Cooperative - United Diversity

Co-produce something tangible as a group of equal peers

I <3 the Participatory City Foundation’s “Every One Every Day” 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 of equal peers. Thereby creating a

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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

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Open Co-ops: Inspirations, Legal Structure and Tools

this post originally appeared in Stir Magazine illustration by Daksheeta Pattni In 2002 I described United Diversity as “a member owned and stakeholder governed network of mutual advantage.” In truth, it was aspirational. At the time, the flexible off-the-shelf legal structures and open source tools needed to make such a

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United Diversity at the London Permaculture Festival

I’m off to Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival now, but thought I’d better whack this presentation I did at the London Permaculture Festival up first. I gives a brief history of United Diversity plus details of our exciting plans going forward. The sound isn’t too

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TOGETHER. How cooperatives show resilience to the crisis

This great new documentary, featuring Mondragon and other co-operative inspirations shows how it is not just financial co-operatives who are more resilient to crisis, but all co-ops. The examples are from around Europe, but the same is true in the UK. The UK co-operative economy is performing significantly better than

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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 says ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible‘) whilst the land that sustains us all is owned and controlled by a tiny minority of the population. We need to transcend private

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The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation

The Mondragón Corporation is an inspiration. The largest 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 their own banks, universities, research laboratories and social security systems. They have

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Time to replicate WIR Bank?

The 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 that it’s turnover is extremely counter-cyclical, adding to the resilience and stability of the Swiss Economy.

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Financial co-operatives: A safe bet in a crisis

The Co-opreative News has reported news about a study by the International Labour Organization called Resilience in a downturn: The power of financial cooperatives. You can download find the report on the Co-operatives shelf of of online library or read it now below. Resilience in a Downturn – The Power

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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 from the brilliant Sustainable Economies Law Center a few times over on our facebook page. The whole presentation is well worth watching, but I particularly like it when she says: What is the entity structure that is most going to

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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 Great

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Springhill Cohousing

Last Saturday Gloria and I joined members of the North London Sustainable Housing Partnership to visit the lovely Springhill Cohousing community in Stroud. The video above is a quick tour of the site (unfortunately my battery ran out before I got to show you around inside the common house, and

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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 Watch the trailer now: And watch the whole thing! (NOTE: although much if not most of the

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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