Cross-posted from Shareable. Khushboo Balwani: Here’s the problem: How can consumers become producers? The shift from consumer culture to maker culture is often described in terms of a synthesis between consumers and producers —”prosumers.” What practical steps can be taken for people to become prosumers? Here’s how one organization is working on the problem: In 2002, Neil Gershenfeld,… Continue reading
Simon Mont: How can nonprofits and movement workers committed to social transformation embody the change we want to see and become more effective, accountable, and equitable as we do it? In late September 2017, thirty-eight people from eighteen different organizations based in ten different states came together to answer this question and learn how to effectively… Continue reading
A new form of citizen participation arises in Barcelona, combining participatory budgets and crowdfunding. It is a co-responsibility model called Matchfunding and it allowes citizens to start and support initiatives for the improvement of Barcelona by connecting participation and democracy with public budgets. The Goteo Foundation (www.goteo.org), in collaboration with the Barcelona City Council and… Continue reading
As a monetary adviser, I spent many years questioning bankers on the authenticity of their balances sheets. What stood out most for me in these discussions was this: the social demand for commodities is often claimed by banks as having a direct link with the ecological supply of resources which are extracted, produced and sold as commodities. But this… Continue reading
This essay addresses arguments regarding the “place” or “non-place” in which ideas originate and whether they are wholly transcendental, wholly contingent, or a combination of transcendental and contingent. Far from a resuscitation or recitation of Medieval scholastic disputations, the essay seeks to situate these untimely concerns in the context of spent discursive and ideological systems… Continue reading
The Internet is broken. Investor-owned digital platforms are monopolising key economic sectors, controlling our data, and distributing profits to the few. This needs to fundamentally change according to Co-operatives UK and Stir to Action. As part of an effort to make the ‘digital economy our own’, these organisations have today joined forces to launch a… Continue reading
We are living in turbulent times for electoral democracy. But it didn’t start with the Brexit referendum and the election of Trump. Over the period 2006 – 2016 the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index recorded a decline in democratic health for more than half the 167 countries it monitors. Join the P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens… Continue reading
Do you want to co-create the next European Ecovillage Conference? Here’s your chance! The following was sent in by Francesca Whitlock through the European Commons Assembly‘s mailing list and you can find out more about the conference in this link: The Wisdom of Conscious Communities. Dear friends, We hope by now you have seen our… Continue reading
I highly recommend this work done by several organizations I think highly of. These highly accessible and thoughtful resources can help us more effectively reframe the dominant economic narratives that have gripped the public imagination and paved the way for regressive economic, social and environmental policies. Without the framing resources and co-ordination to challenge these… Continue reading
Julie Gilgoff: While billion dollar development companies eat up affordable housing units throughout the Bay Area, dedicated teams of organizers, nonprofit service providers, community development corporations, and others fight a relentless battle along side and on behalf of those at threat of displacement. Some are seeking to transform the current system of land ownership, removing profit… Continue reading
Here’s a new publication that we co-created with the Tactical Technology Collective – a group specialised in Big Data, digital security and data driven technologies. It is meant as a contribution to an emerging and important debate on the role of technologies in shaping our societies and an attempt to begin to spell out. In… Continue reading
Perhaps one of the most important examples of a broad based, decentralized, democratic, community directed development based on social justice, gender equality and ecological well-being; sustained by the people known for the central role their fighters played in the defeat of ISIS. The following article was written by Sean Keller and originally published in Local… Continue reading
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel. University of California Press, 2017. The following texts mainly extracted from the publisher’s site. Contextual Citation The call for a Reparation Ecology by Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel: “Weighing the injustices… Continue reading
Eunice Kwon: Three years ago we set out to make it possible for communities to own their energy. And boy did we run into some strange things along the way! Before introducing those peculiarities, first some background: If people could own their energy, they’d be more secure – both financially and infrastructurally. We could save money and… Continue reading
Since 2015 Outlandish have spent £192,450 in Cobudget across 34 buckets. Kate Beecroft interviews Brian Spurding, from the web services coop Outlandish about their use of Cobudget. Originally published in Greater than/finance. A web services consultancy based in London, Outlandish is a worker owned cooperative. They use Cobudget to democratically distribute dividends to all cooperative members as a… Continue reading
After an extremely successful event in February 2017 at Goldsmiths University The Open Co-op conference is back with a new line up and a new venue for 2018. This year, OPEN 2018, will be held at Conway Hall in Holborn, London, on the 26th and 27th of July. Conway Hall is owned and operated by Conway Hall Ethical Society, a… Continue reading