Info, news & debate

Co-operatives

What makes the commons movement different? (A: it’s much more difficult to co-opt.)

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The commons is a movement to create a different world, not just the same system with a few tweaks to make it more bearable. If successful, obviously there will be entities out there that will try to undermine it, buy it and ultimately, to crush it. But there are aspects to the commons model that will, I think, make it more resistant to this than existing models.

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Why is the co-operative movement so successful in Emilia Romagna? With Matt Hancock (no, not that one)

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Today I’m talking with Matt Hancock, who’s been heavily involved with the co-operative movement in Emilia Romagna – the region of Italy around Bologna. There’s a huge, very successful co-op sector in ER. I want to try to find out in this interview is why – what’s special about ER, and can it be emulated elsewhere?

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ecological land co-op

Consider gifting land to the Ecological Land Coop to support agroecological farming

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At Low impact we love to hear about our companion organizations’ successes, this reblog from the ecological land coop describes why we are celebrating. The ecological land coop have been inspired to try a new approach in their campaign to reawaken our rural economies after they were gifted land by two very noble ecologically minded farmers in Wales…

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We’re taking on a paid intern: you, maybe?

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We’re looking for a paid intern. Contact us if you think this might be you, and please do pass it on to anyone you think might be a likely candidate. We initially have up to £600 per month available for the right person, depending on how much time you can put in – and there will be opportunities for you and others to bring in more income to pay for more work for you to do.

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Cooperative democratic social care

Co-operative social care with sociocracy and mutual credit: Emma Back of the Equal Care Co-op

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There are some very interesting aspects to the Equal Care Co-op, including ‘Teams’, sociocratic decision-making and an internal payments system that could be described as a cross between mutual credit, timebanking, tokenising, and recognition of informal labour, including emotional labour and care work.

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Toward co-operative commonwealth: transition in a perilous century

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A while ago, we interviewed Pat Conaty, author, academic and stalwart of system change activism. We talked about how to grow the ‘co-operative commonwealth’ and about what constitutes the ‘commons’ in the 21st century. Pat is now part of the Synergia Institute, who have put together a MOOC for those of you involved with social and environmental change, and frustrated at the lack of real change we can see around us.

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ecological land co-op

Please help the Ecological Land Co-op with their latest OPD application

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The Ecological Land Cooperative would like to ask you for some support. As you may be aware, in 2020 we submitted a One Planet Development application to create 2 new small farms on our site at Furzehill on Gower. Due to one of the potential farmers having to pull out we have withdrawn that initial application and have just resubmitted an OPD application for 1 farm with the other original farmers.

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