Barefoot co-operative development

Note: this is a public thread shared with others outside of the CD Loomio Group. This intro text has been updated to reflect the current state of play with this work, as at April 2019

This thread is to help develop a programme where members of existing co-ops can actually deliver peer to peer co-operative development in conjunction with CDB's.

Barefoot – adj. Self taught through experience, but lacking formal qualifications, for example barefoot lawyer, barefoot doctor, barefoot accountant.

Context

1. We have an ageing and dwindling CDB sector, many due to retire in next few years. This will lead to a lack of capacity to support the growth of the co-operative sector, whether that comes from a strategic programme to encourage the co-operative model or, more likely, arises spontaneously as a grass-roots, DIY response to austerity, state underfunding and retreat from public services.

2. There is some peer to peer co-op development already being done and some CDB's (Including Co-op Culture) are exploring using existing co-ops as associates to provide development support to other co-ops.

3. There are many members, particularly of worker co-ops, who have significant business development skills, developed through their work in the in own co-op. What they lack however is a knowledge of the process of business development and are unfamiliar with the language used and the funding models around paying for co-op development. They are the “barefoot practitioners”.

Overview

In late 2017, Co-op Culture facilitated an action learning pilot project around building the capacity of members of co-ops, so that they can they can deliver co-operative development as associates, and with the oversight of, of existing CDB's.

We held two workshops (Manchester and London), funded by the Solid Fund, bringing together members of worker co-operatives and some co-operative development advisors, to explore the following:

• what barefoot co-operative development was already happening;
• which co-ops were open to further exploring this work
• what the co-ops would need in order to participate.

We produced a report on the results of these two workshops (attached).

Further to that work we continued to talk within the CD Forum (and wider) to determine:

• How we might deliver training to barefoot co-op developers to give them the capacity and confidence to deliver co-op development support.

• What additional partners might we involve in this work?

• How we might resource this further work?

• Which existing CDB's would be willing to participate and “apprentice” barefoot practitioners and how that might work.

As part of this work, Co-op Culture have produced a document which outlines how they work with Barefoot developers as a possible model for working with other CDB's (attached). Co-op Culture is actually starting to use Barefoot developers to deliver co-operative support.

Funding

If this project initially focussed on worker co-operatives, then it could be funded wholly or partially from the SolidFund. Training for barefoot CDB practitioners could possibly be delivered/funded by the existing Hive programme as an extension of the Co-op option training. It may be that in order to resource any training we would need to cast the net wider than just worker co-operatives, this being where the current funding is concentrated (for example Power to Change).

##Where we are now:
Co-op Culture and new partner Platform 6 held an on-line meeting recently on 26th Feb 2019 (notes attached). One of the main outputs of this meeting was to invite those who attended the initial action research workshops to join this thread and several have.

Please continue the conversation below with this larger thread membership.