Cooperative - United Diversity

Co-produce something tangible as a group of equal peers

I <3 the Participatory City [http://www.participatorycity.org/] Foundation’s “ Every One Every Day [https://www.weareeveryone.org/]” initiative. There is so much wisdom baked into their approach, wonderfully summed up as creating as many opportunities as possible for people to: > Co-produce something tangible as a group

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What if... Co-operatives UK had £70 million a year?

This article was originally written for Issue 14 of STIR, the magazine for the new economy and was also published online at Co-operatives UK What if…? blog that fed into the UK National Co-operative Development Strategy. I recently noticed that blog has since gone offline and so have re-posted the

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Open Co-ops: Inspirations, Legal Structure and Tools

this post originally appeared in Stir Magazine [https://www.stirtoaction.com/magazine] illustration by Daksheeta Pattni [https://www.daksheetapattni.com/] In 2002 I described United Diversity [https://uniteddiversity.coop] as “a member owned and stakeholder governed network of mutual advantage.” In truth, it was aspirational. At the time, the flexible

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United Diversity at the London Permaculture Festival

I’m off to Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival [https://uniteddiversity.coop/projects/cloud-cuckoo-land/] now, but thought I’d better whack this presentation I did at the London Permaculture Festival [https://londonpermaculturefestival.com/] up first. I gives a brief history of United Diversity plus details of our exciting plans going forward.

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TOGETHER. How cooperatives show resilience to the crisis

This great new documentary, featuring Mondragon [https://uniteddiversity.coop/2013/07/31/the-mondragon-co-operative-corporation/] and other co-operative [https://uniteddiversity.coop/category/cooperative/] inspirations shows how it is not just financial co-operatives who are more resilient to crisis [https://uniteddiversity.coop/2013/07/30/financial-co-operatives-a-safe-bet-in-a-crisis/] , but all co-ops. The examples are from

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Homes and Hands - Community Land Trusts in Action

We’ll never have a peaceful, just and sustainable world (or, as Charles Eisenstein [https://charleseisenstein.net/] says ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible [https://vimeo.com/66550562]‘) whilst the land that sustains us all is owned and controlled by a tiny minority of the population. We

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The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation

The Mondragón Corporation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation] is an inspiration. The largest cooperative [https://uniteddiversity.coop/category/cooperative/] in the world, they are a federated network of over 250 co-operative businesses who together are the seventh biggest group in Spain. They employ over 80,000 people, have

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Time to replicate WIR Bank?

The WIR Bank [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR_Bank] in Switzerland has been successfully running for over 60 years. It was started in the 1930s in response to the great economic crises of the time. Studies have shown [https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Money_and_Economics/Community_Currencies/WIR] that

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Financial co-operatives: A safe bet in a crisis

The Co-opreative News [https://www.thenews.coop/] has reported [https://www.thenews.coop/article/financial-co-operatives-safe-bet-crisis] news about a study by the International Labour Organization [https://www.ilo.org/] calledResilience in a downturn: The power of financial cooperatives [https://www.ilo.org/empent/Publications/WCMS_207768/lang--en/index.htm]. You can

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How Cooperatives and Community Enterprise Will Get Us Out of this Gigantic Mess

I’ve posted this excellent talk by Janelle Orsi [https://janelleorsi.com/] from the brilliant Sustainable Economies Law Center [https://www.theselc.org/] a few times over on our facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/uniteddiversity]. The whole presentation is well worth watching, but I particularly like it when she

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COMING HOME: E.F. Schumacher and the Reinvention of the Local Economy

This is one of the best documentaries about Community Supported Agriculture, Community Land Trusts and Community Currencies. > COMING HOME: E.F. Schumacher and the Reinvention of the Local Economy, is a new 37 minute film that tells the story of a series of revolutionary innovations by the community of

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Springhill Cohousing

Last Saturday Gloria and I joined members of the North London Sustainable Housing Partnership [https://nlshp.wordpress.com/] to visit the lovely Springhill Cohousing [https://www.springhillcohousing.com/] community in Stroud. The video above is a quick tour of the site (unfortunately my battery ran out before I got to

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The Take: Occupy. Resist. Produce.

As I’ve said before, The Take is one of the best films I’ve seen. We’re screening it at 7.30pm on Saturday December 15th @ Sessions of Spontaneity

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Housing Co-ops

Just sent this out to a couple of lists… People keep asking me about Housing Co-ops 🙂 Here are a few good links: Finding Housing Co-ops in London https://www.cch.coop/coopinfo/london.html https://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/iane/coops/coopsdirlondon.html How to set up a Housing