You may be familiar with Bhutan’s “Gross National Happiness Index,” established to measure something more than economic well-being of a country. Or perhaps you’ve followed the UK’s Happy Museum project, which takes a holistic approach to sustainability and well-being.
Now this approach is beginning to take hold in the US. (Or at least it is gaining a toe-hold.)Your Futurist Friday assignment is to watch this [2 min] video about the city of Santa Monica’s Well-being Project, one of five projects to be funded through Bloomberg Philanthropy’s Mayors Challenge.
You can read more about the project in this article,
This project aims to expands Santa Monica’s Youth Wellbeing Report Card to create a metric that serves the whole city. The Youth report card already takes note of museums (for example, the Santa Monica Museum of Art ‘s Park Studio, which is a spring break immersion program for high school students). If this approach spreads to other cities–how might it help measure, and value, the contribution of museums to a community’s well-being?