Abundant Earth Community: A Cooperative learning event from last year.

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.