Coming home: our co-op journey
Pepper, one of the co-op dogs making herself at home
For the past 18 months our little group has been sharing our hopes and dreams, navigating fears and barriers, building local support and living our co-operative values together, and the hard work has finally paid off. On 27th March we officially secured the Glenorchy Centre as our future home.
At this pivotal moment a world of possibilities has opened up before us - we each have big hopes for the space, as do those who have supported us to get to this point. It’s going to take us some time to settle in and work through all of these possibilities so before we share ‘what next’ we wanted to reflect on some of the foundations we have built to get to this point.
Centring care
An early investment that we all made to this process was an intention to live like a co-op even before we are actually living together. The way this showed up most explicitly was through the ways Joni & Char have become involved with caring for Ray’s kids. This felt like an important foundation to lay when one of the main reasons for living in this way was that we are all seeking mutual care and support, and when the change in living situation is going to be most overwhelming for the small children involved. Most Sundays and Mondays we’ve made time to hang out together as a family, cooking food for each other, walking dogs and taking it in turns to play games with the kids or mediate fall outs or meltdowns.
But we’ve also provided practical support to each other beyond the kids too. From mending clothes to offering lifts to doctors appointments, we are consistently learning how to show up for each other and invest in the wellbeing of one another.
The process has made us all feel even more committed to living together. To have the ease of just being there for one another when we need it. And this will be a central part of the process for building relationships with new potential co-op members too - investing in how mutual flows of care work between the different people living in the space. It will also be a principle we continue to centre with how we develop the role of the co-op within the community - ultimately we are offering our home to people as a space to socialise, organise and learn together and in return we hope that those who use the space will be as invested in offering mutual care as we are.
Collective intentions and individual agency
A tricky thing to navigate when working collectively to purchase a property within a market that it’s built on individualism is to get the balance right between the needs of the collective and the needs of the individual. The more we’ve had to articulate this to those outside of the co-op the better we’ve become at understanding what it is that we are all trying to embody through this decision to live in this way.
In many ways communality and individual agency are linked. Drawing on collective resources enables us to have more individual capacity, and providing the space and support for individuals to pursue what they need creates more commitment to one another and our shared intentions.
But we’ve had to unlearn some things along the way. For example we are all contributing different levels of loanstock due to the means that have or haven’t been available to us in the past. It’s been important for us to speak honestly to the feelings that brings up and ensure that we are actively counteracting any hierarchy that might come from access to wealth. In addition the structure of a co-operative explicitly ensures that financial contributions are disentangled from the ownership and governance of the property which provides a reassurance to everyone involved. We have also been taught by society that some needs are more valid than others and that some knowledge is more valid than others, so consciously unlearning these beliefs and repeatedly committing to validating each other's needs and contributions has been important.
The power of community
One of the most moving things in this process has been the commitment from the wider community in the co-ops success. A week before the property went to auction we had no real idea of how we were gonna finance the shortfall. The bank wouldn’t loan to us because of the nature of the property so we decided to do a public call for investment. We’ve had loans committed to us from all sorts of people - those who are close to us to those who don’t know us personally but just want something like this to exist. People have committed from £500 - £50,000, with some smaller donations to our crowdfunder too, and every single contribution has been as meaningful to us as the next. Because while money is materially important, it’s the sentiment and belief behind people’s choices that have given us confidence in what we are trying to achieve.
What an incredibly hopeful experience to see that when communities rally together they can have the same power and leverage as banks or property developers. And what this means is that the asset will now provide value to the community for many generations to come - the co-op will provide affordable housing for people beyond just the original members, the community space will provide safe warm space for people to gather and build more memories in an already historic building, and there will be no risk of bank repossession because it’s been financed entirely by us and our supporters.
We still have a lot of hard work to do to make the space liveable and explore how we create a thriving, resilient co-op that people from the wider community can be part of so if you want to continue to support our journey you can sign up to our newsletter here or set up a regular donation.
