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Gemma Copeland

Tag “cooperatives”

I went to the Futuress talk by Cooperativa de Disenio last week. They’re a feminist worker co-op from Argentina. They’ve been running for 11 years and have 12 members, all women. They do a mix of product, identity and audiovisual design work for communities, cooperatives and recovered factories.

It was very interesting to hear about how a different co-op is run. The way they spoke about their co-op felt so familiar: it’s not perfect, but “it fits us like a glove” — they can shape it however they like and put their values into practice.

The talk was entirely focused on how they work as a co-op, rather than their design work. They spent a fair bit of time explaining what being part of a co-op means, what the seven cooperative principles are, how they govern themselves.

This made me reflect on the talks I usually give — I realised that I try to cram way too much into the 30-45 minutes I have. I usually cover a bit about my own practice and how I got into this type of work, touching on Evening Class and Designers + Cultural Workers, and then onto Common Knowledge: who we are, what a co-op is, why we’re a co-op, the kind of work we do, our attitude towards technology and politics and a bunch of examples of our work. No wonder I’m always exhausted afterwards!

I think I need to split my talk out into a few separate ones, something like:

  • Exploring different collaborative forms: learning groups, unions, cooperatives
  • An introduction to worker cooperatives: what they are; how to set one up; how to make decisions
  • How digital technology can amplify grassroots politics
  • Community-led design practices

Community-led design practices is the one I’m most interested in but least certain about. Sonia and I developed a workshop centred around this for a LCC masters course back in 2021. It ended up feeling quite speculative because we weren’t actually working with communities directly, just thinking about how we might design the design process. It was a little too meta.

I’m really curious as to how you can involve diverse groups of people in the design process while still eventually producing something that does what they need and that most people involved are happy with. I think the main issue is that this takes time, so much more than we ever have in our projects.

I asked the people from Cooperativa de Disenio how they approach this, as they do quite a lot of work with other non-hierarchical groups and communities. They agreed that it can be difficult and slow. You have to meet people where they are, slow down to their pace, listen to their point of view and decentre yourself.

I agreed with all of this, but I still feel that there are missing pieces. Maybe that’s just because there is no one methodology that will suit every project — you have to develop new methods to suit each new situation.

There seems to be so much interest in worker co-ops for designers at the moment. In both this Futuress talk and my talk at FBAUL the other week, there were lots of questions from the audience on the practical details of starting and running a co-op like:

  • How can new graduates start or get involved with a co-op?
  • How do you make sure hierarchies don’t seep in?
  • How do you deal with problems?
  • What legal form should it take in Italy/in Portugal?
  • Is there anyone who gives accountancy advice to co-ops?

I would love to run a question and answer session exploring questions like this for people interested in starting worker co-ops.

I think the best way to do this would be to get a few design cooperatives from around the world involved, like Cooperativa de Disenio, Partner & Partners in the US and Commonin Australia. There are so many legal considerations that are specific to each country, so having co-ops from a range of countries there would help answer some of the specifics.

I think it would also be good to have multiple co-ops so we could compare different approaches. From 2020–21 I regularly met with six people from other co-ops working from Space4 (a coworking space and co-op incubator in north London). We discussed any challenges we were facing or ways that we wanted to improve our co-ops, gave each other advice and held each other accountable. I think we all got so much out of learning from each other and sharing our different approaches.

 — All flourishing is mutual

A few weeks ago we visited Cooperativa Integral Minga, a multisector co-op in Montemor-o-Novo, about an hour east from Lisbon in the Alentejo region.

The view across the valley in Montemor: lush trees, dry grass, bright blue sky and a gently flowing river.

They have around 100 members across four branches: agriculture, products, services and housing. These branches run as autonomous working groups using sociocracy. They also have a number of elected administrative roles that make up their board.

Anyone living in the area around Montemor can pitch an idea to join the group, as long as their practice is in accordance with Minga’s values: sustainability and degrowth. Once they join, they can run their company through the co-op rather than individually, sharing resources and lowering costs for everyone. In return, 5% of each invoice goes towards Minga.

A wooden bowl filled with brightly coloured yarn.

They have a small store in the centre of town where you can buy local and seasonal fruit and vegetables, groceries, ceramics and textiles from co-op members. The shop is a way of promoting locally sourced goods, fair trade and a circular economy. Everything is grown or made by hand, with natural materials and human energy.

A woven basket full of dried lavender.

On one of the shelves there are skeins of cream and brown yarn, produced by Suarda. Last year, two cooperators (Jorge and Telma) started the company, which is focused on encouraging fairer and more sustainable wool production from all angles: fair prices for producers, improved animal welfare, and a regenerative approach to environmental stewardship. It’s an attempt to create an entirely new value chain around wool and revive the national textile industry.

A wooden loom with a brown and cream patterned weaving on it.

Hanks of yarn wound around a wooden structure.

Around the corner from the store is the Espaço Integral, a coworking and event space which houses a communal library, seed swap and some wooden looms. Another cooperator (Teresa) weaves with Suarda wool there, sharing her knowledge with anyone who is interested in learning the craft.

A selection of publications on wool and traditional crafts.

The shelves of their communal library.

For me, the fascinating thing about Minga is how it weaves together so many strands of life: from food to housing to work to education to health. They share the same cooperative values, but operate at a whole different scale to a worker co-op. Rather than focus on one industry, it’s possible to work in collaboration with many other in order to address issues across and between sectors, with a philosophy of degrowth underpinning everything they do. The people involved have such a wide range of expertise, sharing knowledge across different sectors and different generations. They are deeply rooted in Montemor, slowly creating a commons from which everyone can benefit.

 — Hearts, minds, rhizomes & other worlds

Mobilising Hearts and Minds

I’m just about to start the Mobilising Hearts and Minds course initiated by Max Haiven and Sarah Stein Lubrano. We’ll be exploring the question “How can we change people’s minds and create the conditions where they not only support but join the movements for radical change we desperately need?”

I’ve been following Max’s work for a while and am in the middle of reading The Radical Imagination, so looking forward to a few months of guided study and reflection and conversation. I’m curious about how to learn from psychology / sociology / philosophy / critical theory and apply it to my design practice, given that a big chunk of my work is about motivating people to take political action and join movements.

Centre for Other Worlds

I’m really happy to share that I joined the Centre for Other Worlds, a research centre for art and design initiated by Lusófona University in Lisbon. It’s a distributed network of designers and researchers, all of whom I deeply admire. They also publish a journal edited by Silvio Lorusso.

We value design cultures, but we approach them without devotion. Instead of celebrating the power of design, we focus on the power structures that, willingly or not, design reproduces. For us, more than a solution, design itself is a problem and a challenge.

Rizoma Cooperativa

I’ve also joined a local cooperative, Rizoma. It’s similar to Minga, which I wrote about previously, in that it’s a multi-sector cooperative with five integrated strands: consumers, services, culture, agriculture and housing. It’s based in Arroios with a grocery store, cafe and terrace at ground level, a co-working space upstairs and a cultural space downstairs. They also have two fledgling sector groups focused on habitation (campaigning against the housing crisis and setting up cooperative housing) and agriculture.

 — Transformative Work as Livelihood

In December I went to the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano to teach a seminar on Transformative Work as Livelihood for the Eco-Social Design masters students. Over three days, we explored potential pathways available to socially and politically engaged designers, how to balance financial stability with meaningful work, and feminist strategies that ensure that transformative practices remain open to many and viable in the long-term.

Cover slide from my presentation which reads "Transformative Work as Livelihood".

Rather than focusing on strategies for individual success, we discussed and imagined new models for working together based on solidarity and care. To do this, we gathered a wide range of practices and tools that challenge the dominant narratives of design and work, exploring the multitude of alternative social and economic approaches that already exist in the here and now.

The seminar cycled between individual and collective exercises: brainstorming, reading, self-reflection and building a toolkit. My goal was to make the seminar really practical, full of useful tools that they could easily apply in their lives, and signposting them towards a broad range of further resources and readings that I’ve found useful in my practice. I wanted to be both critical of our current capitalist reality while also pointing to hopeful possibilities and new pathways. I’ve collected the slides and all the resources into this Arena channel.

I learned so much throughout this process. Below is an overview of what we did, my reflections on how it went and the changes I’d like to make if/when I run this seminar again. I’m documenting this (in probably too much depth) for my own benefit, but if it’s useful for others to read then that’s great too!

Students in the classroom.

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