communities, organisations and policymakers - both in east London, where the research has taken place, and in other areas where people are interested in understanding what prosperity means in local terms.

Acknowledgments

This research draws on significant contributions from an extensive group of citizen social scientists who have worked on designing, collecting, interpreting and presenting this work. We would like to thank and acknowledge their participation:

Sue Ansarie, Peter Bailey, Rhajesh Bhattacherjee, Miriam Chapman, Farhana Ibrahim, Montana Joseph, Akbar Khan, Leila Lawal, Nathalie Limon, Tony McKenzie, Jonathan Murray, Kyronne Parkes, Carrie Svinning, Ivy Tanzila, Ines Tercio, Fatima Uddin, Angela Williams, Nileema Yesmin, Nesrin Yurtoglu.