Levels of loneliness in the UK are so high that social scientists have labelled it an epidemic, with nine million people—more than the population of London—either always or often lonely. It’s only relatively recently that we’ve started to see loneliness as a health risk, but it is every bit as dangerous for you as smoking and obesity: massively increasing your chances of suffering dementia, heart disease and depression.
'Collectively' is an organisation that unleashes collective action to tackle some of the thorniest issues of our time, whether that’s inequality, ocean plastics or sustainable fashion. Through ‘labs’ they design and prototype new approaches to entrenched problems, pooling the insight and expertise of an array of experts from business, charities, government and the arts to shed light on their problem area and create lasting change.
One of their key challenges is to ‘design loneliness out of our cities’. I filmed a series of events the group curated to capture, brainstorm and test ideas that might genuinely shift the needle on this growing issue.