Thriving too

Two-way social investing platforms for vibrant local high streets

A few weeks ago we have the pleasure of welcoming Tom Baker of LOAF down to the Discovery Incubator in Sidcup to talk about his bakery and cookery school in Stirchley, Birmingham.

I first met Tom at the launch of Community Lover’s Guide to Birmingham and was really inspired by how he as developed his ideas. Below is the chapter he wrote for Community Lover’s Guide, but in a nutshell Tom:

-       Started baking at home.

-       Developed a base of customers who collected bread from his home.

-       He create £1000 investment bonds – with 6% dividends p.a. to be paid in bread.

-       Over 30 of his customers applied for a bond.

-       Tom didn’t take up all the offers – but moved his business into a shop where he continues to grow, build relationships with fellow shopkeepers and customers. 

Tom’s business is fully integrated with his own customers and the local community – but as he states – it is a business and he keeps a very firm eye on this.

During our research in Sidcup, and also in other places such as West Norwood, it has become increasingly obvious that once a high street has started to lose its shops there are very few opportunities for local residents to support its revival.  They can be attracted back to buy things that remain – but once the goods and shops are lost there are no routes to bringing them back. 

In frustration residents often focus on areas that they feel that they can influence – such as planning decisions, legislation and council arrangements such as parking.  But we know that high street revival is very complex, involving landlord rents, rates set by central government, competing local high streets, the internet.

In the post on Trading Spaces we described ideas for connecting shops and local business with residents more strategically – integrating different forms of trading, participatory cultural and social experiences and designing new hybrid spaces to encourage collaboration and cross fertilisation.  Social investment has to be part of that strategy – there is a real role here for crowdsourcing financial support for both existing and potential shops, experiences and spaces.

The other example, which also involves food and cooking, is Cook with Me in Rotterdam.  The restaurant gives cooking lessons (with ipads no less) to local children.   At the end of the courses the children cook a big communal meal for their families. 

Both LOAF and Cook with Me are lovely in every way …But they are not charity. They are very smart strategies … for their businesses, but also for their streets – creating ways for local residents to invest in a more interesting and exciting high street, and innovative pathways for them to make investing in the local community part of everything they do. They make it possible for us to have a real influence on our high street ... and we want that - ask anyone.....

Learning in a complex emergent world

The Hub Insight Gathering last Wednesday brought together Hub founders and makers, Hub members and other speakers to talk about a range of topics related to the Hub as context for civic change.

I attended a fascinating panel session chaired by Indy Johar which was entitled Education: How do we nurture system builders and changemakers today?

The panel offered us very different view points on new kinds of systems for learning.

Max Oliva from Teamlabs and Co-founder of HUB Madrid described how a university programme was working out of the HUB.  The programme sounds unique.  The degree course is to start a business.  After 3 years the students earn a degree, have 3 years work experience and new business. What’s also interesting is that the students are based at the HUB because they think that it provides a unique learning environment. Students are required to invoice 2400 Euros each year (they all have to invoice this amount – so they need to support each other’s businesses).  They have to complete 50 customer visits per year, read and share 40 books.  Eight hours per week is spent training.  This takes the form of 2 x 4hour dialogue sessions that the students design themselves.  The tutor takes on the role of ‘team coach’ – which is a light touch facilitation role. 

In many ways Max’s programme is a solution which closely matches the changing needs of learning described by Filipe Santon, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD – but offers a rather different method than Filipe himself suggests.

Filipe Santon described the ‘complex reality’ of knowledge – in particular the distributed nature of emergent knowledge.  This knowledge needs codifying, have patterns identified, the facts need distilling to their essence. Filipe made the case for the continued role of academics doing this knowledge building and dissemination. I think at the heart of this suggestion is the thinking that knowledge is built through combining emergent information, with existing knowledge and theories, to develop complex and deep understandings. We use existing knowledge to interpret and understand new information.

Max’s programme and environment make a different assumption – that the group can learn together – and are able to blend practice and theory to make new things in an exciting, dynamic and iterative learning process - effectively building and disseminating knowledge through collective and integrated methods. But this is by no means simple. Developing a life-long learning practice, integrating learning within our day-to-day work, building knowledge rapidly and collectively ... these are some the biggest challenges we face when we think about the necessary re-design of personal and organisational systems for learning.

Filipe Santon thinks that academics are the people to continue to extract information, codify and disseminate.  Good academics, he says, are ones with a strong understanding of how people learn and are able to compress learning so that people can learn more in a shorter period of time.  Although Filipe did not say this explicitly, there could be an assumption here that knowledge building and learning remain separated – discrete operations, where one is transferring knowledge between people - rather than Max's assumption that knowledge can be built through interaction.

Indy offered a comparison to this  - looking back to a time when makers were also the philosophers … a time when makers or doers were able to synthesise and build theoretic foundations for their own work. Is it a characteristic of pioneers that they need to be able to do both? 

Is it our current challenge to find new methods of working with networked (rather than linear), distributed (rather than single source) and dynamic (rather than static) knowledge.  What we make in the world is increasingly collaboratively built, perhaps we need to see how knowledge can be collaboratively built also? And how can we ensure that we inject existing wisdom and insight - the kind of deep knowledge currently often held by academics, but perhaps needs to be embedded more deeply into our work and organisations? How do we move on from trust building practices to developing more deliberate, structured, and potentially more powerful ways of knowledge building?

If, as Indy describes, 'we need to put learning at the centre of 21st Century institutions', then it will require more and different people, to add to the academics, who understand how learning and social cognition takes place ... and who can facilitate the innovatative collective practices that Max is developing.

Ultimately these are questions for system builders to see ways to re-configure and re-build infrastructures to support these new complex realities.

Dr Marc Ventresca offered a new 5 Cs to learning: comparing, convening, curating, connecting, conversing and it was a delight to hear him speak. His fantastic 2011 Ted talk “Don’t be an Entrepreneur, Build Systems’, below, has been a real inspiration ever since. 

Thanks to Hub Westminster for a great afternoon!

 

Barter for knowledge - bringing Trade School into libraries

Celebrating practical wisdom, mutual respect and the social nature of exchange.

Trade School is a non-traditional learning space that runs on barter. Anyone can teach, and pupils sign up by agreeing to meet the barter requests of teachers.

 In this case, barter does not mean haggling, or bargaining. It simply means the social exchange that takes place when you offer someone an object, some advice, or a new skill in exchange for their knowledge.

 

Creating a supportive global network

Trade School was founded 3 years ago in New York by Our Goods – a collective of creatives who wanted a way to more effectively share their skills and resources, and reduce a reliance on money or outside funding to run their projects. 

Using a strong idea, some core principles, an attitude of generosity and trust with the project, and a well designed replicable website, Trade School has grown from the initial founding group to be a global coop with over 35 Trade Schools in nearly as many countries.

We co-founded Trade School London nearly 1 year ago – and are continuing the ethos and aims of the global coop by sharing our experience so far and helping others set up.

 

Self organised learning in libraries

Why might an enterprising library be interested in hosting and nurturing a Trade School? 

+ It offers a tangible way to surface and engage skills, talents, resources locally. There is currently a lot of interest in ‘asset mapping’ or ‘asset based approaches’ and Trade School offers a way not just to list and map, but to engage and connect.

+ The social exchange mechanism (barter) creates new richer connections and networks around learning. Because the exchange is non-monetary, the experience has a different quality, that is more personal and lasting.

+ It lowers barriers around teaching and learning through creating an informal social setting and novel learning experience, and through the barter mechanism allowing for non-monetary involvement.

+ This exchange also flattens hierarchies between the teacher and learners – who are all a group of people with value to bring to the class in different ways. We have seen that people who join a class to learn, often gain confidence and come back to teach themselves in a later season.

+ Trade School offers an opportunity to move from service delivery to co-production as it is not something that can be delivered, but something that only works if there is a group of co-founders, and lots of different people bring their knowledge and barter items.

 

Everyone has something to offer.

 Trade School starts with the premis that anyone can teach. We all know something that is of value to others, perhaps we just have not thought of our abilities in this way before. To test this out, we imagined we were starting a new Trade School – named after the Whitechapel Idea Store in which the Enterprising Libraries event was being held. We asked everyone to think about what they could teach, and what they might want in exchange. The results were the unique and inspiring list of classes you can see below. From our experience, you can ask any group of people and be constantly amazed both at the variety and depth of their collective knowledge, and at Trade School’s ability to offer an engaging and enjoyable way to share more of it.

For more about Trade School see www.tradeschool.coop and www.tradeschool.coop/london

Trade School in the UK is partnered by Social Spaces www.socialspaces.org

And we have also jointly developed the Pot Luck website to encourage social dining www.potluck.so

Lightbulb icon credit to www.thenounproject.com