We spent the first hour sharing details about our governance, meeting, accountability, decision-making structures etc from each of the three projects, learning tactics from each
other, each in a unique position. We were able to ask each other lots of questions. The introduction of Slack was a big hit! The second hour was spent learning more about sociocracy and consent decision making, and hearing how Ally Park put it into practice within their team.

Finally, we spent a good chunk of time exploring how we might go about co-writing ‘contracts of care’ within our teams, and what they could address (e.g. sick leave, grievance, processes, access needs etc). It was clear that a lot of nuance, personalisation and consideration was required to make sure these were just and equitable. It generated a lot of food for thought for each organisation to go away with, but the stand out point for everyone was the desire to integrate access riders into their workplaces.

The ‘contracts of care’ that we began to generate has helped us get going with our own in our individual teams, but also has led to another workshop that the Seed Library has been able to fund, in which we are sharing this concept and its relation to land work with other food growers and community gardeners in the city. So we are really glad that the impacts of this exchange are rippling out to our wider network.

We are also now developing a conversation with the Glasgow Community Food Network and the Green Party councillor for Dennistoun about co-operative governance which will begin with a blog post – I will make sure we credit CLE for the funding to support these initial talks!

Learning Outcomes

• To share knowledge and practices for successfully working together in co-operative, non-hierarchical structures. Similarly, to help each other understand ways of dealing with conflicts within a non-hierarchical workplace.
•  To identify the specific challenges and opportunities present in land worker’s co-operatives, how we can best embrace them, and also ripple this awareness out to our wider community.
• To build a sense of solidarity and community within Glasgow’s food grower’s co-operatives sector, and create tactics for support and accountability into the future

"Through strengthening our skills in working in a collaborative ecosystem at work, we improved our engagement activities within the community. There is much to be learned from nature about collaborative partnerships, and so this a learning exchange that reflects both our interpersonal work environment and also the literal ecosystems/landscapes that we’re partnering with. There are also other food-growing co-operatives in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland that we would like to connect with in the future, drawing from the tools we will develop through this exchange."