The Eko is the UK’s oldest community currency, having been in operation since 2002. The fourth issue, which will run until 2017, has just been launched.

Based at the Ecovillage in Findhorn Moray, about £18,000 worth of Ekos are in circulation in denominations of 1s, 5s, 10s and 20s. The currency has provided economic support to a variety of organisations over the years including the community-owned wind turbines, Station House Co-operative and the local Youth Project.

The current issue, which celebrates the community’s 50th year, will be used to support new affordable housing projects.

Ekopia first launched the community currency in May 2002 – the Eko, with the support of the Hygeia Foundation. It  is a local currency system designed as a working alternative to £s Sterling in economic transactions and as a complement to LETS.

Community organisations that accept Eko notes include:

• Phoenix Shop 

• Findhorn Bay Holiday Park 

• Blue Angel Café 

• Findhorn Foundation 

Since the successful trial, 15-20,000 Ekos have been in permanent circulation. 

Total trading turnover of the notes has exceeded £400,000 to date, and several new traders have started accepting the currency. As a result of the surpluses created we have been able to make a grants of £400 each to the community Festivals Group and the Youth Project.  The issue is at par with sterling i.e. 1 Eko = £1, and notes are in one, five, ten and twenty denominations. Individuals may not redeem the notes in sterling from Ekopia, although traders may redeem the Eko currency in sterling from Ekopia according to certain set criteria. 

From the sale of the notes to community members, Ekopia has made low interest loans to various community organisations.  Visitors can receive the notes in a number of ways, including purchasing Ekos from the Findhorn Bay Holiday Park reception and the Visitors Centre.

Aims of the Eko Currency Issue :

1. To provide low cost financing for new projects through low interest loans and surpluses generated by the currency project itself.

2. To enable existing businesses to make savings on bank charges (surprisingly perhaps, this benefit may outweigh the value of the low cost financing), and to stimulate trade amongst community business, residents and visitors.

3. To promote these businesses and projects, and the Ecovillage in general as a place of innovation and sustainable economy

4. To inspire both guests and residents with the demonstration value of a locally based currency, and to get the users thinking about how and where they spend their money.

5. To create gift capital for local projects.

The Western Isles’ first ever community-owned wind turbine has arrived on Stornoway.  The colossal pieces were then transported to South Shawbost on the western side of the island, where they will be installed on common grazing ground. It is hoped that installation will be complete by the end of the week, and that the turbine will be connected to the national grid by September 30th.  

Energy generated by the turbine will be sold into the national grid through the Feed in Tariff scheme, and will provide around £80,000 for the local communities of South Shawbost, Dalmore and Dalbeg. The Horshader Community Trust was established in 2005 to plan, build and run the community turbine. A number of consultations have been held with the local community, including a ‘have your say day’ and a door-to-door survey, to plan how to best spend money raised by the turbine for community benefit. 

The project created its first job in January of this year, with the Horshader Community Trust appointing Angela Macleod as development officer to ensure that the funds generated by the turbine are distributed according to the outcomes identified by the local community. Ms Macleod said: ‘It is all systems go now.  Foundations works are complete on site and we have the road access established.  The site has one of the best possible wind resources in the UK and will help fund our community needs to improve life here for the next generation and hopefully reduce depopulation.’

The project initially began with a proposal from private developers, who were seeking to install a 4.2 megawatt scheme on commonly owned croft grazing ground. However, negotiations with the developer fell through: ‘we realized that the community were not going to get the best deal. So we looked into turning it from a private project, to a community one.’ Says Gordon MacLennan, chairman of the Trust’s trading subsidiary.  Speaking about some initial challenges they faced, MacLennan, adds ‘Historically, in the western isles, things have been taken away from the islands, not put back, so I think people were a little skeptical at first.’  

Community Energy Scotland, a Scottish charity dedicated to supporting communities to develop renewable energy projects, then assisted the community with support and funding to enable them to take on the project themselves. The total cost of the project was around £2 million pounds. The community received a £1.8 million loan from the Co-op bank and grant funding from the Big Lottery fund, Highlands and Islands enterprise and the Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES). The latter two were managed through Community Energy Scotland. 

 Kathleen MacDonald, Community Energy Scotland’s development officer for the western Isles said: ‘The Horshader project has overcome many a hurdle to get to this stage and is something the group should be extremely proud of. The early and consistent funding support from HIE has been vital to the success of projects such as Horshader, along with the group’s determination. CES have enjoyed working with the group throughout this time and look forward to continuing this support over the coming months.’

David Wright, chairman of the Horshader Community Trust added: ‘This is a massive achievement for the trust, it has been a long hard road with many difficulties, we were the first community in the Western Isles to start work on a wind project and it is only fitting that we will now have the very first community owned revenue generating wind energy scheme.’ 

Many members of the local community came out to watch the installation of the turbine, with Chris Mayers, resident of the neighboring village of Carloway concluding ‘Why isn’t every community doing this?’

Daniel Boffey , The Observer, 5 August 2012 

Serco, a leading private contractor, is in line to win a multimillion-pound contract to run the National Citizen Service, proposed by the prime minister as a “big society”, non-military version of national service for youngsters aged over 16.

The company, which recently announced global revenue of more than £4bn, has joined four charities in a controversial bid to run what has been described by the government as a key part of David Cameron’s big society vision. Serco and its partners hope to win eight of the 19 contracts currently up for tender, with an estimated value of nearly £100m over two years.

The development has raised concerns that the National Citizen Service (NCS) will become another way for private firms to make money from the public sector as charities and voluntary organisations find themselves without the resources to bid for large contracts amid the economic squeeze. Pilot NCS programmes, aimed at bringing together 16- and 17-year-olds from different backgrounds to undertake character-forming community work, have been run by around 60 charities over the last year.

However, Justin Davis Smith, chief executive of Volunteering England, has warned that England’s network of volunteer centres is at risk of “fragmentation” because of an average 12% local authority funding cut from 2009-2011, raising concerns that only private firms will be able to deliver such large community projects in future. One in 10 charities told researchers for a report by New Philanthropy Capital that they could close within the year due to cuts.

Gareth Thomas, shadow minister for charities, said he had concerns that private firms were proving to be the winners from the big society agenda. He added: “Far from creating the big society, it seems that once again Cameron is going back to his roots and creating the privatised society instead, with charities and voluntary groups used as mere ‘bid candy’ for the large corporate outfits going after public sector contracts.”

Serco has joined Catch22, a charity for poor children that was paid £2.3m last year for its work on the NCS, and three other charities to take over the running of the scheme in the north-east and north-west of England, Yorkshire and Humberside, the West and east Midlands, the east, south-west and south-east from 2013.

Independent research into the NCS by NatCen found that 81% of those who signed up for the pilot programmes completed them, and 92% of those said they would recommend NCS to their friends. However, the research also raised concerns about the ability of its providers to expand the service nationally.

The programme, which provides a combination of residential weeks and volunteering projects, was attended by 8,500 young people last year at a cost of £14.2m.

The number of places is expected to rise to 30,000 this summer and 90,000 by 2014. Sir Stephen Bubbs, chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, said the model of a private firm providing assistance to charities could work, but it depended on the contract between the parties. Under the government’s work programme, where big companies have formed partnerships with not-for-profit organisations, charities have complained that they have been used to give credibility to contract bids but then not benefited financially. Bubb added: “If you are trying to scale this up, then involving a partnership can be good. What I think wouldn’t work was if they did it on the model of the work programme, with Serco as a prime contractor. But if it’s a partnership, then it probably can.”

Serco is one of the leading outsourcing firms, but has faced criticism of some of its operations. Its staff assisting border controls have been found to have missed security alerts and to have left their stations unmanned. The company was recently found by the health regulator to be failing to meet legal requirements to provide enough staff, to train them properly or monitor their performance in the out-of-hours GP service that it runs for the NHS in Cornwall.

Jayne Colquhoun, from vInspired, one of Serco’s charitable partners in the bid, said: “Having worked with local partners across the country to deliver NCS since 2011, we are keen to continue our involvement over the years to come and to provide a high-quality, exciting programme for 16- and 17-year-olds. Given the government’s ambition to scale up the programme from 2013 onwards, we have joined up with Catch22, NYA, Serco and UK Youth to form the NCS Network. We hope this will enable us to continue our work with existing local partners and bring on board new delivery organisations.” The winner of the contract will be announced next month.

Resurgence magazine, August 2012

 We are living in a frightening and exciting historical moment. All around us there are signs of paradigms shifting: Occupy camps springing up; riots on the streets; growing anger about the greed of those at the top of the financial pyramid. Our certainties seem to be collapsing along with our economies and our ecosystems.

 Living through a collapse is a strange experience. Perhaps the strangest part is that ‘nobody wanes ro admit that it’s a collapse. The results of half a century or debt-fuelled ‘growth’ are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties continue to crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. Politicians – surveying the wreckage of the system they have long talc us there is no alternative to – have nothing to say. Neither do most economists, Faced with this, people are looking elsewhere for answers. One place worth looking is the almost forgotten work of a political thinker who predicted four decades ago chat we might get to this point.

 The crisis currently playing out on the world stage is a crisis of growth. A crisis caused not, as we are regularly told, by too little growth, but by too much. Banks grew so big that their collapse would have brought down the entire global economy. To prevent this, they were bailed out with huge branches of public money, and this in turn is precipitating social crises on the streets of Western nations.

 The European Union has grown so big and so unaccountable that it threatens to collapse in on itself. Corporations have grown so big that they are overwhelming democracies and building a global plutocracy to serve their own interests. The human economy as a whole has grown so big that it has been able to change the atmospheric composition of the planet and precipitate a mass-extinction event.

 One man who would not have been surprised by this crisis of bigness, had he lived to see it, was Leopold Kohr, who has a good claim to be the most important political thinker that most people have never heard of. Possibly readers of this magazine will be better informed: Kohr was one of the intellectual founders of Resurgence and the wider green movement, and one of the principal inspirations for E.F. Schumacher, But he did not have a wide following himself. Unlike Marx, he did not found a global movement or inspire any revolutions. Unlike Hayek, he did nor rewrite the economic rules of the modern world.

 Kohr was a modest, self-deprecating man, but this was not the reason why his ideas have been ignored by movers and shakers in the half-century since they were produced. They have been ignored because they do not flatter the egos of the power-hungry, whether revolutionaries or plutocrats. Quite the opposite, in fact: Kohr’s message is a direct challenge to them. “Wherever something is wrong,” he insisted, “something is too big.”

 Kohr was born in 1909 in the Austrian town of Oberndorf, This small-town childhood, together with his critical study of economics and political theory at the London School of Economics, his experience of anarchist city-states during the Spanish Civil War (which he covered as a war reporter), and the fact that he fled Austria after the Nazi invasion, contributed to his growing suspicion of power and its abuses. Settling in the USA, Kohr began to write the book that would define his thinking. Published in 1957, The Breakdown of Nations laid out what at the rime was a radical case: mat small states, small nations and small economies are more peaceful, more prosperous and more creative than great powers of superstates. It was a claim that was as unfashionable as it was possible to make. This was the dawn of the space age – a time of high confidence in the progressive, giganrist, technology-fuelled destiny of humankind. Feted political thinkers were talking in all seriousness of clearing a world government as the next step cowards uniting humanity. Kohr was at odds with the prevailing mood. He later commented, dryly, that his critics “dismissed my ideas by referring to me as a poet”.

 Kohr’s claim was that society’s problems were caused not by particular forms of social or economic organisation, but by their size. Socialism, anarchism, capitalism, democracy, monarchy – all could work well on what he called the human scale: a scale at which people could play a part in the systems that governed their lives. But once scaled up to the level of modem states, all systems became oppressors.  Changing the system, or the ideology it claimed inspiration from, would nor prevent that oppression – as any number of revolutions has shown – because «the problem is nor the thing that is big, but bigness itself.”

 Drawing expansively from history, Kohr demonstrated that when people have too much power, under any system or none, they abuse it, The task, therefore, was to limit the amount of power that any individual, organisation or government could get their hands on. The solution to the world’s problems was, counter-intuitively, not more unity but more division. The world should be broken up into small states, roughly equivalent in size and power, which would be able to limit the growth and thus domination of anyone unit. Small states and small economies were more flexible, more able to weather economic storms, less capable of waging serious wars, and more accountable to their people. Not only that, but they were more creative.

 On a whistle-stop tour of medieval and early modern Europe, The Breakdown of Nations does an entertaining and persuasive job of convincing the reader that many of the glories of Western culture, from cathedrals to great’ art to scientific innovations, were indeed the product of small states.

 To read The Breakdown of Nations 50 years on is to wonder at the predictive powers of its author. Bigness, predicted Kohr, could only lead to more bigness, for “whatever outgrows certain limits begins to suffer from the irrepressible problem of unmanageable proportions.”   Beyond those limits, it was forced to accumulate more power in order to manage the power it already had. Growth would become cancerous and unstoppable, until there was only one possible end point: collapse.

 We are now rapidly reaching the point Kohr warned about over half a century ago: the point where “instead of growth serving life, life must now serve growth, perverting the very purpose of existence.” Kohr’s ‘crisis of bigness’ is upon us, and true to form, we are scrabbling to tackle it with more of the same: closer fiscal unions, tighter global governance, more economic growth. Big, it seems, is as beautiful as ever to those who have the unenviable task of keeping the growth machine going.

 This shouldn’t surprise us. lt didn’t surprise Kohr, who, unlike some of his utopian critics, never confused a desire for radical change with the likelihood of it actually happening. Instead, Kohr’s downbeat bur refreshingly honest conclusion was that, like a dying star; the gigantist global system would in the end fall in on itself and the whole cycle of growth would begin all over again. But before it did so, “between the intellectual ice ages of great-power domination”, the world would become “little and free once more”.

 We are living in a frightening and exciting historical moment. All around us there are signs of paradigms shifting: Occupy camps springing up; riots on the streets; growing anger about the greed of those at the top of the financial pyramid. Our certainties seem to be collapsing along with our economies and our ecosystems.

 Living through a collapse is a strange experience. Perhaps the strangest part is that ‘nobody wanes ro admit that it’s a collapse. The results of half a century or debt-fuelled ‘growth’ are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties continue to crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. Politicians – surveying the wreckage of the system they have long talc us there is no alternative to – have nothing to say. Neither do most economists, Faced with this, people are looking elsewhere for answers. One place worth looking is the almost forgotten work of a political thinker who predicted four decades ago chat we might get to this point.

 The crisis currently playing out on the world stage is a crisis of growth. A crisis caused not, as we are regularly told, by too little growth, but by too much. Banks grew so big that their collapse would have brought down the entire global economy. To prevent this, they were bailed out with huge branches of public money, and this in turn is precipitating social crises on the streets of Western nations.

 The European Union has grown so big and so unaccountable that it threatens to collapse in on itself. Corporations have grown so big that they are overwhelming democracies and building a global plutocracy to serve their own interests. The human economy as a whole has grown so big that it has been able to change the atmospheric composition of the planet and precipitate a mass-extinction event.

 One man who would not have been surprised by this crisis of bigness, had he lived to see it, was Leopold Kohr, who has a good claim to be the most important political thinker that most people have never heard of. Possibly readers of this magazine will be better informed: Kohr was one of the intellectual founders of Resurgence and the wider green movement, and one of the principal inspirations for E.F. Schumacher, But he did not have a wide following himself. Unlike Marx, he did not found a global movement or inspire any revolutions. Unlike Hayek, he did nor rewrite the economic rules of the modern world.

 Kohr was a modest, self-deprecating man, but this was not the reason why his ideas have been ignored by movers and shakers in the half-century since they were produced. They have been ignored because they do not flatter the egos of the power-hungry, whether revolutionaries or plutocrats. Quite the opposite, in fact: Kohr’s message is a direct challenge to them. “Wherever something is wrong,” he insisted, “something is too big.”

 Kohr was born in 1909 in the Austrian town of Oberndorf, This small-town childhood, together with his critical study of economics and political theory at the London School of Economics, his experience of anarchist city-states during the Spanish Civil War (which he covered as a war reporter), and the fact that he fled Austria after the Nazi invasion, contributed to his growing suspicion of power and its abuses. Settling in the USA, Kohr began to write the book that would define his thinking. Published in 1957, The Breakdown of Nations laid out what at the rime was a radical case: mat small states, small nations and small economies are more peaceful, more prosperous and more creative than great powers of superstates. It was a claim that was as unfashionable as it was possible to make. This was the dawn of the space age – a time of high confidence in the progressive, giganrist, technology-fuelled destiny of humankind. Feted political thinkers were talking in all seriousness of clearing a world government as the next step cowards uniting humanity. Kohr was at odds with the prevailing mood. He later commented, dryly, that his critics “dismissed my ideas by referring to me as a poet”.

 Kohr’s claim was that society’s problems were caused not by particular forms of social or economic organisation, but by their size. Socialism, anarchism, capitalism, democracy, monarchy – all could work well on what he called the human scale: a scale at which people could play a part in the systems that governed their lives. But once scaled up to the level of modem states, all systems became oppressors.  Changing the system, or the ideology it claimed inspiration from, would nor prevent that oppression – as any number of revolutions has shown – because «the problem is nor the thing that is big, but bigness itself.”

 Drawing expansively from history, Kohr demonstrated that when people have too much power, under any system or none, they abuse it, The task, therefore, was to limit the amount of power that any individual, organisation or government could get their hands on. The solution to the world’s problems was, counter-intuitively, not more unity but more division. The world should be broken up into small states, roughly equivalent in size and power, which would be able to limit the growth and thus domination of anyone unit. Small states and small economies were more flexible, more able to weather economic storms, less capable of waging serious wars, and more accountable to their people. Not only that, but they were more creative.

 On a whistle-stop tour of medieval and early modern Europe, The Breakdown of Nations does an entertaining and persuasive job of convincing the reader that many of the glories of Western culture, from cathedrals to great’ art to scientific innovations, were indeed the product of small states.

 To read The Breakdown of Nations 50 years on is to wonder at the predictive powers of its author. Bigness, predicted Kohr, could only lead to more bigness, for “whatever outgrows certain limits begins to suffer from the irrepressible problem of unmanageable proportions.”   Beyond those limits, it was forced to accumulate more power in order to manage the power it already had. Growth would become cancerous and unstoppable, until there was only one possible end point: collapse.

 We are now rapidly reaching the point Kohr warned about over half a century ago: the point where “instead of growth serving life, life must now serve growth, perverting the very purpose of existence.” Kohr’s ‘crisis of bigness’ is upon us, and true to form, we are scrabbling to tackle it with more of the same: closer fiscal unions, tighter global governance, more economic growth. Big, it seems, is as beautiful as ever to those who have the unenviable task of keeping the growth machine going.

 This shouldn’t surprise us. lt didn’t surprise Kohr, who, unlike some of his utopian critics, never confused a desire for radical change with the likelihood of it actually happening. Instead, Kohr’s downbeat bur refreshingly honest conclusion was that, like a dying star; the gigantist global system would in the end fall in on itself and the whole cycle of growth would begin all over again. But before it did so, “between the intellectual ice ages of great-power domination”, the world would become “little and free once more”.

Two reports  – one looking at the role of community pubs and the other considers the reinvention of the corner shop

Why community pubs are worth saving. Full report here

Community pubs are one of Britain’s oldest and most popular social institutions. However, they are currently under pressure, with 16 pubs closing every week. This report assesses the social value of community pubs, showing why pubs matter, and why we should be concerned about the current state of the pub trade.

Why do pubs matter?

• Pubs are more than just private businesses selling alcohol. Many pubs also play an important role at the heart of their local communities.

• Pubs provide a meeting place where social networks are strengthened and extended: the pub scored the highest of any location in our survey asking people where they get together with others in their neighbourhood.

• Pubs inject an average of £80,000 into their local economy each year. Pubs add more value to local economies than beer sold through shops and supermarkets, simply because they generate more jobs. Beer sold through pubs also generates more funding for the public purse than beer sold through the ‘off trade’.

• While alcohol is linked to problems around crime and disorder, very little of this comes from community pubs serving residential areas.

• Pubs are perceived by people to be the most important social institution for promoting interactions between people from different walks of life.

• Pubs host a wide variety of community-oriented events and activities that add considerably to local civic life.

• Many community pubs are becoming hosts for a range of important public services, including post offices and general stores, and providing broadband internet access.

• Community pubs, or at least pubs with certain characteristics, also have a cultural as well as a practical community value. This is because pubs are felt to offer things such as tradition and authenticity that are becoming rarer in a world transformed by global commercial pressures.

• This report uses a ‘social return on investment’ methodology to measure the wider social value generated by a sample of community pubs, and finds that this ranges from around £20,000 to £120,000 per pub.

Time for change

The current policy framework regarding community pubs contains three major flaws.

• It is too indiscriminate: all licensed premises have to carry the burden of new regulations and increased taxation, but the smaller community pubs that cause so few problems are those least able to take on these additional costs. We need a more nuanced approach that targets the problem drinking places, and rewards and incentivises pubs that play a positive role in their local communities.

• It is counter-productive, particularly in terms of tackling crime and disorder: by making beer in pubs more expensive while beer in shops and supermarkets gets relatively cheaper, policy is drawing people out of the regulated and supervised drinking environment of the pub.

• Policy fails to recognise that very many pubs are more than just businesses and perform important community functions which if lost can have a serious impact on the quality of local community life.

Full report here.

Reinventing the corner shop,  Clare Goff, NewStart journal

A sign in the window of Key News in Sheffield calls on customers to help shape the store’s stock.

Key News on Sheffield’s Derbyshire Lane is your average ‘humble’ corner shop. Situated on a residential road, it sells newspapers, tobacco, sweets and a selection of groceries. Like your average corner shop, it has, in recent times, been struggling. The rise of smaller local versions of the ‘big four’ supermarkets, the decline in newspaper readership and the economic downturn have hit the local general store hard.

However, the owner of Key News, Paul Keys, hasn’t closed his doors and in the last two years has trebled his takings. He achieved this not by spending thousands on advertising but by inviting his local community in to help decide the future of the shop.

As part of a physical restructure, Keys painted a message on the window asking local people what they would like to see sold inside. Around 60 people came in to his tiny shop and expressed their views, and some of their requests were unexpected.

‘The most requested items were alcohol and hamsters,’ he says. Key News now stocks alcohol, has added a range of local food and an improved selection of greetings cards. It also stocks hamster food – though not hamsters – at the request of local children. Paul Keys runs special offers and is planning a wine tasting evening later in the year.

He thinks that smaller shops have the advantage of being closer to their communities than the big supermarkets and thus more able to respond to changes. ‘You have to keep in touch and be prepared to change,’ he says. Key News has thrived not only through improving its range but by focusing on and expanding its civic role.

‘Humble’ is the adjective most often used to describe the corner shop. Often it alludes to its irrelevant and old-fashioned approach to retail, its lack of pretension that is part of its charm. But there is also a sense in which the corner shop underplays its role.

For while we will all recognise the corner shop piled high with a disordered and random stock of over-priced and unhealthy goods and manned by a grumpy shopkeeper, we will also know of local corner shops which are the lynchpin of the community. When they close their doors for the final time what disappears is often much more than a place to buy a pint of milk. But corner shops – these ‘humble’ community resources – are often under-valued and under-used.

With corner shops now closing down at a rapid rate due to economic pressures, could they be revived by focusing on and highlighting their civic role? Indy Johar, the co-founder of Architecture 00:/, has spoken of the reinvention of the corner shop as a symbol of a new type of civic regeneration. As the big regeneration model based on real estate and consumption wanes, the focus is shifting to the expansion of human and social capital through the reinvention of the local shops and services we use every day.

‘I would like to see the corner shop reinvented for the 21st century, that’s the most beautiful thing that can happen,’ he said in an interview with New Start in May. ‘It can be a platform for so many things – sharing goods made in different houses, bringing together the problem of food wastage with local skills around baking and cooking.

‘It’s about reinventing and supporting these small everyday fractals of real lived society and making them so much better, so much more competitive and value added that they challenge the big boys. That’s the imagination challenge and its absolutely possible.’

In the digital age many corner shops are offering new services based around the delivery of online shopping, with John Lewis among the retailers planning to use corner shops as drop-off points for parcels. In San Francisco, one local corner shop has become the pick up point for a vegetable box from a Community Supported Agriculture scheme, and the provision of local healthy food is the backdrop to many corner shop reinventions.

In Los Angeles, the Corner Store Project has seen university researchers from the UCLA-USC Centre for Population Health and Health Disparities team up with local high school students to turn a neighbourhood snack shop into a source of healthy food. The outside of the Yash shop has been painted a vivid green and the amount of fresh food available has been increased. A vegetable garden has been created in the back yard and cooking demonstrations, healthy eating talks and gardening now take place, run by the young people themselves.

In the UK, the People’s Supermarket has created a new type of local grocery shop that mixes civic and economic aims and is as much about building community as selling food. It’s owned and run by locals, who pay an annual membership fee and commit to giving four hours each month to help run the organisation. Two years on from the launch of the first shop in central London, it’s learned to balance ethical choices with economic reality, loosening its decision not to stock cigarettes and alcohol, for example.

Its co-founder David Barrie warns of the difficulties of making a shop financially viable, particularly in an urban setting with strong competition and high levels of expectation from consumers.

‘I can’t tell you how difficult it is to set up a retail grocery that turns a profit,’ he says. But he recognises a demand for a different type of corner shop – one that offers community and authenticity – and believes consumers are prepared to pay a premium for it.

‘In the absence of other local friendly services the People’s Supermarket has become one of the few places in the area where everyone knows each other. Authenticity is not just the currency of cosmopolitan folk. Most people like things that are genuine and that speak to their sense of self. We could have gone down the artisan route and have been more successful commercially but we wanted to create something that was open to everyone.’

A new partnership between the People’s Supermarket and Spar shows that the competition has taken note.

And in the Anfield area of Liverpool, an area now blighted by the remains of big regeneration projects, a community bakery has become the centre of an initiative to renew the neighbourhood a different way (pictured left).

What began as an art project as part of the Liverpool Biennial has turned into a shop-cum-sustainable-housing initiative called 2Up2Down/Homebaked. When the family that had managed the local bakery decided to retire, the importance of keeping open the only remaining shop in the area selling fresh food took precedence over an art installation.

The project now rents the shop and plans for it to become a functioning bakery again, run and managed by local young people, who will also be trained to convert the empty properties attached to the bakery into flats fit for a changing community. In the meantime the bakery provides a base to engage with the local community around the idea of ‘living well’. Philosophy sessions have taken place and a reading group and vertical vegetable garden are planned. ‘It’s about exploring what it means to live well – through food, social life and wellbeing,’ says Maria Brewster, project producer of 2Up2Down.

But the making and selling of bread is just the backdrop to its main aim – to unite and reconnect a community that has been dislocated and depleted through ‘big’ regeneration and external economic forces.

‘It was important to do something so small and intimate and people-centred as a kind of counterpoint to top-down strategies which have created turmoil in this area,’ she says. ‘The aim is a slow steady growth from within.’

Bakeries running philosophy sessions and grocery stores growing vegetables. Local people involved in the running of their local shops and shopkeepers expanding their role as community anchors. Corner shops linking with other civic projects and with local services and needs. The possibilities for the reinvention of corner shops are endless and, as many face extinction, now is the time to explore their potential.

This article is the start of a conversation around what a civic corner shop could become and just a small snapshot of what’s already taking place. New Start welcomes your ideas and examples.

A unique joint venture between two Scottish charities that has been in development for the past few years has received a massive boost.  Planning permission has been granted by Scottish Borders Council for the jointly owned Hoprigshiels community wind farm.  The income generated from this project will be crucial to the futures of both charities –  Community Energy Scotland in its work to support communities throughout Scotland, helping them share in the benefits to be gained from renewable energy, and Berwickshire Housing Association in its mission to provide much needed affordable rented housing across the county.

The modest 3 turbine project is Scotland’s first joint venture project between two charities: Community Energy Scotland and Berwickshire Housing Association, the majority partner. The green electricity generated by the turbines will be sold to the national grid and profit will be dispersed between the two organisations to support their charitable aims. 

Berwickshire Housing Association will use their share to build up to 500 low-cost affordable homes in Berewickshire. Community Energy Scotland’s share will help fund its national support service to enable communities to develop renewable energy projects. 

Helen Forsyth, Chief Executive of the Berwickshire Housing Association (BHA) commented, “Without a doubt, Hoprigshiels Community Wind Farm is the single most important development ever proposed by BHA.  This will benefit not only those in housing need today, but households and communities for generations to come. A remarkable legacy for a modest three turbine wind farm.” 

On average for every home BHA has available to let, the Association receives 50 applications. At a time of reduced public expenditure and growing demand for affordable housing, Hoprigshiels Community Wind Farm provides BHA with the potential to develop much needed new housing, which otherwise would not be built.

Nicholas Gubbins, Chief Executive of Community Energy Scotland said, ‘Scottish Borders Council planning committee should be congratulated in taking this progressive step. The benefits from this relatively small scheme will all be recycled to benefit communities locally and nationally. No shareholders and no individual profits will be involved. The main beneficiaries are Scottish charities dedicated to community aims and the local community through the community benefit package.’

Aside from the funds raised to be used by BHA and Community Energy Scotland for their charitable purposes, a community fund of over £35,000 per year will be provided in support of community activity within the vicinity of the development.

BHA and their partners, Community Energy Scotland  are already putting together the programme of works to take the project to completion. “We’ve a way to go yet” said Helen Forsyth “but this is the most significant milestone in the project to date.  Hopefully in eighteen months time the blades at Hoprigshiels will be turning, with every turn earning money for Berwickshire. That’s what makes our project unique” .

Simon Birch, The Guardian, 26.07.12

Harold Wilson would surely have approved. The Labour prime minister’s old grammar school in Huddersfield is now one the country’s leading co-op schools and a passionate supporter of the spectacular growth of this type schools.

“I’m really very excited about co-op schools,” says Melanie Williams headteacher at Royds Hall High School in Huddersfield. “I can’t imagine working any other way.”

The first co-op school was established in 2008 and, by the start of the new academic year this September, there will be more than 350 such schools, with many more in the pipeline, an achievement which has even taken the co-op school movement by surprise.

“We’ve been shocked by just how popular co-op schools have proved to be,” confesses Mervyn Wilson, who leads the Manchester-based Co-operative College which develops and supports schools making the transition to co-op school status.

“We’re now the third largest association of schools in England after church-run schools, a ranking which has largely gone unnoticed.”

Such has been the dramatic growth of co-op schools that they constitute one of the three fastest growing sectors of the already booming UK co-op economy.

So what exactly is a co-op school? Before this can be answered a short history lesson is required – pay attention at the back now.

The very first school which was run along co-operative principles can be traced back to the 1830s. Since those pioneering days, education has played a central role in co-op activity.

However by the 1960’s many aspects of the co-op economy were thought to be outdated and plainly irrelevant, so co-op schools quietly slipped out of fashion.

What led to their renaissance was Blair’s 2006 Education and Inspections Act. This introduced the idea of trust schools, which were trumpeted as “independent state schools”; they allowed for a loosening of the ties between local authorities and schools.

While they would remain funded by local authorities, schools would become charitable trusts, with other key features, including establishing long-term partnerships with outside groups such as local businesses and charities who would then become involved with the school’s governance and leadership.

The smart thinkers at the Co-operative College spotted that this presented a golden opportunity to develop a co-operative-based model for trust schools. The result was that in 2008 Reddish Vale technology college in Stockport became the first ground-breaking co-operative trust school in England, which heralded the current revolution in co-op led education.

In answer then to what defines a co-op school, Wilson, at the Co-operative College, identifies two key features. “The first is that the co-op values of democracy, equity and fairness are applied right across the school,” he explains.

“The second is a governance model that directly engages key stakeholders through membership of the trust that includes, parents and carers, staff, the local community and the pupils themselves.

Together they form a community-based mutual organisation.”

It is a governance model that Wilson says puts the school right at the heart of local communities, which in turn have a direct input into how their school is run.

So what exactly are the benefits of a co-op school?

“One of the key advantages are the opportunities that the partner organisations can bring to the school,” says Wilson, who adds that co-op schools are encouraged to team up with other local co-ops or social enterprises. Royds Hall, for example, which became a co-op school in 2011 has a trustee from the Fairtraders Co-operative from nearby Holmfirth.

“Having a trustee who’s directly involved with the Fairtrade movement has helped the students to run the school as a Fairtrade school,” says headteacher Melanie Williams, “and it’s a relationship that’s worked very well for us.

“The values and worldwide nature to being a co-operative is also very much at the forefront of our planning and strategy and has enabled us to establish links with other co-ops around Europe. Making these links to the wider world really helps to raise the attainment for students because you’re widening their horizons.

To read the full article, click here.

Extract from ‘Social Enterprise in Anytown’ by John Pearce (2003)

Mutual Financing 

Financial institutions are required within the third sector which have the capacity to make the scale of investments that are needed to seriously grow social enterprises.

The idea of making social enterprise ‘bankable’ sends out quite the wrong message. It implies that social enterprises are, or should become, like other businesses, which they are not and should not aspire to be. It further implies that social enterprises should somehow fit themselves to the demands of the existing banking system.

The first step must be to consolidate the network of finance institutions which belong to the social economy. That may not mean proliferating small Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) but building institutions of some scale which can both make loans and provide ‘patient’ equity capital.  The emphasis should be on finance institutions which are controlled by the state or by the private sector.

The second step is surely for the existing big financial players from the traditional co-operative sector in the social economy to take a lead in developing a new national institution or supporting regional social economy funds to build up and provide the investment capital which is required. They have the expertise.  There is substantial money around the social economy, but most of it is kept and used within the mainstream banking system. Therefore it does not work to benefit the social economy, The Charity Bank, Triodos Bank and others have demonstrated that there is money out there which people are willing to invest in social enterprises and to accept that social returns temper the financial return they may expect.

The third step is to make more sensible use of the substantial funds which the public sector already invests in social enterprises. That means the introduction of ‘recoverable grants’, paying revenue money as up-front capital, working through social investment funds rather than direct from the public sector, and diverting some of the expensive revenue schemes (Intermediate Labour Markets for example) into capital investment funds.

Four Main Points

• The social economy requires its own mutual financing institutions based on social economy values rather than having to become ‘bankable’ in the style of the first-system banks. 

• These mutual finance institutions must build investment funds of a scale which can deliver the growth capital required for social enterprises to make a significant difference.

• The existing co-operative financial institutions should take a lead in developing new institutions and mobilising the substantial funds already within the social economy to work for social enterprises. 

• Public-sector investment in social enterprises should be routed through the mutual financing institutions and delivered as ‘patient’ equity.

A blog by Malcolm Harvey, Electoral Reform Society Scotland – Scots are ready for real, meaningful constitutional debate

Since the launch of Yes Scotland and Better Together, the campaigns in support of independence and the Union respectively, the constitutional debate has entered a phase of relative quiet. While partisans and activists continue to fight the campaigns on the doorsteps and on street stalls (and, more vociferously  through social media outlets,) the campaigns – at least in the national media – appear to be on a summer hiatus.  Which has meant that writing about the campaigns themselves has been somewhat limited. 

The absence of partisan debate has allowed the non-aligned an opportunity to engage with the constitutional debate – an opportunity which was grasped eagerly at an event I attended last month.

And though I am currently an intern at the Society which organised the event, I don’t think I need any kind of bias to suggest that the event was a resounding success. Dubbed a “People’s Gathering”, the event brought together people from all over Scotland – a sample of the population, albeit opt-in, representative of age, gender, home town and political affiliation for a dialogic discussion in two parts. 

The morning session asked delegates to consider how a Scottish democracy might look in 2030 and discuss what particular aspects of this utopian ideal they liked the most.   The afternoon session subsequently saw delegates consider the obstacles which would need to be overcome to achieve such ideals.

Professor Alice Brown opened the day by reminding delegates of the ideals upon which the Scottish Parliament was based on its (re)opening in 1999: wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity, words inscribed upon the Parliament’s Mace.  And while that was the starting point for discussions of how the infant parliament should conduct itself, there were no such constraints on the delegates at the People’s Gathering.

Different ideas for Scotland’s future ranged from increased engagement in the political process through a better informed electorate, social justice and a better informed policy process, to praise for the principle of subsidiarity, an end to money being able to buy political influence, and an open process to consider a written constitution for Scotland.  From a personal perspective, as a note-taker for one of the groups, I was taken by the knowledge and experience which the delegates brought to the day, and the vibrancy with which the discussions flowed.

While the People’s Gathering was but the beginning of the process for the Electoral Reform Society’s “Democracy Max” programme (which continues later this year with several round table events), the early signs are that it is doing something which the two sides of the referendum campaign would like to do: engage the Scottish electorate in discussions about Scotland’s future.

That delegates from all over Scotland were happy to voluntarily give up their time on a summer Saturday to come to Edinburgh and discuss ways to improve Scotland’s democracy suggests there is an appetite within the Scottish electorate for this kind of debate.  Herein, I think, lies the lesson for politicians and political commentators alike.

The Scottish public are happy – eager, even – to engage in political discussions, to consider how we might improve democracy, our political institutions and our society. But the discussion needs to be meaningful, the consultation two-sided and the outcomes identifiable. If we start to see this kind of engagement from Yes Scotland and Better Together, there’s hope for us all yet.

Extract from Andy Wightman’s Blog 

Today, the Scottish Government announced the establishment of a “Land Reform Review Group” that will oversee a “wide ranging review of land reform in Scotland”. If this happens it will be very worthwhile.

However, the remit and membership of this group are yet to be agreed with Scottish Ministers and it is unclear how wide the remit will be. If it is simply to undertake a technical review of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, it will be of very limited value when the real issues concern inflated land values, affordability of housing, succession law, tax avoidance, secrecy, absentee landlordism, theft of common land, land registration laws, common good etc. etc. etc.

Whether any of this gets looked at depends on two things.

The definition of the term “land reform” and the remit for the group. Let’s crowdsource ideas on both of these. Please leave comments at www.andywightman.com on :-

1. a definition of land reform and

2. a remit for the Land Reform Review Group.

My interview on Radio Scotland Newsdrive at 1750, 24 July 2012.

Article by Robbie Dinwoodie, The Herald, 25th July

URBAN communities are in line to benefit from land buyouts after the Scottish Government announced plans for a radical rethink of the policy.

First Minister Alex Salmond yesterday set up a new expert panel, chaired by former Kirk moderator Dr Alison Elliot and including in its ranks a critic of this Government’s rate of progress on the issue, Professor James Hunter.

Part of the Land Reform Review Group’s role will be to show how it would benefit people from the remote communities which have bought out their land already, to those living in towns and cities who want to reclaim brown field sites.

Iain Cooke, of Development Trusts Association Scotland, which has championed causes such as Inverclyde Community Development Trust, the bid to reclaim Moffat Town Hall, and the Castlemilk Stables project in Glasgow, said: “This should be something that is open to all com- munities – sustainable and com-munity-led development. The principle of communities taking control should be universal.”

The issue of land reform has traditionally been seen as one for the Highlands and Islands, prompting activists to recognise that spreading recognition of the benefits and principles will advance the cause more generally.

Mr Salmond said after the Scottish Cabinet meeting in Skye: “Land reform is an important part of Scotland’s story. From the Crofting Acts of the 1880s and 1890s to the more recent right-to-buy legislation and support for community land purchase, significant progress has been made. 

“We cannot underestimate the crucial part land reform will play in contributing to the future success of Scotland for the next generation. By improving the relationship between our land and people, we can create stronger communities and deliver the economic growth and fairer society the people of Scotland quite rightly expect.”

He added: “I want this review to deliver radical change for both rural and urban areas, developing new ideas which will improve current legislation as well as generating even more innovative proposals.”

Dr Elliot said: “I want to take a look at all the opportunities that exist to promote more communities taking control of their future by taking control of their land.”

Her joint deputies will be Professor Hunter and Dr Sarah Skerrat, with 10 advisers to be appointed soon to look at possible legislative needs.

Mr Hunter said: “I am very pleased to have been asked as I have a long-standing involvement in this area.”

He has been a strong critic of the way politicians of all parties have failed to carry through on land reform since the first legislation was carried in the first term of the Parliament.

David Cameron, chairman of Community Land Scotland, the body representing previous buyouts, said: “The terms of reference appear to be broad as this will allow scope for the group to examine radical action that will help advance the cause of securing further change in land ownership across Scotland.

“The review can learn from the success of the land reform that has already taken place over recent decades and help plan how to accelerate that.

“Community Land Scotland will play an active part in presenting evidence for further reforms to promote an ever greater role for communities in the ownership and management of their land and look forward to contributing actively to the work now getting under way.

“The review group have a significant number of months to complete their work and it will be important that options for any necessary legislation can be developed in tandem with their work to avoid any delay in being able to legislate.”