Welcome to Bath Cooperative Alliance! Please introduce yourself

Do suggest other organisations we should invite. So far we have Komedia, TechforGood, Moles, Chapel Arts, Julian House and another 15 or so invitations out (incl Bath City and The Bell)

Do all these enterprises , entities qualify as coops or democratic?

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Even if they’re not all as cooperative or democratic as we would think pure, it looks like being a group through which we can outreach. Do we only want to talk to clones? How else could Bath become a Cooperative City than if we mingle with those who are potentially sympathetic?

The invitation is not restricted to existing co-ops. That said I think it suits co-ops because of the richer relationship they have with individuals. It’s just a small trial so we can’t claim too much for it.

Hi BCA. I'm a part of the small membership team at Co-operatives UK. I'm based in Manchester but spent a fair amount of my time on the road either visiting members or running our physical Co-op Connections events. Yes I'm a fair distance from Bath, but I'm keen to assist any groups around the country to organise, promote co-operation or start new co-ops. I'm a member of a co-op pub and a brewery, so you can see where my interests are. I think its great to see the efforts of the BCA and the progress that's being made. If you're interested in hearing more from CUK, please consider signing up to our mailing list www.uk.coop/email and please let me know of any events that we can promote on our events pages. www.uk.coop/all-events - The Ted Howard event listing went live today.

Human Survival - It Was Cooperation Wot Did It.
Link below is to a rather academic but fascinating account of how humans evolved cooperative genes and hormones to survive and prosper.
Useful counter to arguments based on necessity for competitive individualism.
Early sections are a bit dry and pedantic but worth persevering for the inspiring conclusions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj1ds5JsyGE

Hey! This seems to be the place to introduce myself, although last post in August 2019, but I didn't see other place for introductions, so here goes.

I grew up in Bath, but have been travelling around a lot, particularly in Germany, often by bike (of the pedal variety), I recently decided to base myself in Bath for a bit longer. I don't know how long right now, but long enough to get a bit more involved in stuff going on here.

One of my main activities is software development, I am part of the team building https://karrot.world - which is kind of a "community empowerment" software tool, supporting volunteer communities to organise themselves, its open source and built by volunteers. So far it's been focused on foodsaving groups (similar to foodsharing.de), but we're making it more generally adaptable for other kinds of groups, think community gardens, bike kitchens, mutual aid groups, ... kind of an organising tool for when just having a facebook or whatsapp group isn't enough any more (and maybe if you care about keeping your data out of the hands of big tech).

Anyway, enough about karrot for now, I could talk a lot about that! I'm hoping to find some communities in Bath that might enjoy using it, but not in a rush for that, I don't like tech that imposes itself on people. People first. Software later.

I also had various co-op experiences, my first experience was visiting various UK housing co-ops whilst on a bike tour almost 10 years ago, nutclough, cornerstone, talamh. I later worked with Outlandish in London (but I was remote, quite literally, see my profile pic, working under a tree), a little bit with Webarchitects, and I participated in and contribute some stuff for cotech. I frequent the cotech forum occasionally, and the platform co-op discuss mailing list even more occasionally.

I'm a big proponent of wide concepts of "co-operativism", that address all the 7 principles, and maybe extends them further, this thread on the cotech forum gives you a flavour of where I'm coming from, if you're into reading long threads with lots of words! Co-opted, absorbed, or destroyed by Capitalism?. Just creating a bunch of co-ops that are basically like normal businesses but internally organise democratically is maybe a positive step, but doesn't excite me very much, I'm looking for solutions beyond capitalist modes of exchange, etc.. so when people say words like "good" and "community" I want to know what they mean more specifically, which higher organising modes and principles do they connect to.

... but in any case in Bath, I'm just getting involved in whatever is going on, so I need a nice balance in life, there's a couple of kids I take care of once a week, I'm hoping to find a rhythm to do some basic physical work at Dry Arch Growers (just had my introduction there this morning!), etc...

I don't know quite what BCA does, or is intended to do, but happy to hang around! I am not intending to suddenly become a really active member or something, for now, investigating All The Things.

Oh, and I'm in Larkhall (a few doors up from @A Waterhouse). If anyone ever wants to get to know me more, I'm normally up for a covid-friendly walk in the area! Walking and talking is a nice activity :) Keen to get to know larkhall people more (I've started adding a lot more local info into open street map too, opening times, bench info, bus shelters, etc.. so if you're into that I'd love to share that, it's actually a nice activity for a walk, getting to know all the little details...).

Well, that's quite enough from me for now, I am quite prone to verbosity...