 Good afternoon and welcome to this high webinar, Freelancers Unite, The Power of Courts and Joint Working. I'm glad that you can join us this afternoon. I'm just going to do a short introduction and then I'll hand over to my colleagues, Asia and our speakers. So my name is Petra Morris. I work at Co-operatives UK with the National Membership Organization that represents the corporatives across the UK. We're here to promote, develop and unite cooperatives and we represent about 7,000 different cooperatives in all shapes and sizes in the economy. So this high webinar is part of a series of high webinars we're currently delivering. We've delivered some before Christmas and they're available online as recorded webinars and we're doing some more over the next few weeks. So if you want to learn more about cooperatives and different types of cooperatives, do check them out. The reason we're running these webinars is that we want to promote cooperatives and we have support programmes that will help start new cooperatives, including the high business support programme, which is delivered by Co-operatives UK in partnership with our member of the Co-operative Bank. We've been delighted to work with the Co-operative Bank over the last six years and have supported lots of cooperatives over that time. And I will talk a little bit more at the end of this webinar about what support is available and we'll also contact you. So this webinar is being recorded. So it will be made available and we'll go online after this session. There's no video or audio for participants. If you do want to ask any questions, please use the chat box and put your questions in there. We'll try to respond as we go through the webinar or we may have some time at the end of the webinar to pick up any specific questions that you have. So without further to do, I'm delighted to introduce our first speaker. I'm going to hand over to Asia. Asia Hatt works at Chapel Street Studio. She's fairly new to the Co-operative movement and she'll tell you a little bit more about cooperatives and why they're a good option for freelancers and self-employed and workers. And that's enough for me and hope you enjoyed the webinar. And as I say, do use the chat box to post any questions. Thank you. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Freelancers Unite webinar. So today we're going to be talking about why it's advantageous for freelancers and sole traders like many of us to be part of a cooperative or create your own cooperative. So today we're going to be hearing from different speakers or I will be representing Chapel Street Studio and I work there as an agency lead. So I'll elaborate on that a little bit further. And then we have Stephen Flower, who is the co-founder of Open Data Services Cooperative. We have John Gibson, who is the director of that note production. I hope I've said that correctly. And then finally Petra is going to be talking about what support is available for the Hive to start a co-op. And lastly, we will reserve some time if you want to run over to have some questions from yourself. So what are co-ops? Like yourself, I'm fairly new as Petra mentioned to the co-op movement. I've only just joined in August and prior to this I always thought that co-op was just a bank or a shop at the end of the street. And I thought okay, you know, it's funny because they always seem like such a serious business. And I wonder how did they operate, what did they do, but that was all that I knew about it. Until I joined Chapel Street when I found out it's much bigger than that and what it stands for is significant and is so much more than I had anticipated. So again, a co-op is a business organization that is controlled by its member who have a vested interest within the business and the success of their business. So again, this varies from people who are potentially customers of the business, employees, residents or suppliers. Essentially, every single co-op within the world adheres to certain cooperative principles and values. But before we go on to the cooperative values and principles, I'm just going to play a short video that explains it extremely well as to what a co-op is. Just bear with me. Ownership matters. It gives people a say in the things they care about. Did you know if you are a member of a co-op, you are also one of its owners? Originally founded by a group of working class people who were fed up of having to buy poor quality food, co-ops are just as relevant today. They are found in every sector, from high street retailers to farmer controlled businesses, cooperative pubs and credit unions. Their tech platforms, they deliver social care. And they're making a huge difference to people, workers and communities across the UK and the world every single day. From the outside, co-ops look like any other business. But inside, they are very different. They are owned and controlled together by the people that are closest to the business. Employees, customers, residents, suppliers, not distant shareholders. These people, the members, have an equal say in how the business is run. And they even decide what to do with the profits and co-operatives work. There are thousands of different co-ops in the UK and over 3 million worldwide. Some of our most famous brands come from co-operatives. From Champagne and Parmesan to Lurpak Butter and Bird's IPs. There are even fan owned football clubs. Co-ops contribute billions of pounds each year to the UK economy and boost UK productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship. And they work for the millions of members who together own the UK's co-ops. Co-operatives give people, in fact, all of us, more control over the things that matter. Because ownership matters. Stephen, you've got your hand up. Did you have a question? Okay. Great. Just checking. So, like I mentioned, every single co-op in the world operates on these core values and principles. So I'm just going to delve a little bit further in the next slide. So again, all the co-ops are owned and controlled by its members. And essentially, their whole purpose is to benefit its members to ensure that people who are actually involved within the business benefit from it. So this involves its customers, its workers, suppliers and the wider community around it. It is a very democratic way of running your business. So every single member has their own stay and contributes their ideas on how the profits can be used for the business. Every single member contributes financially in some way, sort of form. So again, either purchasing products, either working for the co-op, or again identifying how the profits are going to be spent. The co-op, again, is an independent business and is controlled by its member. It offers education and training to everybody involved. So many of us struggle to find that support even in our businesses. So when you're part of a co-op, you get those opportunities to develop yourself and to develop what cooperatives actually do and how they benefit you and other businesses. One of the other things that cooperatives are fantastic is that they like to not only help to improve themselves, but support other co-ops as well. And finally, a co-op supports the community that it works with. So not only are you helping to improve yourself and the members within your own co-op, but the community that is around you and around your business. So a lot of people, when they think about co-ops, think that this is probably a business that's got a lot of social aims but financially, does this make sense? Why should I opt to be a business within who adopts a co-op model? Do I necessarily think this is going to be successful? So during the pandemic, we've all suffered. Myself as a small business, prior to the pandemic, business was doing well and when the pandemic hit, it was quiet. And during this time, you are wondering whether or not you're going to make it or whether or not you're going to be successful or not. And as I became part of Chapel Tree Studio, it helped me become a more stronger person within my business and to be able to offer what I have with a wider section of other businesses. So just some facts around this is that co-ops are four times more likely to seize trading. So less likely to seize trading, sorry, apologies. So for example, any other business within this difficult time has actually stopped trading. But if you're part of a co-op, you're going to be four times more successful, which is incredible. 68% of co-ops that had growth ambitions before the pandemic, 73% of those are still have the same ambitions. So 15% have actually grown from those clouds that they had for their co-ops actually increased. 92% of co-ops have actually identified clear benefits of being part of the co-op and it's helped them to deal more effectively within the pandemic as well. And then 2020, the cooperative economy grew by over one billion, but it's toned over to 39.7 billion, which is incredible. Again, within the pandemic, a lot of the co-ops said that they really benefited from being part of this model purely because they had a strong and loyal membership and also people within the pandemic, but really passionate about supporting local businesses and independent businesses during this difficult time. Hello, I'm just going to be talking a little bit about Chapel Street Studio. So Chapel Street Studio came together when a group of creative individuals said, okay, we've got some fantastic skills. How is it that we can work together to make sure that we are growing our business? And the group came together in 2014 and essentially they were passionate about sharing their skills, their knowledge and their contacts and using that to grow their businesses and creating more opportunities just for themselves but for other people like them within the Bradford City area. We chose to obviously adopt the cooperative model, a cooperative consortium model because this allowed us to all have our independent identities but also be able to work together as a co-op and offer our services within under the agency banner. So here's some pictures that we have this kind of collaborating. This is our Chapel Street Connect event that we hope we actually run every single month where all the different associates and members sort of come together, share ideas, give some feedback on how we're running things and how we can potentially improve things. So that helps us then to develop our strategies and our processes moving forward. So you might be wondering how does it actually work and how do we come together? So here's a little kind of diagram to show all the different businesses, some of the different businesses that are part of Chapel Street Studio. So my business is called an Osphia Digital Marketing Consultancy. So what I do is obviously provide social media, digital marketing, website design services, but being part of Chapel Street Studio, it's allowed me to be able to, if I need a graphic designer who is very specialist in creating graphics for the websites or creating social media posts rather than outsourcing it to anybody else, I know I've got reliable people within the network who I can connect with, who can help me with certain projects. Not just that, but via Chapel Street Studio, we can all work together and pool our resources together to go for big contracts, big projects because we have such a specialist group of people, which is incredible. Caroline is a very accomplished photographer. Again, she is working on the Born in Bradford project. Again, having someone like her within the community is great. She brings her own set of skills and then she can kind of share those skills on any given new project that we have with clients. We then have Claudia, who's the co-founder of the agency and how do they provide printing services. So we have all these amazing people within Chapel Street who can then break down any given project that we've got coming in. So here I'm just going to talk a tiny bit about the different projects that we have worked on. So we worked with the British Science Association. So British Science Association ran 203 events in Bradford. So they needed somebody to create their marketing campaigns to do printing for them, to do distribution for them, to ensure that we are marketing their event within the Bradford region. Now, had they not worked with ourselves, they would have had to employ multiple different agencies to run a point on all those different things and that's what they said to us. So this is incredible. We cannot believe that you guys exist and we were able to come to just one company and you were able to do every single thing for them. And we were only able to offer that purely because we all pulled together and shared our expertise. They only had to liaise with one point of contact to deliver that. And then we also worked with the Wild Festival at the South Vine Centre. And again, this was another fantastic project for us. This was for women of the World Festival that we ran. And again, we did a number of things for them such as social media marketing, marketing strategy, press NPR, print design, contract publishing, photography, all that with just being part of our agency. So again, we're able to deliver all that because we all pulled together and worked together. So it's been incredible. So Chapel Street Studio, why did it make sense? Why did it make sense for us to be a co-op? At the end of the day, we want to be able to work together with people who are similar to us, who have the same passions, who've got the same ideas. But again, we want to make sure that we are sharing those opportunities and making ourselves a lot stronger in the process. We also wanted to, you know, as creators, as you know, we're very precious of our work, right? We want credit, we want to make sure that we hold on to what we do. So this allowed us to have our own independence but also to be able to work under the wider umbrella. We also wanted to be one of those co-ops that was able to deliver the first workspace that was offered for all creators within the Bradford region. We wanted to stay true to Bradford because that's where we're from. And I know that a lot of people probably forget about Bradford, but it's an amazing space. And, you know, if you're ever around, please do come check us out. And this allowed us to find people who are like-minded, have somewhere where they can come together and again give legitimacy to what we want to do, which is good help for the people. But not just that, that allowed us in business sense to access grants and loan investments for social enterprises as well. And again, I cannot stress this enough how important it is to have that wider support network and movement because when you're an independent small business or a freelancer or a solopreneur, that's something that you really struggle with because, you know, you're in isolation. You're away from everybody else. You don't have somebody who you can share and bounce idea with. With the co-op, you have friends, you have co-workers who you can collaborate and share that with. And how is it that we benefit from being part of the co-op? Like I said, prior to me joining Chapel Street, I'm someone who loves working in a team. I'm somebody who thrives off that conversation and that banter. I've always previously worked for the people. So starting my own thing, it's quite daunting and scary. And you think, oh gosh, where do I start? Who do I go to for advice? And being part of Chapel Street allowed me to do that. To come together with people who had similar ideals of myself who wanted to be quite supportive and who wanted to make a difference. And again, it allowed us to be part of something bigger, build something a bit more meaningful. And most importantly, supporting one other and creating or being part of projects that are mutually beneficial not just for the agency, but for all the different freelancers who are part of the agency. So it's incredible, really. I cannot stress this enough. Again, just to sort of circle back is this is us at ChapelStreetStudio.co-op. That's where we can find us. We're always that happy as you can see when we're working on our laptops. So that's like a constant look, but 100% I would recommend for you to think about this model as a small business and as a freelancer. So on that note, I'm going to pass on to Stephen. Stephen is going to be talking about open data services and his cooperative and how they're doing things. Thank you, Aisha. Thank you, that was really helpful, really interesting. I'm going to share my slides. Okay, now I will. Here we go. The inevitable bit where I'm trying to slide the shares whilst talking. It's impossible, isn't it? Here we go. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Stephen Flower. I'm a co-founder of Open Data Services Cooperative. I'm going to talk a little bit about our story from a group of freelancers to the cooperative that we are now. And I think it does share and build on some of the really positive points that Aisha talked about with ChapelStreetStudio as well. So about us, well, we are an organization and we help people publish and use this thing called Open Data. So it's open data is a thing that's happened for many years now, really. And we're really specialist as the name says on the tin, Open Data Services. We help people and people are often in organizations, either release data openly for various reasons or then use that data for various reasons. And there we are at Salford Lads Club and one of our many in-person meetings that we've had as a cooperative. We were formed in 2015. It's four people and we formed a company, a workers cooperative. And we've grown to, I think it's 23, forgive me. We have a new person starting today. I hope she's on this webinar to learn about what we do. So we've grown steadily but surely over that time and everybody that joins the cooperative is a member of staff and then after a short probation period they become an owner member of the organization as well. We've always worked from home. I just added that as we were talking in the preamble of this one. We've always worked from home. We spread across the country from Scotland down to London from across, from across, etc. And we have one colleague who escaped and he's in New Zealand and he still owns the company and he's the night shift. So he does the magic work overnight, which is really helpful. So we're 23 people in the company. And as I said before, most of us were freelancers or contractors before joining this co-op. But increasingly people are joining us from academia from other organizations. And we find it really interesting when we recruit people the value of talking about us as a cooperative and why people want to join us to do the work that we do would also want to be part of this, this, this joint venture. So a lot of us were freelancers but increasingly a number of us are from other backgrounds. So what do we do? We work on lots of initiatives often with the word open in whether it's about ownership of companies or contracts that go to contracts of work that come from government or international aid and humanitarian responses or even where the grants go from national lottery and other organizations. And we work on many initiatives to make sure there's transparency about this focus, this point. And we do the technical often boring work behind that to make the data real and such things. And behind or around these initiatives we work with lots of organizations. Here's just a snapshot from today. World Health Organization you've probably heard of in the World Bank. Gavi who are very involved in the COVAX response at the moment, we're working with them. And Equal Care Cooperative is a local, to Manchester where I'm based, a local-ish cooperative that we're working with on data and transparency as well. So we have a lot of clients and lots of initiatives that we work on. And what are we? Who are we? So those people, those nice pictures I've shown you. We're very specialist people. We work, we have very particular skills that we combine together. We could be software developers or system analysts, data policy or business analysts or documentation writers and such things. So really skilled, somewhat niche skills that we share and have. And we bring those together as the cooperative. But that's what we are and what we do. And the real value of what we do though is that we work as teams. So for example, the open data project called 360 Giving as a tool called Grants Now where you can find all that data on who's given a grant to who. I think actually it might be useful for those looking for grants for example. But what we do, our team, we make the data standardised. We work with the National Lottery and others to publish that data. And then we, some of our team provide the tool to search the data. So we get great value in our own skills but in our joint enterprises as an organisation to make these things happen. I think a context to this I think is really important. I mentioned that a lot of us were freelancers and such. And in this world that we work in, those organisations are really set up and really familiar with the idea of consultants or contractors. And play the violins a little bit here. This can be fragmented and lonely existence by which I mean, oftentimes you find yourself working on this contract, going on to the next contract and there might be really interesting pieces of work but you're not there for the longevity might be gone or the collaboration is there. So I will be clear, some of this is quite rewarding and arguably lucrative in some senses but that real ownership of the work is lost when you're in this world of contracting and consultancy. So that's the world we've operated in and so the reason we, one of the driving reasons that we started the cooperative was to build teams as I've mentioned but also pull skills and get some resilience and to get away from the boom boss to the cycle of contract to contract and try and build some long-term sustainability and really vitally build an organisation that we own and that we could be proud of. I think this is the best photo that I've got so we'll just dwell on this one for a bit more. But yeah, pulling skills, building resilience, this is what it was all about. It wasn't just about how many more contracts could we get because we were all working already. So what happens then is really interesting. So as I mentioned, we've been going for six years. This is who we are as I explained before. We're highly skilled people. We do all these things. But what happens when these highly skilled people running a co-op, there's suddenly a load of other things to do and those other things, we always jointly share and run and do and enjoy and debate and discuss as well. So whether it's running payroll or sorting out contracts, having staff welfare policies, building planning, worrying about capacity. We suddenly got all these things that we're jointly sharing and that I think it's really, really great. It's really interesting. It's a big jigsaw puzzle that we're putting together. But I really enjoy this idea that we've got our skills that we're really valuable but the other skills that we're developing by running the co-op are becoming just as useful and just as helpful to us as an organization. So that's the things that we're doing to run the organization that we are. And lastly, I just wanted to leave you with really some thoughts about so what are we learning from being a co-operative? What are the things over the last six years as a worker-owned co-operative have we learned? And for me, there are three key themes for our co-operative. Three things. I can't say that. Three key themes that come out of this. First of all, it's really a theme of shared understandings. So it's quite straightforward logistically to form a co-operative, to form a business and say you're a co-operative and Co-op UK can help you with that. But the challenge, the theme to understand each other and to have a shared understanding is a real long-term process. And we really enjoy that and relish that about trying to see differences and talk and discuss and find ways that we can not by consensus but by other ways to agree to understand where we're going and what we're trying to do. And that's a really invigorating part of a co-op that we're no longer a disparate freelancers but we're jointly in this together. I think it's really great. Another theme that is really key for our co-operative is we're reflecting peoples, the owners, the needs. So as I mentioned, there's no external shareholders. There's nobody else trying to determine what we do. We're user-led. We're here to really reflect the needs of the people that own the business. And again, that's really important. That's really helpful. And it builds on the shared understandings that we're developing and have developed. And lastly and crucially, it's about stability and sustainability. I mentioned we formed an organization to jointly pull our skills but we've been going for six years. We're in a very healthy position to recruit new people. And that's both from the quality of the work that we do but also this foundation of understanding each other, reflecting each other's needs. So that I do think leads to and can lead to real stability and sustainability. Of course, I could talk endlessly about all the things that we do specifically around these, whether we have collective policies that we have, for example, parental leave policy we developed. We will pay the same. We have equal pay. We have flexible working patterns to suit people. And we all have permanent contracts. Nobody's on a short-term contract with us. We're all here for the same amount of time. I could talk about all these other things and many others but for me, those three pillars are really important as the air comes for the co-op. So that's about us and what we do and why it was really vital to form an organization that we own. And I think the last thing to leave you with is that we've also got six years of team photos. Some of them as you've seen really bad. This is the worst one. And I don't know if you can see it on the screen share. I have no idea who that person in this photo is at the back. That person isn't part of the co-op but maybe one day they will be. So that's about us and what we do and I look forward to getting questions and by all means, concepts for me directly and if you've got any more questions specifically about the nature of our organization or how we set up such. Thank you. I'll stop sharing. There we go. Thank you, Stephen. That was really interesting. I loved how you shared those different concepts and how you guys came together. That's brilliant. But I also love what you do and the idea of stability. I think a lot of the time people think that there isn't stability within the co-ops and I think that's brilliant how you share. Everybody's on a permanent contract. We're doing really well and it's a very niche thing that you do, right? It is a niche thing that we do and we could have all done this work individually as I said before as freelancers contractors but we do really get value out of being this joint organization that we share and as I was saying before it's really interesting to talk to the World Bank or the World Health Organization about us as a co-op and in that context and I think that's really helpful and really invigorating to do too. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm going to hand over to the man here who's got the most cool-sounding co-operative name which is John Gibson from Feltnote Note Productions. Over to you, John. Thanks very much. So I'm John Gibson I'm one of the directors of Feltnote Productions and I'm just going to talk you through our experience and our journey. So this is what I'm going to talk you through. So who are we, who are Feltnote? Why do we exist? What do we do? Why we're a co-op? What the Hive did for us and what we found as being the benefits of working together. So first of all, Feltnote Productions we are a not-for-profit co-operative of comedians from the northeast of England and we're collaborating to create more comedy in the area. We're also actually a community interest company so that means we've got a commitment to the community as well and I'm only disappointed that my presentation isn't as humorous as Stephen's but being a set of comedians but never mind we'll talk you through it. So why do we exist? Well we were created by COVID in 2020 not directly but what happened was that COVID shut down all the venues and if there's no venues there can't be any comedy. So a group of us got together and said okay what are we going to do about this and what we decided to do was put on some online comedy events. So we started selling tickets for these and they were really successful and we thought you know what we could by pooling our skills we could create something that addresses some of the other issues in the northeast comedy scene not just the immediate problem of COVID. So that brings us on to more on why we exist. So some of the things that we identified were that there's very little comedy in the northeast. It's very light on comedy and what that means is if you're a comedian in the northeast excuse me you have to travel to further field and that means you incur more travel expenses or overnight stay expenses and what it means for new acts is it's difficult to come through because there's not enough comedy going on to basically hone your skills and learn how to do this. For audiences it means there's fewer events where people don't have access to comedy and there's that lack of community engagement with comedy because of the shortage and overall what that means is the northeast is just not a great place for comedy or comedians and so we thought we'd tackle all this so what is it that we actually do? So this is what we do there are four main strands to what we do so we do comedy, we do outreach and we do things for our members so this is the kind of thing we do so on comedy we do what you'd expect we put on gigs and we put on gigs that are local to the northeast we do it with local comedians our cooperative is local comedians so we have a policy of only using local comedians and we do it in more venues than currently was the case and we get out to more communities we've got a lot of working class rural disadvantaged communities in the northeast so we get out to those guys and bring comedy to further a field we've also launched a video on demand service that we very cleverly called Netflix which has no relation to it's more prominent cousin to share the content of the comedy production of northeast comedians we also do outreach so we do community workshops to bring comedy into the community give people experience of to write and perform comedy and we provide comedians for charity events so that they don't have to pay money to have access to comedians to come along and generate money and we also celebrate the heritage of the northeast so the northeast has a proud heritage of comedy and we promote that through our social media we've been commissioned by northeast sorry tiny we're archives and museums to produce a series of podcasts so we're doing that and we also do talks on comedy in the northeast and for our members well we're generating more well-paying work which means less travel for them we also are putting on new act nights so that new people coming through have a chance to hone their skills and we're actually specifically developing new comedians as well by giving them comedy training and their first paid work and we also provide services professional headshots venues, rehearsal spaces and training and help with PR as well so that's what we do so why did we choose to be a cooperative right at the start these are the kind of things that we knew we want to do we knew we want to work together to transform the northeast comedy scene we knew we want to provide outreach into communities and deliver that wider social impact we knew we want to do it using local talent and develop more local talent and we knew we wanted it to be owned by comedians themselves to generate that buy-in and for it to be based on membership fees a sure commitment and we wanted it absolutely not to be about profit we didn't want it to be about directors getting rich hence why we went down the community interest company route as well as being a co-op so what I've done for the purposes of this which we didn't do at the time but it was interesting exercise I just looked at the cooperative values and the cooperative principles I'm not going to talk you through them because some of them you've already been through and what I've done is just take in what we originally intended to do and map that onto the co-op values and principles and what we found is that we have an amazing amount of overlap between what we want to and how co-ops operate so all of the values are things that we actually want to embody and that was fantastic the co-op principles as you can see the majority of those have absolute one relationship with what we want to do the only two that are remaining on there are the education and training to develop the co-op and co-op works and supports other co-ops they weren't something we specifically do but you can see they are part they are absolutely well within the bounds of our approach and our mindset so there was a huge amount of overlap with what co-ops stand for and so that's why we went down the co-op route and to do that we went via the hive and so the hive was extremely helpful in getting us the support we needed so one of the first things we needed was support and understanding how to complete financial forecast as I mentioned we're fairly new so we just completed our first year of trading so back when we were starting up we really needed some help on completing these financial forecasts and the hive got us that support so we knew what to do and how to set things out they also provided support on how to articulate and measure our social impact as I mentioned we're also a community interest company so that was something that we really struggled with and then lastly they provided us the support and actually becoming a co-operative and helped us through that journey to make sure that we became a co-op so that's why and what benefits have we found well specifically for us we found that we share special skills so we happened to have a set of really good skills within the comedy community we got IT specialists we got people who are experts in PR who can do press releases I've got project management experience and there's other people with video and sound production experience as well and what it means is we created a northeast comedy brand so as opposed to just a set of individuals we now have a brand we can stand behind and so far we've got over almost 4,000 followers across our social media accounts and we're getting absolutely great coverage on radio and print and online media which is fantastic for the events that we put on and we're able to support each other there's a lot of volunteering going on at the moment as I said we're still fairly new and volunteers also help with not just running the organisation but help with gigs and the social media accounts and we've trained other members in the skills that they've got and what we're finding now is that our members are pointing people towards Feltnout if they're contacted for a potential new piece of work they're saying well actually just go straight to Feltnout and we're getting bigger contracts in the summer we programmed the comedy tent for a music festival in Cumbria and we as I said have been commissioned by TinyWe Archives to create a series of podcasts these are things that wouldn't have happened previously without working together and it's opened up brand new opportunities so we've opened up a weekend comedy club in the area we've got lots of new comedy venues where there wasn't comedy previously we started our community outreach sessions doing workshops we sold 2,700 tickets and we've generated £56,000 worth of work directly given to comedians in our first year so we're really pleased with that we're really pleased with how the co-op mechanism has allowed us to come together and generate that so that's what we found in relation to us specifics but if we look at what it means more generically and hopefully these are the things that people can benefit from rather than just talk about us as an individual organisation we found that we were generating more work for members so as a co-operative we could generate more work than individual people which benefits everybody we had more clout working together it becomes an organisation that can actually do things that you couldn't do individually it's difficult to define clout but we definitely have more of it we are a stronger brand so rather than a lot of individuals people can really get behind the felt-out brand in the north-east and understand that felt-out means comedy for the north-east and it's given us much better PR people can get their heads around or there's a co-operative of comedians the media can get their heads around the fact that there's a co-operative working together to put on events and that generates much better PR and media coverage than just an individual doing something so there's power in that working together as well from a media point of view and we find that we have a collective support we're supporting each other we support each other and run the business but we support each other with skills and basically work in much more closely together than would ever have been the case if we'd just been this fragmented bunch of individuals and that is my presentation thank you very much thank you so much I love the way how you broke it down broke down what you did, how you were formed in line with the co-operative principles that was fantastic and it's amazing you're very very new normally when people think about the pandemic it's usually like oh my god it's come out of nowhere and it's affected my business but you obviously found an opportunity and pulled together all these amazing people I must say John I was expecting a joke I was expecting you to tell something that's going to be killer and we're just here laughing and we have you here and no jokes it was straight down the line serious and I'm sorry I saw Steven being so relaxed I thought I've got to set the wrong mood here but never mind it's done now we are at least we're the most positive thing to come out of the pandemic let's just take that away for sure 100% and I love that you found this particular niche and you found that there was clearly a need and that's how you guys were formed so that's amazing we felt the same here in Bradford as you know with Bradford we kind of get forgotten because they're so close to Leeds and everybody's like it's all about Leeds but we are pretty special we're pretty important people here in Bradford so we felt like there was a space here to help the creatives within Bradford they had to go to Leeds or Manchester all the big shiny cities to get that support and we thought ok we want to have a space where creatives within Bradford can come together and I'm so pleased that all our members have that connection to Bradford and I think that kind of keeps us all together really like you with all your comedians so yeah that's amazing I'm not going to comment anymore because I don't want to put my foot in it I've already not been funny enough so I don't want to I don't want to compound it Sorry I apologise I'm putting undue stress on you it's supposed to be a relaxing web and I apologise so on that note I'll head over to the lovely Petra so she can give some more information about how we can get support from the hive and how creative amazing people just like ourselves can decide that this is the way that they want to move forward with their businesses over to you Petra Thanks Aisha I hope everyone online has been inspired as I have been by those incredible co-operatives I think what we've seen is lots of individuals coming together with expertise and skills and particularly niche skills and that the co-operative has really given them the model and the opportunity to work more collaboratively and to improve their businesses some great stories some very varied stories and I've been really inspired and really a great opportunity to be on this call and I thank you everyone for joining me on that I just wanted to check whether there was any more questions in the chat there were a couple that I think were responded to in the chat but just to pick up on those I think there was a couple of questions from Naomi I think she was particularly asking Aisha really about how the co-operative works in the sense that obviously there are individuals who have their own businesses but they're also part of the co-operative and I suppose essentially how does the co-operative make its money and how do they take money out of the business I don't know if you want to say anything more about that Aisha I know you responded in the chat but it might be interesting to other people as well around that Absolutely so how it works is I think Naomi asked a question first of all is are we all private businesses do we have our own legal structure that's absolutely correct I myself am a sole trader and we have limited companies who are independent freelancers who are part of the consortium of the Chapel Street studio so the other question I think Naomi asked was about membership so in terms of membership we're actually not paying any fees how we all contribute is with our time so we are either volunteering our time or selling our services through the agency so being part of the co-op now how it works is for example we've got a contract that's come through and that is something that we feel like we can deliver at the Chapel Street studio put a proposal together go for that we will connect with the team within Chapel Street studio to see how many people would be interested in taking part of that who's got the time and capacity we put the proposal together once we win that proposal then obviously Chapel Street studio will have a bit of a cut of that for managing the project manager inside of things and then all the other freelancers and small businesses will get paid for their services so essentially you dictate what your rates are and then the co-operative kind of puts that proposal together and then you bid for certain opportunities and what's fantastic is that I was sharing this with the panellists prior to the webinar starting is we've currently got a project with the NHS if you get a chance to definitely check it out it's Healthy Minds in Bradford and again currently we are leading on mental health here in Bradford for putting together all these different services within the region and we've created the Bryan Identity for that, the website all that is done by Chapel Street studio being part of Chapel Street studio I've been able to be part of the project as well in a small capacity and just as an independent small business who is just starting and very new going for those bigger opportunities can be a bit daunting, can be a bit scary but being part of the co-op you know right okay if there is certain gaps I know that can count on somebody those kind of expert specialists we can ask them to come on to this project and share their knowledge we have a strong team together That's great, that's really helpful and I think it just demonstrates how flexible the co-operative model is that it allows different ways of working but still adhering to those general values and principles and ways of collaborating you've got your hand up Steve do you want to come in on that as well? Yeah just to briefly explain our route we were four freelancers that came together and rather than create another organisation building in our organisations we just formed a company and we were the four directors of that company and we changed our articles of association to become a co-operative the model articles available from Co-Ops UK are really helpful and so everybody that joined since becomes another director of the company and has the same one share and we had a very interesting conversation and we started about pay and how we get money out and we work in data and we try to make formulas about all if I worked this many hours and then the end we just said let's all just be paid the same so we have flat equal pay because it was the easiest decision to make and we've kept that in the six years since so everybody's paid the same relative to their FT within our organisation That's great, thanks Stephen I think there were some questions there about legal forms and there isn't time in this webinar to touch on legal forms but I am doing a webinar in a couple of weeks time and we will be covering legal forms a little bit more in that one so check out our website to attend that one but generally you can be any legal form and still be a co-operative it's not the legal form that defines you as a co-operative it's how you kind of demonstrate that you meet the values and principles and how you're owned by the members and how you share your profits and everything else but we haven't got time to touch on that now I think there were also some questions generally about how you kind of meet each other and informed each other and found each other and obviously I guess there's different ways and there's usually some kind of community before you start these things but as I think as Stephen said in the chat he promotes and recruits much in the way as any other company might do in that respect but I guess having that kind of collaboration to support from your community allows you to reach out maybe in better ways than you could as a normal company so we're kind of running out of time so I'm going to I'm just going to check if there's any more quick questions that I can give a quick answer to or our speakers can but it's too difficult to go into all the legal sides but do check out we've got a recorded webinar as well on the website that covers legal forms and Corporate is UK and the Hive can support you with that so I'm just going to share this final slide hopefully this will work everyone else did so brilliantly so don't let this slide down um so we won't see that so this is just a final slide to say that if you do want to get support we have the Hive Business Support Programme it's our national programme delivered in partnership with the Co-operative Bank and delivered by Co-operatives UK so anyone who's thinking of starting a co-operative you can apply online we're open all the time for applications and we have monthly panels also on that website you'll find other funded programmes that we support co-operatives and existing co-operatives not just Newstart and we also have some great resources on the website that help you think about starting your business a step by step guide that takes you through business formation and legal and finance and everything else so do head to that page for more information and resources and to get support so I hope a final thank you to Asia and all our speakers Steven and John for joining us today it's been a great session and I hope you've learnt lots of things I think I'm finishing ahead of time here so sorry about that so yeah if there is a last question I'll take it but I think hopefully what you've seen from this session is that the co-operative model works in all sectors in all kinds of ways it's really flexible and it's essentially there to meet the needs of those that care most about the co-operative and the users and the people and the community they work in and we've shown that we're much more resilient as a model particularly during these last couple of years and that's been demonstrated again and again by the co-op model and the ways that we work so thanks very much for joining us I'm just going to stop sharing that slide and just check if anybody else wanted to say anything else or if there were any last minute questions checking the chat and there are links in the chat as well if you want to check those out and just to confirm again that this webinar has been recorded it will be sent out to everyone that's registered and it will be put online as well so if you did miss the beginning if you joined a bit later you'll be out to see it from the beginning so I think we're on time we're ready to finish Is there anything else you want to add or anyone else? I think thank you so much everyone that was fantastic and thank you for keeping in touch with the rest of the guys Thanks very much then and we'll finish there