What does a HAPPY
Kingston Upon Thames look like?
The Happy Kingston Project is a storytelling experiment looking to foster active hope in residents by exploring what brings us personal joy, and how we can cultivate more long-term consistent and sustainable happiness for a stronger and more resilient community - and a more hopeful future.
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Delivered through a series of art and wellbeing workshops, we'll use hands-on collage activities to celebrate each of our resident's voices and stories.
Stories of what a happy life in Kingston looks like, how we connect into our neighbourhoods and the wider borough, how we interact with our communities, and how our communities and the borough can in turn support us.
By celebrating these nuances, we hope to better understand the mindsets, values and priorities of our residents, and build a framework for how we invite more people to become co-authors of our collective future.
We want residents from all across the borough to be a part of The Happy Kingston Project.
Our art and wellbeing workshops will run throughout 2025, 2026 and 2027 and will predominantly take place in our borough's beautiful third spaces. The next workshop will be on:
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23 March 2025 at Kingston Environment Centre: Happy Kingston Collage - an Art and Wellbeing Workshop Tickets, Sun 23 Mar 2025 at 14:00 | Eventbrite
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If you're an organisation, group or space interested in hosting a Happy Kingston Project workshop for your members, or you'd simply like to say 'hi' or learn more about the project, please drop us an email us at thehappykingstonproject@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
This is a three-year project made possible through funding from Kingston Council's Small Green Grant. It's run by Divya for Kingston Hive with inputs from a range of experts and community leaders at key points in the research, development and design phases.
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We'd like to express our thanks to Soumojit (Tisu) Ghosh for supporting the project in Year 1, and to Dannielle O'Shaughnessy for supporting the project in Years 2 and 3.
Divya Venkatesh is a creative designer and visual researcher with 14 + years' experience developing emotive and efficient visual communications for nature conservation and sustainable development organisations. She’s passionate about storytelling that uses joy to ignite people’s imagination and transform hope into positive ecological action.
She’s interested in: how knowledge is created, shared and lived - learning through art and creative exploration - Imagination Activism - celebrating the everyday heroes in our communities - deepening our connections to each other, time and place.