Welcome to notacompetition! I’ve launched this blog and website because I believe our competitive culture is making us unhappy. I also believe we can change this.

Young children crying because they’ve been excluded from musical chairs isn’t “fun”. School children who can’t sleep because they’re worried about tests will not lead to better education outcomes. Spending more time obsessing about our online image than talking to friends doesn’t make us happy.  Living our lives as a race against others is exhausting and counter-productive. But it is how our culture works, increasingly.  In the last two years we learnt that being “great”, “first” and in “control”  are more important for many than coming together as nations and as people to meet challenges at home and abroad.

Competition is not inevitable and there are many stories and studies that show how working with one another can make us both more productive, and happier.

I used to be committed to the idea of competition.  I trained and practised as a competition lawyer, first in London and then at the European Commission in Brussels. I bought into the idea that competition is necessary to ensure markets function and consumers benefit from the best and cheapest products, and also that it helps us thrive as individuals.   I then moved to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), now the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), again, championing competition and free markets.

The global financial crisis in 2008 changed things. More clearly than before it exposed the downsides of free markets, competition and unlimited growth and the failure of mainstream policy to deal with inequality and sustainability.

I moved from London to Oxford where I completed a Masters in Environmental Change and Management and then started working on local social enterprise projects.  I helped set up Oxford North Community Renewables and the Low Carbon Hub, supporting communities across Oxfordshire to develop renewable energy projects. I started to see how things could be done differently, how many people are driven by a desire to contribute to, and be part of, their community, rather than purely financial considerations. Most recently I have worked at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI) as researcher.

I have two children at school and their daily happiness and future are what drives me. Every day is a battle against competitiveness, but also an opportunity to find pleasure in helping one another, in enjoying life’s challenges and in appreciating our personal journeys and progress.

Through this website and blog I hope to explore and promote the idea that we don’t need competition, that it is not inevitable; that cooperative approaches can make us happier, and that seeking and meeting our own personal challenges and goals and valuing difference, rather than winning against others, can make us more fulfilled in all spheres of life, and ultimately create a better society for all.

Julia Patrick, March 2017