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]]>Donate!
On July 7th, an accidental fire in a neighbouring studio wiped out Stir to Action’s office – we lost everything. We estimate we’ve lost around £15,000 in magazine stock and archive, new office furniture, office computer, and paperwork. And, of course, the office!
This loss has disrupted our whole organisation and recovering from the fire will delay selling our latest issue, which fortunately arrived a few days after the office went up in smoke, announcing our planned New Economy Programme to train a 1000 people, and other current projects.
To see us through the next six months we’re asking for support – we’re not expecting to recover everything, but here are the basics that will help us get back on our feet!
What do we need help with?
– Office computer (with creative design suite)
– Office Furniture: desks for our team, and equipment for workshops, evening classes, and other community events we plan to host over the next six months. We’ve already been offered free office space by a local organisation!
– Magazine restock: we are looking to reprint 1,000 copies of the last four issues only, so we can sell them at events, conferences, and through our online shop.
– Printing next issue: The most immediate challenge for our organisation is to fund and produce our next issue. Staying on our print schedule is important for our cash flow, but it’s also a symbol of our recovery and our supportive community. Our October issue be themed on the communities and co-operation that arise during and after disaster and crisis.
– Magazine archive recall: We’re looking to rebuild our print archive from our first issue, Spring 2013, to our 15th issue, Autumn 2016 (the remaining archive would be replenished by our restock print run). We are limiting our collection to 10 copies each for storage reasons. Please send a message on this page if you don’t mind giving up a few of your back issues!
– Time and patience as we rebuild and organise our upcoming New Economy Programme and other projects 
Thanks for your support and solidarity!
The Stir to Action team
Donate!
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]]>The post Crowdfunding: New Economy Programme appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>To help transform our economy over the last few years, Stir to Action has organised national workshop programmes to support communities. Now, we are now planning to launch a year-long programme of practical workshops, 3-day residentials, mentoring, and live crowdfunding to build a new economy that works for everyone.
For this to be successful — and with your support — we are hoping to raise the £12,500 we need to cover programme costs. Pledges on our campaign over the next five weeks will support subsidised workshop places, local workshop venues, programme design, our mentoring network, and provide the resources to engage new communities with these ideas. This is our first programme at this scale, but we aim for it to be an annual programme!
We’re continuing to build our inspiring mentoring network during the campaign — would you like to join?!
Get in touch via workshops@stirtoaction.com
Click here to support our crowdfund
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]]>The post Making Local Woods Work appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Whilst truly wild woodlands are ‘climax vegetation’ that has achieved a balance between death and renewal, these generally need to be at a scale much bigger than any of our remaining woodlands to thrive independently of humans.
Here in Britain, “the wildwood” has a central place in our culture and imaginations, but the reality is that active management has shaped our woodlands since the ice age, providing supplies of food, fuel and timber, and creating diverse habitats amongst the trees. Unmanaged woodland lacks diversity and can result in poor tree health and increase the spread of tree diseases.
Whilst most of that unmanaged woodland is in private ownership, the future management of our public forest estate also remains uncertain. Attempts in 2010 to sell off the national forest estate were abandoned in the face of a public outcry, but austerity has resulted in many local authority woodland teams being disbanded and the future for the management of the national public forest estate – at least in England – remains unclear.
It is in that gap between the market and the state that we find the commons and, increasingly, a diverse range of community businesses, co-operatives and other forms of social enterprise creating value and livelihoods from its management. So does social and community business have a role in reinvigorating our woods and forests and rebuilding our woodland culture?
In 2012, in the aftermath of the failed forestry sell off and in the wake of the Independent Panel on Forestry’s report, a number of organisations came together to discuss alternative approaches to the management of our woods and forests.
There was already a well established sector of community woodlands and voluntary groups involved in woodland management across the UK. There were also some examples of social enterprises managing significant-sized woodlands, particularly in Scotland where community buyouts meant communities in the Highlands and Islands already had ownership and control over their local woodlands and a focus on sustainable local economic regeneration.
Could these approaches provide new models for managing our woodlands in ways that created livelihoods, improved their quality, and produced useful resources such as woodfuel?
That 2012 meeting led to the establishment of the Woodland Social Enterprise Network and, over time, the development of a proposal for a project to support the development of social enterprise in woodlands. In 2015, funding was secured from Big Lottery to deliver Making Local Woods Work, a pilot programme to provide technical assistance, training and peer networking opportunities for woodland-based social enterprises across the UK.
The programme, which runs until Autumn 2018, is providing support to 50 woodland social enterprises right across the UK, each of which embed woodlands or woodland products into their core activity whether that is the production of woodfuel and timber, or delivering educational or health and well-being activities in a woodland setting. It provides technical advice on woodland management and finance, support in developing business plans, choosing legal structures and strengthening governance, and advice on leases, tenure, and a wide range of other issues. It also provides training, webinars and peer networking opportunities, many of which are available to the wider network of woodlands social enterprises as well as those who are part of the formal support programme.
Austerity has resulted in many local authority woodland teams being disbanded and the future for the management of the national public forest estate – at least in England – remains unclear.
Case studies:
Vert Woods Community Woodland in East Sussex is a 171 acre woodland that is owned and managed for community and wildlife benefit. Much of the woodland is recovering woodland, substantially affected by the Great Storm of 1987 and includes mature tall pines, oak and beech, as well as under-managed chestnut coppice, and unmanaged birch and willow. With support from Making Local Woods Work, Vert Community Woodland has registered as a Community Benefit Society (CBS) and is looking to widen its community membership and issue shares to enable the community to collectively own the woodland.
Elwy Working Woods in North Wales is a co-operative and social enterprise set up in 2010 to create sustainable employment by managing local woodland to produce good quality timber for construction and joinery. North Wales has seen the demise of several small sawmills in recent decades and Elwy Working Woods is looking to create new models for the business that can provide sustainable employment and add value to local natural and renewable resources. They aim to provide a one-stop shop capable of supplying everything from complete house frames to kitchen tables, using locally-grown timber and providing local training, employment and volunteering opportunities.
Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park manage London’s most urban woodlands in a densely populated and rapidly growing borough. The park is located in of one of London’s Magnificent Seven Cemeteries and owned by the local council. The Friends maintain the site under a Service Level Agreement and provide a wide range of public events, short courses and heritage activities as well as managing the woodland. In order to expand their activities, increase their commercial income, and ensure a sustainable long term future for the Cemetery Park, the Friends are being supported by Making Local Woods Work to review their business plan and explore opportunities for more secure tenure on the site with the council.
The forestry and timber processing sector already support around 43,000 jobs in the UK. It directly employs around 14,000 people in more than 3,000 separate enterprises, suggesting that the vast majority of forestry business is undertaken by small and medium-sized enterprises.
Community and social enterprises operate to a triple bottom line, ensuring that the way they manage woodlands is good for people and good for the environment as well as good for the economy. As well as providing social benefits such as health, education and wellbeing through the activities they deliver in woodlands, the very act of managing local land and resources is one that supports longer term community empowerment.
This aspect of community management is recognised and supported by programmes that enable community management, and even ownership, of the public forest estate in Wales and Scotland.
In 2011, Natural Resources Wales launched the Woodlands and You (WaY) scheme, which enables communities and social enterprises to operate long term projects through Management Agreements and Leases. Forest Enterprise Scotland’s Community Asset Transfer Scheme (CATS) provides asset transfer rights for communities who want to take on ownership or leases on Scotland’s National Forest Estate. This builds on the previous Scottish National Forest Land Scheme that gave community organisations the chance to buy or lease National Forest Land where they could provide increased public benefits.
To date, no such scheme exists in England, making it harder for community and social enterprises to secure leases or management agreements. Harder, but not impossible. Neroche Woodlanders are an example of a social enterprise that has secured a 10-year lease from Forestry Commission England to inhabit, manage and harvest wood from 100 acres of woodland near Taunton in Somerset.
Our woodland commons have always provided for basic human needs and securing access to them forms a rich part of our history. This November marks the 800th anniversary of the 1217 Charter of the Forest that restored the rights of free tenants to access and use the Royal Forests that were being enclosed. The Charter protected practices such as ‘pannage’ (knocking acorns from oak trees for pigs) and ‘estover’ (collecting wood). Whilst our expectations of what woodlands can provide for us may have changed over the centuries, the issues that the charter sought to address remain familiar.
Celebrations for the 800th Anniversary range from the call for a new Charter for Trees, Woods and People being led by the Woodland Trust, a public meeting under the Ankerwycke yew at Runnymeade to call for a new Doomsday book of the Commons, and a black tie dinner at Lincoln Cathedral. However you celebrate it, the anniversary provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of our woodlands and the potential for communities to manage them in ways that work for everyone.
You can find out more at Making Local Woods Work and on Twitter @localwoodswork. The Woodland Social Enterprise Facebook page is also open to anyone with an interest in the sustainable management of woodlands and provides a great place to connect online with what others are doing to make woods work for everyone.
The Making Local Woods Work / Community Woodland Association Conference will be held on 20-21 October 2017 in Westerwood Hotel, Cumbernauld, Scotland. More information.
Mark Walton is the founder and Director of Shared Assets, a think and do tank that supports the management of land for the common good. He currently acts an advisor to Defra, and Charity Bank on issues such as working with civil society, asset transfer, and social investment.
Republished from STIR magazine
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]]>The post New pilot ‘accelerator’ launched for UK Platform Co-operatives appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>As part of an effort to make the ‘digital economy our own’, these organisations have today joined forces to launch a new pilot accelerator UnFound to support ‘platform co-operatives’, digital platforms that are democratically owned by their members or users.
UnFound will give these early-stage platforms the opportunity to access the UK’s first structured programme of support. Teams can apply for the accelerator programme at www.unfound.coop between now and 31st March.
Successful applicants will benefit from a team of six mentors and a series of masterclasses to support and develop the business planning and co-operative governance of their platform. Support is being made available through The Hive, a business support programme for co-operatives from Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Bank. The accelerator culminates with live crowdfunding session, where the teams will pitch for financial support from 400 delegates at Co-operatives UK’s Co-op Congress event in London on 23rd June.
Ed Mayo, Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, says:
“We are seeing more and more sectors of the economy disrupted by online platforms, from Deliveroo to Uber. They are revolutionising so many aspects of our workplaces and lives. But what is not changing are the patterns of ownership, where a relatively small number benefit from the success of the platform.”
“Imagine, though, if the platforms we used every day were owned by the workers and the users themselves. UnFound is a great opportunity to kickstart platform co-operatives with some extremely valuable support.”
Nathan Schneider, co-organiser of the Platform Cooperativism conference, also sees the significance of this new pilot accelerator.
“Accelerators like UnFound make it easier for entrepreneurs trying to make their idea real in the world to do it with democracy. For too long, the startup ecosystem has been a game of trying to sell our best ideas to investors looking for exponential profits. Now, startups are starting to have better options. They can truly build their startups for their communities.”
What are Platform co-ops?
A platform co-operative is a democratically-run member- or user-owned online platform or mobile app. They are start-ups from communities of people – such as workers or users – to meet their needs or solve a problem by networking people and assets.
There are successful examples of Platform Co-operatives in North America and Europe, but they are still in early-stage development in the UK. Even though the likes of London-based TaxiApp represent an exciting new wave of co-operatively run platforms emerging here.
UnFound is open for applications from today (1st March) and closes midnight on 31st March 2018.
The accelerator is one strand of the National Co-operative Development Strategy – an ambitious strategy to create a more participative economy. Launched in 2017 by Co-operatives UK, it calls for more support for “platform co-operatives using new technology for shared ownership services.”
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, Stir to Action, says:
“We’ve got experienced teams of facilitators and mentors who will be supporting the co-operatives through the accelerator. We’ll also be joined by the inspiring co-founders of Stocksy and Fairmondo who will be introducing new ideas for business development, digital governance, and crowd finance.”
For more information about UnFound visit www.unfound.coop
— ENDS —
About Co-operatives UK
The network for Britain’s thousands of co-operative businesses, Co-operatives UK works to promote, develop and unite member-owned business worth £36 billion to the British economy.
Stir to Action
Stir to Action publishes STIR, a quarterly magazine on the new economy, runs workshop programmes, and supports Community Economic Development.
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]]>The post FREE places on “Freeing the Freelancer” workshop, London, October 15th appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>STIR to Action: Thanks to the kind support – and solidarity – of many co-ops around the UK, we’ve now got 5 free places on Alt Gen’s Freeing the Freelancer workshop on October 15th in London. If you’ve got an idea for a co-op, however small, come along and develop your idea over a day with the inspiring team at Alt Gen, and meet other people exploring the co-operative model.
Workshop and further information: http://www.stirtoaction.com/workshops/alt-gen
Also check out Footprint Workers Co-op, an ecologically minded printers in Leeds, Principle Six, a methodology and meeting format for face-to-face, high energy, results-oriented business referral networking, and Fairmondo, a co-operatively owned online marketplace that makes it really easy to source ethical goods and services from sellers.
by Edd Baldry
Freeing the Freelancer: Co-op solutions to modern freelancing
- Dates: Saturday 15th October 2016
- Times: 9.30AM-4PM
- Location: CAN Mezzanine, 7-14 Great Dover St, London SE1 4YR
- Price: £75-£50
- Full Price (Salaried)
- Concessions (part time/students)
The contemporary economy is failing young people and many others. One in seven of the UK workforce are now self-employed and this has grown by around 39% since 2000. The nature of work is transforming but the economy is not changing with it – unstable, unequal and unable to produce secure, meaningful work for all.
This workshop will introduce you to co-operative alternatives, best practices and how to work together to overcome individualistic and isolating work cultures and start co-operatives. Practical exercises will help you imagine and articulate how to use your skills, passions, resources and networks to turn your ideas into democratically-run enterprise. Take a first leap into creating a better future for yourself and those around you with Altgen team!
What participants will leave with
– Learning about common problems of being a freelancer
– Learning about what is being done to challenge them
– Learning what the co-operative movement can offer to bring change to your working life
– Merging your ideas and co-operative practice
Facilitator Profile
Constance Laisne is passionate about social change, cooperation and the future of work. A designer by training, she has spent the last two years co-directing AltGen – a young social enterprise that empowers young people to set up co-operatives and move beyond métro-boulot-dodo (subway-work-sleep). For her supporting the new generation to build a fairer economy is an urgent need that needs to be worked on.
Henry Naylor Stead also works for Alt Gen.
Watch Alt Gen’s Video below to find out more!
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