Carnegie UK runs a rolling portfolio of research, policy, practice development and advocacy programmes to advance our strategic aims of putting wellbeing at the heart of decision making and tackling issues that threaten aspects of wellbeing. We use our challenge questions to guide our work.

Read about our current work:

Measuring Wellbeing

Life in the UK – Carnegie UK promotes putting wellbeing at the centre of policymaking across the UK. We believe we need a new, holistic measure of social progress to tell us whether policies and actions are positively influencing how well we are living.

The Life in the UK index is a three-year demonstrator project designed to measure the collective wellbeing of the people of the UK, looking at social, economic, environmental, and democratic aspects of life. This landmark research, conducted in partnership with Ipsos, is based on a survey of more than 6900 people.

We launched the first set of findings in November 2023. Other reports published using this data are:

This work is based on a pilot project Gross Domestic Wellbeing which we launched in 2020.

Contact: [email protected]

Wellbeing and place

Wellbeing in the North of Tyne – In 2021, Carnegie UK and North of Tyne Combined Authority brought together the ‘Roundtable on Wellbeing in the North of Tyne’.
This group of specialists worked together to design a wellbeing approach for the North of Tyne, built on the voice of people living across the region.
In 2023, we’ll expand on this work with information about how other institutions can adopt a similar approach.
Contact: [email protected]
Imagining a Wellbeing Economy in Ireland – In partnership with WEALL Ireland, we are bringing together a community of artists and other creative people to reimagine a society that puts wellbeing first.
This approach is designed to start a discussion about the case for building a wellbeing economy across the island of Ireland.
Contact: [email protected]
Understanding Welsh Places and Understanding Scottish Places – Carnegie UK supported the development of these online tools designed to help decision-makers make informed decisions about local economies and places.

Tackling threats to wellbeing

Online Harms (ended October 2023) – Carnegie UK worked for over four years to develop and promote a systemic, risk-based approach to regulation to tackle online harm in the UK and has influenced the development of the UK’s Online Safety Act. This programme of work came to an end in October 2023. However, our former associates Maeve Walsh and Professor Lorna Woods have continued to work on the implementation of the Online Safety Act. To get in touch with them, or find more about this work, please visit their website. To keep up with the latest developments on their work, you can also sign up to their new newsletter here. You can access the archive of Carnegie UK’s work on tackling online harms here, as well as an archive of our dedicated Online Safety Act resource page here. You can read archived editions of our former Online Harms newsletter here.

Democratic wellbeing – Democratic wellbeing in England is in crisis according to our 2022 report GDWe: A spotlight on democratic wellbeing which found that less than half of the public think that democracy works well. This work built upon our activities in Northern Ireland working with local authorities.
In 2023, we’ll look to develop this work looking at aspects of participatory democracy and investigating new ways to improve transparency.
Contact: [email protected]

Policy and Advocacy