Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford Speaks on Mindfulness
Listen to the Speech
Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister, addressed the Developing Mindfulness in Wales Conference on 21 November 2019: the first time a government leader or First Minister has addressed a mindfulness conference anywhere in the world. He commented that Wales had a long contemplative tradition and offered three challenges.
- Mindfulness in Wales needs to be based on evidence. Good intentions aren’t enough.
- It needs to focus on individuals not in isolation but in relation to others and in communities. This implies a ‘social model of mindfulness’ that reflects the model of distributed leadership that the Welsh Government seeks to follow.
- And it must pay attention to the causes as well as the consequences of social distress. This means mobilising people to work collaboratively to address those underlying causes.