Take a look at our programme from our 2021 festival. The festival took place 13-15 July at our own venue: the New Economy Centre at Selgars Mill. You can scroll through some of the photos from the festival above. It was so good that our 2022 festival will be at the same venue. Tickets will go on sale in December 2021. Sign up to our mailing list and we'll let you know when they are available.
Enjoy a wood-fired, nordic-style sauna at this year’s festival!
Provided by Seaside Sauna Haus normally based on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.
Gently wake up your body and mind ahead of the festival programme. Suitable for all levels of experience. Please bring your own yoga mat if you can!
Alice is Vinyasa Yoga teacher passionate about yoga for physical and emotional wellbeing. She has been practising yoga for 20 years and teaching since completing her training in 2012. Her approach is accessible, grounding and playful with her teaching influenced by the traditions of traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa Flow and Hatha yoga. Alice lives and works by the sea in the vibrant and creative community of Bridport, UK.
Join our morning magazine review panel with journalist Hazel Sheffield, exploring current stories and debates from alternative print periodicals.
Hazel Sheffield is a British multimedia journalist living in London. In 2016 she founded farnearer.org, funded by the Friends Provident Foundation and Power To Change, which documents communities experimenting with alternative economies during austerity and Brexit. In 2019, Far Nearer was highly commended in the Georgina Henry Award for Innovation at the Society Of Editors’ Press Awards.
An evident global trend of the last decade has been the rise of political movements and leaders labelled ‘populist’. Their simplistic sloganeering and emotion-led appeals are in stark contrast to the typical approach of those working for a new economy.
But are there lessons to be taken from their success and popularity, that could help spark a similarly meteoric rise? Is it possible to adopt such tactics, without undermining the very principles we stand for?
Daniel Stanley is the founder of Future Narratives Lab and specialist in strategic communications for values-driven organisations. He writes and lectures on Narrative & Framing, has a background in grassroots community organising, and an MSc from the Institute of Social Psychology at LSE. He founded and led movement-building digital agency Small Axe, working with a range of global NGOs & Campaigns, and is now Creative Director at Cohere Partners, a strategy consultancy for organisations creating a more positive future for business and society.
Friends of the Joiners Arms are a community group fighting against the closure of LGBTQ+ spaces and campaigning to open the UK’s first community-run queer bar in East London.
Friends of the Joiners Arms was formulated in late 2014 in response to the threatened closure of our favourite late-licence, radical, grungy queer pub. The pub was closed in January 2015 by developers and was due to be demolished to build a new luxury housing development. However, we have successfully campaigned to save the pub, ensuring the inclusion of a late-licence queer venue on the site of the Joiners Arms.
“We are not creating something new. We are waking up something that was lost inside; that was lost because of the capitalist system.” – representative of Akademya Star women’s academy in North-East Syria.
We often talk about building a new economy, but democratic practices and governance structures we now call co-operation, mutual aid and the solidarity economy have existed throughout history, long before these terms were invented.
This session will explore learnings from international contexts such as the Rojava Revolution in North and East Syria and the long traditions of Black, Indigenous and Latin American organising, asking how and why we must learn from those who’ve gone before us, changing the world in big and small ways in the struggle for freedom and a better world.
Solidarity Economy Association (SEA) are a small UK based co-operative with a mission to promote the growth of the ‘Solidarity Economy’ in the UK and to build links with the movement in other parts of the world. SEA's work is wide ranging and includes helping to build up the capacity of, and developing relationships between, grassroots solidarity economy groups; designing and running workshops and education websites; developing digital tools for the movement, and practical international solidarity and fundraising work.
Imani Housing Coop Ltd (52 homes) is a well established Black-led fully mutual co-operative based in Wandsworth, South West London, and this session will reflect on Imani’s journey over three decades and how members positioned themselves as custodians of the cooperative philosophy to sustain the organisation and remain true to the ethos of the founding group becoming a vital community asset in the Black community and an important voice with the BME Housing Sector.
Khalid will facilitate a discussion to look at the internal and external challenges that specialist co-ops face in developing themselves as robust organisations with diminishing resources and still be sustainable in the long term. He will also explore using the Imani experience to provide answers to the following questions: what must a housing coop do once it has developed homes for its members? What impact new entrants in co-operative housing and older established co-ops can have in providing solutions to solve the social housing conundrum?
Khalid Mair is the Chair of Imani Housing Coop Ltd.
Our personal and collective experiences are inextricably linked to wider social and economic structures. Join a brief and confidential one-to-one personal support and solidarity session, available to anyone who may be currently experiencing poorer mental health or wellbeing.
Note: These sessions do not provide emergency/crisis services or ongoing therapy.
Sally Zlotowitz is a Community & Clinical Psychologist and is currently the CEO of Art Against Knives and the Co-founder of Psychologists for Social Change.
Rap Association's rap workshop includes interactive rap lyric writing sessions and performance opportunities. You'll be learning how to include themes around community impact, climate change and social justice. No writing experience needed.
Teddy Reiss is Stir to Action's New Economy Programme coordinator and host and also co-founder of Rap Association.
“To fund or not to fund….”: the funding relationship from a funders’ perspective. An overview of the strengths and weaknesses that funders bring to the funding process and how we can all move toward something fit for a fair and more sustainable economy.
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Climate Justice is a concept that has entered the mainstream and is causing chaos and disorientation (yay!). As we make sense and reorient ourselves, let’s capture all its meanings to understand how expansive it is as a talisman. Serayna is offering a stop-off in your journey.
This interactive workshop is open to 20 people to exist in collective knowledge and share sense-making from the macro to micro. Serayna will be sharing some creative tools for your practice of perspective.
What do you see climate justice as? What is climate justice as a practice? What is climate justice in your reality?
Serayna Keya Solanki is a freelancer based in London and raised in Leicester. She curated a programme called Grandmothers Garden for PoC to share climate, environmental and earth knowledge. Serayna supports with participation in climate solutions as climate justice practice and is a researcher with CPRE on ‘Access to Nature’ and Ubele on ‘Navigating Space Under Lockdown’. She is a hobby beekeeper and painter.
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While it’s widely accepted there’s a significant gap between policymaking and business practice, it’s not always recognised that it’s undermining sector-wide ambitions for building a democratic economy. But can it change? Over the next two years we’re working on a new project – supported by the Friends Provident Foundation – to build effective relationships in democratic business practice and policy, encouraging political leaders, policymakers, and researchers to work with not for democratic businesses, and to support the business community to lead research and growth strategies for the democratic economy.
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh is part of the worker co-operative Stir to Action, an business building a new economy based on democratic ownership through national training programmes, strategic economic development, and a quarterly publication.
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In North Liverpool, Kitty's Launderette – owned by the local community – is following the social history of the city by providing affordable washing facilities in low-income communities, while also reimagining the underused space of the laundrette for a variety of social and creative activities.
Join co-founder Grace Harrison to explore the story of how it started back in 2016, and how it's developing into a thriving social and ecological business today.
Grace Harrison is project coordinator at Kitty’s Launderette, a community launderette and social space in the Everton area of Liverpool offering affordable ecological laundry and dry-cleaning services as well as arts and social events. The launderette is named after Kitty Wilkinson who opened the UK’s first public washhouse in the city in 1832 during the height of a cholera epidemic, saving many lives.
The Preston model promises democratic transformation of urban economic futures – often labelled part of the ‘new municipalism’ – but something’s missing, right?
The radical democratic energy of this global movement has yet to infect the UK’s resurgent municipal socialism. Why not? And how can we make the Preston model more municipalist?
Matthew Thompson is a research fellow at the University of Liverpool, where he is currently digging into the hidden history of municipalism and cooperative development in Plymouth, Preston and London.
Cooperation Town organisers will discuss their new network of community food co-ops and the way forward for a decentralised model of organising.
Shiri Shalmy is part of the Cooperation Town movement and founder of Antiuniversity.
Panel discussion on upcoming government initiative. Session information coming.
Danny Kruger is the MP for Devizes in Wiltshire and co-chair of the New Social Covenant Unit which published a report called Levelling Up Our Communities: proposals for a new social covenant.
Amardeep Dhillion is an editor for Red Pepper magazine, and a bartender/Branch Secretary at the Ivy House Union.
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Preston City Council’s efforts to generate and democratise wealth at a local level have earned Preston the title of Most Improved City. But beyond Preston, Community Wealth-Building is a significant and growing movement around the world, aimed at transferring power back to local communities.
What can we learn from the Preston Model? What’s next for community wealth-building? Drawing on his new co-authored book, Paint Your Town Red, Matthew Brown will explore how a variety of communities around the world are applying similar principles to take back control.
Matthew Brown is Labour’s leader of Preston City Council and a Senior Fellow for the Democracy Collaborative, tasked with promoting Community Wealth-Building across the UK and abroad.
Community-led housing has come to be dominated by partnerships between Community Land Trusts and Housing Associations. What are the drawbacks and what are the alternatives?
This interactive session will share examples and experience of more democratic and 'collaborative' models, such as Mutual Home Ownership Societies and housing co-ops, and ask how they can support the development of community economies and the use of local sustainable materials.
Tim Crabtree has worked in the field of community economies for 35 years, is chair of Bridport Area Community Housing and Dorset Community Energy, and is currently coordinating Wessex Community Asset’s Raise the Roof project.
Enjoy a wood-fired, nordic-style sauna at this year’s festival!
Provided by Seaside Sauna Haus normally based on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.
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Globalisation is increasingly driving decisions about land management decisions away from the community and into distant Board rooms. This has had disastrous consequences for both nature and communities.
Chris Blake explores the rise of the New Commons in Wales where local communities are regaining control of land assets to increase the resilience of both nature and society. He will report from the Skyline project where communities in the South Wales Valleys are shaping the forest at a landscape scale to meet their needs and values.
Chris Blake is a founding director of The Green Valleys CIC that supports communities to take action on the climate and nature emergencies.
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We all breathe over 20,000 times a day, but when was the last time you paid attention to a single breath?
Changing the way you breathe can change the way you think and feel.
The session by Sara from Breathways provides an opportunity to find your balance through your breath. Relax and destress in the moment and learn valuable tools to support your wellbeing, both in the workplace and at home, supporting you to be happy, healthy, and resilient. Breathwork is a highly effective tool to proactively manage stress and reduce anxiety, as scientific studies have shown that it can reduce cortisol, the stress hormone, by up to 20% after just one session and by up to 50% when repeated regularly. The techniques that Sara teaches are simple and simply transformational.
Come along and give it a go and do bring something to sit on.
Sara Dance is a certified breath coach and trainee Wim Hof Method instructor, and started Breathways to support people to use their breath to be at their best everyday.
The Skalatans play early 60s Jamaican dance tunes, from the era when 50s American R&B swung into Ska and Rock Steady. Think Jazz Jamaica meets The Skatalites!
Friends of the Joiners Arms presents: Lèse Majesté, a night of soul-filling, mind-bending and body-shaking with QUEER MAJESTY! Lèse Majesté is a drag King/drag Thing cabaret night hosted by drag King sensation Prinx Silver which platforms drag artists who don't fit into mainstream narratives.
Enjoy a wood-fired, nordic-style sauna at this year’s festival!
Provided by Seaside Sauna Haus normally based on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.
Gently wake up your body and mind ahead of the festival programme. Suitable for all levels of experience. Please bring your own yoga mat if you can!
Alice is Vinyasa Yoga teacher passionate about yoga for physical and emotional wellbeing. She has been practising yoga for 20 years and teaching since completing her training in 2012. Her approach is accessible, grounding and playful with her teaching influenced by the traditions of traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa Flow and Hatha yoga. Alice lives and works by the sea in the vibrant and creative community of Bridport, UK.
Join our morning magazine review panel with journalist Hazel Sheffield, exploring current stories and debates from alternative print periodicals.
Hazel Sheffield is a British multimedia journalist living in London. In 2016 she founded farnearer.org, funded by the Friends Provident Foundation and Power To Change, which documents communities experimenting with alternative economies during austerity and Brexit. In 2019, Far Nearer was highly commended in the Georgina Henry Award for Innovation at the Society Of Editors’ Press Awards.
Young people have been hit hard by the pandemic, making an already uncertain future in work, housing and food even more precarious. The Young Cooperators Network (YCN) is being relaunched to tackle this, and the mission is to create a peer-to-peer network together, which supports young cooperators through outreach, friendship, collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Join us to talk about the co-creation of the YCN, what it means to be a member, and explore how you and your organisation can support it.
Hannah Watson is supporting the relaunch of the Young Co-operator's Network and a worker-owner at Stir to Action.
Rob Shorter, Communities & Art Lead at DEAL, will lead a one-hour workshop that invites participants to ‘unroll the Doughnut’ to open up a space for collectively imagining and framing the future we want, and explore the powers that we, as communities, have to bring this future into being. The aim of the workshop is to give you a taste of some of the tools available from DEAL that you then take and immediately put into practice with your own communities.
Doughnut Economics Action Lab, or DEAL, was founded as a Community Interest Company in 2019 to support the emerging global network of changemakers turn the ideas of Doughnut Economics into action. Central to this is the DEAL Community Platform (doughnuteconomics.org), launched in September 2020, that contains tools for action and stories for inspiration.
Everyone agrees that co-op models could play a pivotal role in empowering and cohering communities, were they adequately disseminated outside of New Economy circles. Less remarked on is the need to be mindful and strategic in not reproducing the inequalities and dynamics of the capitalist economy in which they operate. This is all the more relevant in the post-austerity, post-Brexit landscape where questions of location based agency and ‘’community-as-crowdfunder’’ gap-filling are present. These questions are also pressing given that we are arguably living through the breakdown of one economic consensus and the jostling of new, competing ones. We’ll explore issues of co-operative co-option, what it means (and why it’s important) to resist institutionalisation at a local level and in co-op circles more generally; the tension between cooperativism’s radical roots and dominant discourses and forces of attraction today, and how to counter tendencies towards reproducing the power dynamics inherent in traditional wage-labour and philanthropic endeavours.
This session will showcase community shares as an exciting and growing form of democratic finance in community and co-operative enterprise. It will draw on Kindling Farm's recent success in raising investment to fund a new community-owned farm in Greater Manchester, as told by Kindling's Lizzy Haughton. Lizzy will be joined by Simon Borkin from Commonly who will outline how the community shares market is evolving and growing nationwide.
Lizzy is the communications officer for theKindling Trust because of the incredible positive change that they have already brought to Manchester, and the huge potential they have in influencing the food system in the North West. She believes that food and land use are at the heart of this global climate, ecological, and humanitarian crisis that we are facing, and wants to be a part of the change.
If digital spaces are the new social infrastructure, how do we occupy these spaces and build consent-based technology? What does it mean to adopt design justice principles for digital platform and product development? How can we enable individual versus collective data equity and ownership?
Kelly Bewers is the founder of Impact Edit, an alternative digital agency adopting a cooperative innovation approach to build technology stewardship, data justice and digital capacity for organisations tackling social and environmental inequality. She writes about women in social entrepreneurship for Pioneers Post and works as a consultant on projects contributing to new, equitable economies.
Our personal and collective experiences are inextricably linked to wider social and economic structures. Join a brief and confidential one-to-one personal support and solidarity session, available to anyone who may be currently experiencing poorer mental health or wellbeing.
Note: These sessions do not provide emergency/crisis services or ongoing therapy.
Sally Zlotowitz is a Community & Clinical Psychologist and is currently the CEO of Art Against Knives and the Co-founder of Psychologists for Social Change.
Explore how different communities have approached land banking for housing, farming and even entire cities! Learn the lessons that help establish and maintain successful land banks from the best examples of land banking in the UK and overseas.
Tom is the Consultancy Coordinator at Shared Assets. He has a background in business development, account management and support provision, project management and fundraising that enable people, projects and enterprises to build capacity and make an impact, particularly for land-based ventures.
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Community leaders should not be in it for the money. Community leaders should involve their communities in every decision. Community leaders should avoid conflicts of interest. Community leaders should be embedded in their community.
Or should they?
Hot on the heels of our popular Secret Community Leader column and Cut the Crap conversations, we want to create a truly open and honest forum where nothing is off limits. So join us to share everything from whacky ideas to your darkest fears, and (maybe) slay a few sacred cows of community leadership along the way.
Hosted by: Practical Governance - a partnership working with businesses, foundations, charities, social entrepreneurs and local community groups to find ways to organise that unleash their social impact rather than constrain it.
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In March 2021, we ran the What Next? Summit to explore how we can build community power in the UK. Over 1800 people from a hugely diverse range of organisations and groups attended nearly 50 sessions and contributed their voice to a collective Call to Action.
This session will be a working session to crash test the Call to Action - what resonates? What bombs? What useful insights might there be to inform or challenge your practice? Is your voice within it and if not, why not? How can this Call to Action come alive and continue to build bridges and momentum for our movement of movements?
Mike Thomas: Michael Thomas has worked for Transition Network for the last 8 years and is a core member of the CTRLshift steering group. He is interested in developing networks and infrastructure that brings people and organisations together to build the power of communities to shape their lives. He is keen to create a world where collaboration, empathy and understanding shape the core ways that we think, act and relate to each other.
Rhiannon Colvin: Rhiannon Colvin is a writer, facilitator and systems thinker working to build wellbeing economies. She is the co-founder of AltGen and The Young Co-operators Network and has extensive experience supporting co-operative start ups and community led businesses. She works as a freelance consultant supporting organisations to create effective communications and strategies for social change.
Richard Couldrey: Richard Couldrey is based in Tooting, SW London and works bringing the Transition Towns approach to varied situations and projects in schools, local activism, City wide networks and emerging conversations around collaboration in England, the UK and Internationally. Richard believes time together is time well spent, building relationships of trust and growing the power we do have as individuals, as communities and as a plural, fractal, diverse movement for urgent, but long term change. Bring the synergy! Embrace the challenge!
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