Radical
Routes/Seeds for change/Coop event.
As
some of you may know there was a Radical Routes Co-operative event on in Nottingham last year around October, and I had made myself available
to go both Saturday and Sunday for the benefit of both myself and the
cooperative we are attempting to set up. For various reasons some
people were not able to get to the event so on Saturday Mel and I met
and we went in her car. It was held in the Hyson Green Youth Centre,
close to where the famous Goose Fair is held each year.
Once
we had checked in, had our second cup of tea (the first one became
fouled by salt. What else would you put in a bowl on a table with a
spoon in?) we made our way to the venue room upstairs. In a way I'm
glad to say that the room was heaving with people. It means many
people are interested in working in this cooperative manner. However
it did make it a little more difficult to hear everything or
concentrate as latecomers kept filing in. But the two facilitators
were very adept at keeping the show moving and pretty well on time.
Consensus
decision making.
C.D.M is a process of making decisions without voting
and without pressure, which aims to create a solution everyone
involved in the process can agree to. An essential part of C.D.M is
the right of any individual taking part in the process to block the
action of the entire group.
(Radical routes definition)
The facilitators drew a
flow chart to show the stages and the directions of various actions
and went on to fully explain the relevant sequences to be performed
to get to a fully ratified decision by all members. They used the
above previously agreed upon (Radical Routes definition) to show in
practice how this would and can work effectively. They gave all
attending opportunities to break off into smaller groups to work on
example type projects for brief periods of the session, and then drew
everyone back into the forum to share what they had experienced. I
feel, as somewhat of a novice to this experience, that they were
quite fair and yet systematic at their attempts to pack this
developmental tool into the allotted time frame. Obviously a longer
more dedicated session would have made the actual learning
potentially easier to absorb, but on balance there were many sessions
to get through. In reality Radical Routes, Seeds for Change and their other supporters
were trying to offer an overview of the process at this time. For the
more discerning of visitors they had set up booked sessions on a one
to one with councillors/advisers.
I felt as though I had discovered a well intended forum
for sharing, that was in the main able to deliver a very informative
entry into the do's and don'ts of setting up cooperative ventures.
From this session in particular I realised a very fundamental but
obvious mistake on my previous thinking, and that was that consensus
decision making does not include voting which is the democratic
model. A surprise indeed, but one clearly needed.
Being a good facilitator.
Next was a session on
how to be a good facilitator. Or a bad one depending on your
abilities... The idea seems to be set about primarily doing plenty of
homework and planning. Get to know our subject thoroughly. (I believe
Angela and a few others probably know plenty about this, knowing know
just how much effort they put into doing it). Then a good idea is to
send out the agenda before meetings/events so that as many people as
is possible come already up to some speed with what is going to be
discussed. From what I heard it seems common to begin with a brief
introduction and then a 'go round' of the various attendees. I saw in
practice how this gets people to loosen up more and aid with further
discussion intervals. Some people clearly had little to say or were
purely observers, yet I felt able to interject and offer comment as
freely as was needed for my questions to be answered. Next came the
main demonstration of what the role of facilitators are and ways in
which to see that some semblance of order is taken to keep the
discussions flowing and productive. It seems that a facilitators role
is not specifically to steer, but to attempt to get all the
information brought out into the debate forum where all attendees can
access that information through discussion. Another valuable point I
heard, is that the facilitator is best to be as neutral to the debate
topic as is feasible. Better to be disconnected completely so that
they could arbitrate the fair share of discussions between people.
There is an official service for this called A.C.A.S. But in terms of
our cooperative venture we possibly need to constantly share this
role between members, and thus avoid any one person directing events
continually. This does and will as I saw take a lot of effort, so
members must be somewhat committed to doing this if fairness and
equality will guide our ventures. Finally the roles of the
facilitator was to make sure the discussion was kept within pre
agreed guidelines and then bring discussions to a point of
close/evaluation and leave the rest to further meetings/discussions.
Our last session of the
day was with a woman from Seeds for Change
who talked to us about:
Setting up a cooperative.
Because we were all
possibly involved in coops or thinking of setting up coops, she asked
us to describe in brief detail what our reasons for attending the
workshops was. Like Mel and I, many of the attendees were at the
formative stages of contemplating feasibility and investigating
options and sources of information and help. She then moved into
describing the 7 guiding principles of cooperatives as outlined by
the global cooperative movements. As with any organisations there are
many different ramifications of what you are doing and what you
expect to get out of that. Primarily cooperatives are set up for the
benefits to come to the people actually doing the work, rather than
shareholders and bosses. We were involved in small groups again to
discuss and work on small problems, before we came back to the main
forum where we then openly discussed our findings of those topics.
She took us through both the benefits and the challenges of setting
up and running cooperatives, and I felt rather full of knowledge by
the end of the session. We talked specifically about business plans
being put in place very early on, with room to amend them later on as
the process evolved. The collective management was our next topic and
we heard of the many examples of how people had done this to good
effect and also the not so good. Primarily in a cooperative, a good
environment and space for open free discussion is the best way to get
everyone satisfied with a workplace where joy and fun can be had
working together. Then we talked about the legal obligations and how
they too needed to be undertaken before too much other work had been
done on actually producing anything collectively.
To be honest, in quick summary, I feel that for our
venture to work effectively, we all need to be doing and be seen to
be doing some of the heavy work of organising the structure and
formats for service outlets of this cooperative. This was very much
stressed by the event in Nottingham and I tend to agree with it, even
if it means I will possibly spend some considerable hours doing it.
Research, and fact finding are the keys to this, as well as proper
networking and transparency between ourselves.
Again I joined Phil and
Angela on the Sunday to go to Nottingham, and we arrived at the Arts
Centre just around the corner from the Saturday venue. Our first
session somewhat covered one of yesterdays discussing the guiding
principles of cooperatives and the benefits and challenges of
starting and running one. Many new people were in attendance too so
we got to network with both workers and housing cooperative ventures.
Necki from the Eco-works in St. Anns (a cooperative allotment
project) was one of the people I remember from having visited
Nottingham with the Permaculture Lincoln group some weeks ago.
How not to set up a
cooperative.
This was our chance to work with some project sheets
that gave us predetermined scenarios of a housing and a workers
cooperative. We got into groups of 5 or 6 and set about reading and
discussing the various ventures described. In truth our aim was
primarily to attempt to discover what we each thought the faults and
failings of those project were or likely to be. But the good thing
was that we got to suggest our own ways of avoiding those possible
problematic scenarios. I'm not too keen on the obvious one, which is
not to bother at all. That said however, I felt as though the
facilitator was able to help me realise just how hard it truly is to
get to a point at which passions can be realised, where dreams become
a reality and where people can with respect, work dedicatedly
together on a joint venture. It is not as simple as people saying
that they want to do something. There are fundamentals to be
considered and undertaken way before any joint goal can be reached.
(unless that goal is to agree to disagree) Thorough planning (god I
hate this word...!) is needed to avoid the unnecessary complications
that will come from lack of awareness and understanding the processes
fully. A kind of learned wisdom resonating between the other guests
was clearly that clarity and honesty between people were the first
things to be set down as ground rules and further to be frank in
discussing the consensus proposals for a clearly defined joint
vision.
The
next session on the agenda was slide presentation by a member of the
Unicorn Grocery cooperative in Manchester. The lady described the
aims and objectives of the initial plan to provide affordable
alternative food sources to people who didn't want to source
everything from huge chain supermarkets. Obviously the financial
strains of doing this and even considering being competitive in this
aim were huge. But after some 17 years the shop is firmly on the city
map. With a 50 strong membership (current and probationary) they are
now able to pay themselves a handsome and respectable living wage.
People of their community respect them and are engaged with them to
help sustain the services they provide. They have expanded into many
areas not only providing good locally sourced food, but training and
teaching the ethical values of their cooperative spirit. Schools and organisations regularly participate in joint examples of
this cooperation.
Again this brought to my mind so many new things that I
had yet to consider with regards our cooperative ventures. To be
truthful I can hardly remember much of the last session as my mind
was fried with so much to take on board, and it would have been good
if others had come along to enjoy it for themselves. I know Angela
and Phil made notes, so all is not lost...
So in conclusion, I will list with bullet points what I
noticed, that were flagged up for our attentions.
HERE.
Facilitators of meetings need to get prepared.
A good facilitator is unbiased/unattached from debate.
Agendas are sent out in-time for members to
research/read.
The fairest system for a cooperative is C.D.M. (see
above)
All members need to go through a probationary period. (Potentially 6-12 months, via C.D.M.)
Members need to be actively involved in the daily
running.
Members need to be active in C.D.M. and meetings.
Before any work is done a constitution needs to be
activated.
Clear ethos and visions need to be defined in writing.
All legal implications need to be addressed.
A clear Health and safety policy has to be in place.
A core management has to be decided and in place.
In summary, I really got a lot out of all of those
sessions, even if some of it was being repeated as a thread through
them all. The idea that we can get going before doing many if not all
of these things above is remote and at best a little naïve. The
Abundant Earth Community, our
cooperative is going to have to be a very determinedly worked for
collective venture. The benefits are clear, and even somewhat
Utopian, however they are do-able. If we make our stand to be
different enough and to grow from tiny seeds of work and effort, use
proper planning and teamwork we can make our community the place to
be both admired and replicated throughout the county, country and
even the world.
Friends; “let us be the change we wish to see in the
world.”
Follow us on
Contact us
G-mail: abundantearthcommunitylincs@gmail.com
aec.lincs@gmail.com
.jpg)
.jpg)
