 Well, hello everyone. So thank you so much for coming. This webinar is called co-ops giving young people a fairer future. And so I've been invited by co-ops UK to run this webinar. It's one of a series of webinars being offered by The Hive. The Hive is a business support program for co-ops, but we're going to hear a lot about co-ops today, as well as the ways in which people who want to can try and start a new co-op. So just as a reminder, we're going to be, I think we started recording this already, so if you don't want to be on camera, then switch the camera off. But if not, I'm really excited to be here. Okay, I'm going to get started then. So hi everyone, my name is Sim or Simen Madiwala. I use she her pronouns. And I live in Brighton. I live in a housing co-op in Brighton and as we'll come on to later, I live with Connie over here, who is another speaker. And so I got started in co-ops through a student housing co-op, which I helped set up nearly four years ago now, also in Brighton. That was sort of my route into co-ops and is partly why I'm quite so enthusiastic about them. So I'm just going to hand over to the speakers one by one to introduce themselves. First up, we've got Lucy. Hi everyone. I'm Lucy. I'm from, in fact, Digital Cooperative. I also work with some other tech co-ops. We're a digital co-op, so we, simple answers that we make apps and websites, but we kind of work with clients on lots of digital problems and try and help them find solutions. And I mostly work now doing kind of client liaison and project management and design work. Great. Thank you, Lucy. Look forward to talking to you. Connie. Hi, I'm Connie. I use she her pronouns and I live in out-of-town housing cooperative in Brighton with Sim. Yes, coming to us all the way from downstairs. And last but not least, we've got Tamsin. Yeah, I'm Tamsin. I also use she her pronouns and I'm from the Brighton Cooperative Association and which is comprised of Brighton Roses, which is a co-working space and a cafe and has those meeting rooms. And also Chapel Street Studio, which is a creative agency for loads of different creatives in Brighton to kind of work together on projects. Yeah, we're a community-owned business. And so, yeah, really excited to be here and to be talking to you, lovely people. That's really great. Thank you. And yeah, I recognize the name Chapel Street Studio because I realised that we work with them. So I'm part of the thing called the Young Corporators Network. And we work with them to help they've been helping us make our website and stuff. It's a lot more than just that. But okay, so the format of this is going to be that we're going to have a Q&A format. So I'm going to ask each of the speaker's questions one by one. We'll go from Lucy to then Connie to then Tamsin, all of whom come from quite different backgrounds and different co-ops, also different parts of the country. And so we're going to hear a bit from each of them about what they do, what their co-op does and what co-ops really look like for them. And at the end we'll have sort of hopefully 10, 15 minutes set aside for Q&A from the audience. So that's for all of you. And if you have questions as and when they come, they'll come up, see if you can pop them in the chat. And if I miss them, then either Leila or Petro, if you're here from co-ops UK, will be able to flag them up with me. But if we're already, I think that's all the housekeeping out of the way, should we get started with you, Lucy? Hi, Lucy. I know I got to catch up with you a little bit just before this started, but do you want to tell us where you are at the moment? Yeah, well, I'm in a co-working space, which is very hip and trendy, but a bit noisy. So I'm sorry if there's a bit of background noise. It is fine for me, but as that could be an access thing. If anyone is having issues, do flag that up in the chat and see if we can change that. But okay, thank you so much for joining us today, Lucy. It was really good to catch up with you last week, week before to kind of find out a bit more about your co-op. So I guess just really quickly, not really quickly, this is your section. Tell me a bit about your co-op. What does it mean to be a digital co-op and what sort of work do you get involved in there? So, yeah, so we're in fact digital cooperative. We set up three years ago, four years ago, maybe, and we set up because we'd all done Founders and Co-Others together, which is a software development bootcamp, which was also a co-op. They've kind of changed structure now, but they're very co-op friendly, if not actually a co-op. And so we were just really within the network of co-optives. They were sharing a co-working space with Outlandish for another tech co-op. And so when we, me and my colleagues started working together and decided we wanted to start our own, well, we didn't really think we want to start a business. We just thought we want to keep working together. And so we ended up starting a business and we knew we didn't really think about it being anything other than a co-op. I think a lot of us, yeah, we just, we enjoyed that way of working together. We didn't want to set in place any kinds of hierarchies or power structures that we then had to work within. And yeah, it just seemed like it was, it's interesting because the ecosystem that we were in, that was just the, it was almost like the passive choice was to become a co-op. And it would be interesting to see what the world would be like, if that was just a passive choice. Anyway, so we've been going for four years now. And yeah, like I said, we work mostly with, well, we often work with charities, but really the way we decide whether or not we want to take on a client is just if the three of us think it's something we want to work on. So we don't believe that to do good, you have to be a charity. We don't believe that to do interesting things. Yeah, you have to be in that world. We do think that you can be a business and do interesting, important things as well, like co-ops. So we just choose whether to work on something based on whether we find it interesting. And that's a really nice feature of being, I guess, working for ourselves. Thank you so much for that explanation. Yeah, I remember you saying before that, like, you sort of, it was an automatic choice for you to join a co-op. And I think definitely for me, it was more of like an accident. Like, it didn't actually start with housing coops. It started with like a bicycle co-op. I wanted a bicycle. And so we joined this thing and turned out that I was with them for life. I wasn't until I was a student. But, you know, I fell into it. I think a lot of people find out about co-ops accidentally. But, oh yeah, people are just asking for the website if you've just got a link on hand to infect. So that's really interesting that you sort of have this kind of surroundings of people being part of co-ops. And you also said that you just wanted to keep working together with the three of you. And so it just kind of became an automatic choice. Can you talk a little bit more about, like, what the three of you do? How do you split up work? And how does it work being a co-op? Are you able to sort of take on equal amounts? Or do you have to sign off on all of the things? Are you able to talk a bit about that? Yeah. And just before I do, I think it's interesting what you said about ending up into a co-op by being part of a bike co-op. Because, yeah, I was part of a food co-op when I was at university and my colleague Max was also like vaguely connected to some kind of co-op. And, yeah, all of us just managed to get to a certain stage in our lives without ever having got a proper job. And we were like, okay, well, we don't want to start now. So this seems like the right choice. So what do we do? And do we all do things equally? I think when we first started, we were obsessed with doing things equally. We kind of thought like being a co-op means we all have to do everything to an equal amount. And I think that one of the biggest learnings over the last four years has been that what is it that fairness doesn't necessarily mean equality or something like that. Justice is not always equal. I can't remember. I'm sure there's a quote there somewhere that I'm referencing. But basically that at first, we thought that all of us had to know about the finances and all of us had to know about clients and all of us had to know about everything and that we all had to make equal decisions on everything. And then that got really exhausting. And to the point where I said, you know what, I'm happy to not make any decisions on the finances and to give over my authority on that to you, Max, who does the finances, because I trust you. And I trust that if it's important enough, then you're going to come and ask us. And so maybe that was able to happen in the end, because we've been working together for a while and we built that trust up. Maybe it would be harder to do straight from the beginning. Maybe it's like a necessary process. But yeah, I think something really interesting is that tension between equality, what's equal, what's fair? What does that look like? And it's not necessarily as straightforward as it being cut evenly. Yeah, now I definitely feel that. I do a bit of finances in my co-op, but it doesn't feel like everyone needs to do everything. Is it more that you give consent to other people to do those things? Yeah, and you trust that everybody, have you ever heard of the Prime Directive? I can put it in the chat layer, but it's basically like, again, I'm paraphrasing, but trusting that everybody is doing their best at any given time with the information that they have available. And I think that if you're able to build up relationships with your co-workers, where you really truly believe that about each other, then, yeah, then you're able to kind of hand over a bit of that authority to each other, which makes for a much more efficient, I think, working experience more pleasant. I really like that. I think coming from a housing core background, I appreciate being able to have that with my housemates too. So, oh yeah, think about founders encoders. Oh, I think it was Finders encoders. I kept hearing it. Okay, thanks for writing that down. So, it's really helpful to hear you talk a bit about like how you split work up and sort of why you got into co-ops. But just as a last question kind of before we go on to the next speaker, Connie, I'd like to hear a bit about, so I know that you said that to make it quite simple, you work with apps and work, you work on building apps and websites, but it's more than that, right? You work on a lot of digital problems. And so I want to ask you a bit about like the kinds of work that you do. And I think I'm specifically thinking about an example that you shared when we were chatting last time, which was about working with quite a few domestic earnings charities and what that has looked like and how you've been able to help develop apps for them or work with them. I'm sort of seeing this as an example for some different projects that you do. You're able to talk about that a bit. Yeah, so I guess what we really do, the service that we really offer is to speak to people, find out about their problems and then if we can offer a digital solution, then we will. Sometimes we might find out about the problems and be like, oh, actually, we don't think you need a digital solution. We think maybe you need something different, maybe you need to invest more time in, I don't know, staff resources or training or whatever. I don't know, that's not really our area of expertise, but I don't think it's digital. And sometimes we'll say, okay, this is the problem and we think that this might be a digital solution that could help, and then we might try and re-propose it, we work with it together, we might build it, try and test it, that kind of thing. And so the work that I've been, I've ended up working with quite a few different domestic abuse charities, kind of because I did it with, I worked with one of them and then maybe got recommended to another and I think maybe they appreciated that I had some domain knowledge after having worked with one. And what we were able to build for them was varied, like a lot of ways of helping people communicate with charities. I mean, that's such a common issue to so many charities is that they need a way for their users to be able to get in touch that is efficient and that doesn't like monopolize all of their resources. So we're doing that. I also made kind of resource library, which provided resources, but also sharing stories between survivors, which was really interesting. And it's just been, it's been interesting to like build up knowledge across different organizations, and also to be a part of that sharing of knowledge between them. I think charities are changing as well nowadays, but they used to be really quite competitive, and that's still kind of the case, which feels so weird to be talking about competition and that space, like it just really doesn't sit right. And I'm sure that charities feel that way as well, but they're forced to compete for resources and funding. And so that mindset ends up coming in. But I think it is changing in particular, it's been nice to be a part of this group, like slightly of domestic abuse charities who have really said, we don't want to compete, we want to work together and share resources together. So yeah, that's been a nice insight. And that they've been able to start doing that through the medium of digital work has been really cool. Yeah. That's that's really good to hear about. And I can definitely relate to that like, you know, competition between organisations when like, I don't know, you can't outcompute different organisations, you need to co-exist. And through that work together. Thank you so much, Lucy. It's been so great hearing from you. And we will come back to you. But for now, I think we're going to go to our next speaker, Connie, Connie Thinney. Hello. Hello. So we just heard from from Lucy, who is part of a digital co-op work in the tech sector. But co-ops can look like lots of different things. And so for Connie, and indeed for me, this is look like house living in a house where we own it ourselves. So I'm going to I'm going to start by asking you a question, Connie. And that is, what is a housing co-op? Can you tell me a bit about this? So in a nutshell, yeah, everyone who lives in the house is a member of the co-op with it. And we collectively own and manage the house. And we are our own landlords. So we don't we don't have a landlord. And we all work together to make decisions and to pay off our loans. And we all pay rent to the co-op. And but because we manage the house, then we get to collectively set our own rent levels, depending on, you know, how much our mortgage is and the loans and the general wealth of the co-op. And although some housing cooperatives have like a committee where people are elected and they get to make decisions for the whole co-op, and our co-op has a non hierarchical flat structure, and where everyone has an equal say in decision making, and no one's voice is valued more than anyone else's. And that said, yeah, we don't do all the work collectively. We split into working groups and some people take on jobs that align with our strengths and knowledge base and stuff. And then the non hierarchical, I guess the non hierarchical nature of the co-op is reflected as well in the way that we make decisions. So we use something called consensus decision making where, yeah, everyone has to agree on a decision in order for a proposal to be passed. And if even one person doesn't agree, then we have to go back and rework the proposal until everyone's satisfied. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really good description of housing co-op. Thanks Connie. And I also know that they're part of radical roots. So can you tell me a bit about what it needs to be a radical roots housing co-op? Sure. So radical roots is a national organization. And then it's basically a network of co-ops. And it's, yeah, an organizer, it's like the co-op of co-ops, I guess, and it helps co-ops, it helps to set up co-ops and helps to finance them and stuff. And co-ops can only join radical roots, though, if they kind of align with its kind of social and political values. And these are broadly kind of anti-capitalist. And members are expected to vote some of their time to kind of social activism and working towards what they call radical social change. And radical roots believes that cooperatives in and of themselves work against kind of capitalist, the values of capitalist society, namely seeding kind of cooperation and community against like individualistic and neoliberal values. And radical roots do it, they're quite a broad share to do a variety of things. So yeah, they can offer loans and help to seed co-ops. And they offer political education. And they also kind of teach people like the basics of like being in a co-op. So kind of introduction to facilitation, introduction to minute taking and stuff. And because it's a co-op as well, any decisions that are made in radical roots, every one of its member, member co-ops has to agree on decisions. And we practice consensus decision making on that national level as well, when it comes to decisions made within radical roots. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I think that pretty well documents sort of what it means to be part of the network. So let's talk about your co-op, our co-op. So out of town. Tell me a bit about it and how it functions. And so yeah, we're called out of town. We're shortened this to ute. Yeah, we're in Brighton and we're made up of two houses and we have 17 members. The co-op was initially set up in 1991. And it started out with members squatting abandoned houses eventually in 2007, the co-op raised enough funds to buy the house that I'm currently living in at the moment. And then the second house was born into bought in 2016. And we have monthly general meetings with the whole co-ops that's across the two houses. And that's where most of our co-op business happens, you know, which deals with kind of co-op wide issues like finance, maintenance, recruitment, et cetera. And then we have monthly house meetings as well, which deal with kind of more domestic things like cooking rotors and cleaning rotors and, you know, planning social events and stuff. And we also have monthly workdays as well, where we spend time, you know, taking care of the house and the garden. And that includes like big practical jobs. So like recently, some of my housemates recently installed a sink. And we've put up sheds in the past and different things like that and just taking care of the house generally. And Sim and I have been members now for about two and a half years. And in that time, I think it's fair to say that we've learned a lot, including lots of DIY skills, cooking for 10, sometimes 12, 15 people, conflict resolution, active communication, and then kind of yes, skills like how to take minutes and how to facilitate meetings and stuff. Yeah. Excuse me. Thank you, Connie. Yeah, yeah. And you say that we've both been members for two and a half years. Like, I feel like I've learned so much about just what it means to be, to own a house in that time. Like, things that you don't even think about when you're a renter, but like things that you can have quite a lot of control over. And yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing some light on that. I guess, I guess my next question is more focused towards, you know, our title of this webinar, young people. So like, why do you think that young people should get involved in co-ops? Like, yeah, yeah. What do you think about that? I think, yeah, co-ops are really, really great for young people, especially kind of in the more precarious times that we live in. I think young people have it very hard at the moment in terms of kind of like, yeah, a lot of housing insecurity, you know, the job market is smaller. You know, it's more difficult to, well, it's less, it's looking less likely that young people will be able to own their own homes. And so I think it comes back to the reasons why co-ops are so good for young people, it comes back to the kind of core values of co-ops. So, you know, the emphasis on community collaboration and democracy. I mean, a lot of housing, kind of private rented housing today is kind of focused around structure. It's, yeah, it's predicated on isolation. And it starts from the base of that human beings are kind of, yeah, just individuals, but co-ops kind of are the antidote to that. And they start from the basis that human beings are kind of like, we're inherently social. And we're not self-reliant, but we flourish in a kind of community setting. And so from taking a kind of communal approach to domestic tasks, sharing and pooling resources and money, sharing the responsibility and care for one another, I think housing co-ops kind of counter these kind of dominant neoliberal trends in society. So I think a housing co-op can provide stability and a support network for young people, which are denied in the kind of rented and private sector. And as young people, yeah, as I've just said, I guess as young people are faced with increasingly precarious conditions, as well as a culture, which kind of emphasizes social, like individual responsibility, co-ops kind of counter these trends by emphasizing community rather than individual responsibility. And yeah, I think the other thing is that, co-ops are equitable. So they kind of start from the basis that from each courting credibility to each courting to their need, that's the basis from which we start. And it's opposed to the housing market, which is quite inherently exclusionary and thrives on social inequality. It's like owning a house is now the preserve of a few. And housing co-ops, on the other hand, they're more accessible because rent is affordably priced, council tax and bills are split, kind of labor is split as well. And because the rent is cheaper and labor is shared, people have young people have the opportunity to not have to work, you know, 37 hours a week, you know, because that rent is cheaper, that means you can spend time doing social activism or like all with your other social commitments. And I think there's also more security as well, because obviously in rented accommodation, you have to ensure that you pay the rent on time in full every month. And there's no safety net. And if something financially goes wrong, but in a co-op, because this is shared, then there is a safety net for for young people who are, you know, who are struggling. Also, another thing is that obviously there's a lot more autonomy in in in a cooperative as well, you know, you know, rented accommodation. I mean, the conditions of a lot of private rented accommodation at the moment is terrible. There's so much damp. And, you know, it's just clinical white walls. You can't really own the space that you live in, you're just kind of existing in it. It's a very functional space. But, you know, I think there's so much to be said for a housing cooperative where you have control over your own space, like even something like decorating your own room, like you can actually make it a home. It's not just this functional space that you exist in. It feels less transient. And I think, you know, that's that's kind of linked to, you know, obviously young people are facing such a massive mental health crisis at the moment. And this can't be divorced from, you know, the kind of instability and precarity of, you know, the lives of young people at the moment. So I think, yeah, housing co-ops go some way towards, you know, rectifying some of these, yeah, social issues. Yeah, sorry if that was a bit of a ramble. But yeah, I really think that you covered quite a lot in that. And you're right, you can look at it from so many different ways. And like, just purely the aesthetic value, like being able to, I can't really show my room, but like, but like, do anything that I want to in my bedroom, and that can just be for as long as I live here. And, you know, being able to fix things or buy things immediately when they break, rather than having to go to a landlord who says, well, you know, maybe, but then my hike you rent up, it will not give you deposit back. It just feels like starting to even this power balance between like, all of us need to live in houses, but people who are able to own them and people who aren't. But yeah, thank you for that. I just really quickly before we go on to the next speaker, I've just seen a question about like how how we like fell into fell into housing co-ops. And I mean, I know for me, I joined like in 2019. And it was at a time when I had only just graduate like finished university, like I had just handed in my final dissertation, and didn't know what I was doing, but was super burnt out and just needed a break. And for me, coming at that point in my life, like being able to just join a housing co-op where it felt like there was some community around me, there was some stability, everything in my life is shifting. But I could sort of just stay put for a while and think about what I wanted to do was so valuable and continues to be. But yeah, just really funny, I just wanted to ask like, how did you find out about a town? Were you out on a search looking for housing co-ops or and yeah, I didn't really know what a co-op was. I mean, before I moved in, I was looking for a kind of community house, but I didn't really understand exactly that her house and cooperative meant that you own the house and collectively manage it. And but yeah, I was looking because I'd lived in HMOs, you know, and before I joined, and I found them very kind of isolating and alienating, you know, it's just strange to me that, you know, in a HMO, like, everyone will have their own cupboard with their own cutlery in their own plates and their own food when it just makes so much more sense to pool resources. And so yeah, but when I moved in, yeah, I didn't really know exactly what a co-op was, but I've been here two and a half years now and I do know what they are now. And I think that's just such a great way of yeah, of yeah, living. Yeah, yeah, that's my experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Connie. And yeah, just feels like you're one of you're an example like me, like just sort of falling into it accidentally. But I think a really useful thing about co-ops is that they really like, they meet our everyday needs, whether that is a house, a bicycle, some food, like, that's how we can, you know, talk to more people about co-ops and understand that there is this alternative to this really like, capitalist individualist, like neoliberal system that we sort of born into thinking is the only way. But yeah, anyway, my next speaker is Tamzin. Do you want to say hi, Tamzin? Hello, how are we? Hello. Very good. Thank you, bit cold. Sorry for leaving you to the end, but it's so nice to have you here to be able to talk to you. So where are you speaking to us from today? I'm currently speaking to you from Manchester and I must just do a little disclaimer that I'm sure in Sozlo, the plumber who I've been waiting for all day is going to arrive in the middle of this. So many apologies if that happens and I suddenly go blank or you just start hearing me talking about the burst pipe in the wall. But yeah, we can see you from Manchester at the moment. That's great. Hopefully that doesn't happen in the next 10 minutes. But if it happens, it happens. It might have been interesting things to say about co-ops, you never know. Yeah, yeah, quite possibly. So I just wanted to start off by asking you a bit about your co-ops. So would you rather talk about bread and roses or Bradford Cooperative Association and just I'd like to hear a bit more about your co-op and the aims of it. So yeah, so my role in the Bradford Cooperative Association is as the membership and communications officer. So the membership side of that role sits mostly under the Bradford Cooperative Association and the communications side is more focused on bread and roses, which is the cafe and co-working space I mentioned earlier. I don't really have much input into Chapel Street Studio, which is the other prong of the Bradford Cooperative Association. So this will kind of, I'll try and differentiate between the two, which I'm talking about, but it's muddled up in my own head, to be honest. But basically, so Bradford Cooperative Association was set up to be like a community run business for the people of Bradford. I think it began with people within Chapel Street Studio that wanted to provide a new, more collaborative way of working creatively and digitally and providing kind of a holistic way of all of that work and to further organisations and pooling together these resources, which, you know, makes it a lot easier for people to access all of these different kind of creative and digital needs that organisations might have. And that kind of developed into the Bradford Cooperative Association. You know, if we can do this on a creative and digital basis, what more can we be providing to the community? So then I think Brad and Rosie's kind of came out of that as a home for Chapel Street Studio, but as well, to provide like vegan and vegetarian food to the community in Bradford, because I don't know how many of you have kind of been to Bradford recently, but it's really been kind of almost forgotten about in live with its location being so close to Manchester and Leeds. The High Street is kind of dead. There's not a lot of options for people to do and people to get involved community wise and to be in a building that really does foster that community spirit. So I think that's really what Brad and Rosie's offers to the people of Bradford and one of the main missions is to provide that community ownership and to give people in Bradford something back because for the founders of the co-op, I think being in Bradford has just cemented such a sense of that community drive and that collectivism and that kind of anti-capitalist nature that I think Connie was talking really eloquently about. And so, yeah, all of those things together have kind of obviously over the last year with the challenges that COVID has provided as well have really cemented just how important it is to work on things together. So I feel like I've touched on many different points there, but I hope that gives some some kind of information around what these three different organisations are. Yeah, yeah. And as you say, they work quite closely together. So it's really hard to untangle them, detangle them, disentangle, take them apart. And you also talk really, really nicely about like how, you know, it came out of one project, but it is sort of a thing for like a home for the community, like lots of different projects can work out of it. And it is just a food space. And that that is ugly. So I don't even work in your role for a couple of years. Can you talk a bit about the specific work that you get into? And how I think you mentioned that you have 12 to 15 members. So how do you all work together? Yeah, so in a specific way that I do, so it's kind of figuring out the membership processes and kind of trying to make it more transparent to people that are involved, because we've been, you know, members co-op. We don't really, we can't really, so I'm trying to figure out what I'm saying before I say it so I don't end up rambling again. We want to make sure that as many people have the opportunity to own the business as possible, but we also want to make sure that people are getting something out of it as well. So for me, it's been setting up the membership process from trial membership to full membership in which takes about nine months from start to end. And in that time, we require that people have an active interest in the cooperative, which is kind of really great because even though it comes out of giving that time, which is obviously what we want really engaged members want people who are going to have that community spirit and want to drive the cooperative forward, but it's also making that active interest as kind of unique to everyone as possible. So if someone wants to run a yoga cast from the space, that counts as an active interest if someone wants to, you know, go and spend money on our co-working space and get involved in that way, that's an active interest. It's really kind of tailing it to the individual and making sure that that support is mutual and that benefits both parties equally. And so we've recently had Ava Wayday, which was really nice and had quite a few members there who are involved in the organisation in other ways. And there really was just that emphasis on making sure that the vision that we've got is not only collective and kind of we're all driving that force together, but there's space for everyone's individual thoughts and opinions within that as well. And we can have those conversations around what does everyone want to get out of this and how can we make it an organisation that members really feel proud to own as well and proud to be part of. So we've got, because we are a sociocratic model, we've got, you know, I'm an officer and there's a few different officers within the organisation who all lead circles, which then goes to the board who then can make decisions. And so, yeah, we've got a really like flat structure like the others have mentioned. We've got a structure where people are able to, you know, raise any issues that they've got in that environment that makes it a lot easier. Kind of like Connie was talking about with conflict resolution. It's not about one person saying no. And then it just doesn't happen. It's about having as many conversations as possible to hash out those issues before it ever becomes a problem down the line. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. That's really interesting. And I think that, like, it really, it really helps that you can, like, talk to all of the members who are involved, especially when working can look a little bit different in each of those situations. And also talk about, as Lucy pointed out in the chat, like what individual goals are, this is what collective goals are. That, yeah, that sounds really good. I want to get to all the questions in the chat because they are popping. But I do just really quickly want to ask you one last question, which was how did you get into co-ops? Was it an accident? Was it sold out? So it kind of assumes the others have said kind of falling into it because I think so I was at university at Leeds. And I know there was a food co-op, and it was kind of one of those things that I was walking past. And I always thought, you know, if I had more drive to be a better person, I would be buying all my fruits and veggies from there instead of going to Aldi. And then I thought, no, I shan't, not yet. Clearly it wasn't meant for me to do it at that point. And so eventually, but I kind of kept seeing the word co-op around and I thought, that's interesting. And then I worked at the Students Union for a year, which kind of introduced me to the idea of a flat structure rather than a hierarchical structure, which was, you know, really interesting, thinking seeing, especially as a young person, seeing people kind of in their first step of their career, being at the top of an organisation, having that say over it, was super interesting. And then I started working at the Bradford Cares, which was a project to kind of tackle homelessness within Bradford back in 2019, which was a Trouble Street Studio project that was based out of Bread and Roses, and kind of just as needs arose for, you know, someone to do social media, I was able to do that for admin work, I was able to do that, and that's been able to like snowball into the role that I've got now, which unfortunately I'm leaving next week. But so you've got me in just at the right time, because this is a really nice kind of summary for me anyway, to be able to think about what's happened over the last couple of years. So I was kind of able to be the, you know, just keep growing into the membership and communications officer. And I think it being a cooperative at first didn't really seem like, it seemed, it was really interesting, and it was, you know, a great thing to be involved in, but I was doing a Masters at the time as well. It wasn't really the main, like the main thing I was thinking about as a with work, it was kind of just a part-time thing, but especially through COVID, we've got a lot of funding and a lot of grants from local, kind of local pots of money that we've been able to get, and seeing that community support and that community spirit has really solidified the importance of co-ops for me, because I think I saw so many people, you know, one of my best friends works at Morrison's through the pandemic, and worked in the Amazon department within Morrison's, and she was being treated terribly, you know, there are so many people that weren't wearing masks in the, in the height of it and, you know, having to work these long hours. And I thought I'm so lucky to not be doing any of that because it is so community-run, it is for the benefit of everyone that's involved, as opposed to the benefit of someone that's going to get the profits at the end of the day, and you're not going to see any of that. So I think, yeah, that's, that's what's been the best thing about getting involved in the co-op, even though I kind of fell into it. I'm so happy that it was because it really, yeah, especially through the pandemic, I think it's when, when everything becomes so individual because you just sat at home in a room not seeing anyone in my case, it's like you've got all these people out there that you know are working towards a shared goal, and being able to come back into an environment where that is what's happening as opposed to having to go to work and feel like you're working for someone else, working for the community, it's just, yeah, such an invaluable experience and it's been, yeah, co-ops are just bloody fantastic, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, co-ops are bloody fantastic, the new ties to this webinar, no, don't want to romanticize it, like there are definitely inherent issues in it and that's part of anyone working or living together, right, like they're not a magical silver bullet. There are difficult problems but I think the real emphasis here on like communication, respect and consensus and trying to work together to make decisions, that's what really makes the difference to me at least. Okay, well, thank you so much for Tamsin, so great to hear about your whole journey and really best of luck with the next chapter of your journey. I don't really know how to do this next section because I haven't really probably been looking at the Q&A but I know that lots of things have come off. Etra, Lola, do you have any ideas about how we should take these questions in order or? I could just spotlight all of the speakers now and highlight a couple of questions that have come through, if that's the best thing to do. Yes, please, yeah, that'd be great. Okay, I mean just sorry, while I spotlight people I could just ask my question because then it's easy to find but just from, we work at Coptes UK who are running these webinars as part of the Hive and obviously we want to make sure that young people are the future of co-ops and co-ops are the future for young people but apart from, you've all sort of highlighted that you have found out about co-ops through higher education and going to university but how do we reach more young people and how do we get co-ops in front of young people that maybe perhaps aren't able to access university or higher education and have you got any ideas about doing this within the community? That's such an important question really because yeah I hadn't noticed this until you said it but yeah all of us are talked about sort of coming across co-ops at some point during our university. I think personally for me I would hope that work that we're doing is not closed off in university silos. I did start off in student co-ops that's how I found them, learned more about them, got exposed to this and then but being able to join this co-op which like not for students, not for any specific demographics. I kind of found out about it because it was being advertised on my local Facebook pages so from a Hollywood co-op perspective like really making sure that when you're looking for new members who are doing recruitment that you're reaching outside of your bubbles and we helped run a recruitment process out of you this year. I don't know if we were successful but that was definitely like something that we were actively trying to do, trying to reach outside of just our networks, friends of friends but I don't know do any of the other speakers have ideas for that? I guess one of the things is not just how to access people but also how to make co-ops more part of a mainstream piece of knowledge so that when you're contacted about do you want to be a member of a housing co-op you're at responses in either like what's a housing co-op or like oh no that's for hippies. So it's not just getting those people at the point where there's an opportunity for them to be a member of a co-op it's kind of getting them much before that and I think it would be really great if the opportunities that we all had at university to become members of co-ops were were part of that because again it's not even even if you'd like you said Tanzan you weren't you were like that I don't want to do that right now but it may meant that you started becoming aware of co-ops and what they were and and realizing that it's not just for weirdos or only for lovely weirdos so I don't know I've thought lots of times about if there's scope for kind of going to schools or like extracurricular activities or clubs or camps or colleges or whatever and facilitating people setting up cooperatively run structures there that's something I'd be interested in exploring I don't know if that's something that's happening already or not but I think that would be cool. I think we're really lucky and as kind of for a generation of young people that were in in my experience anyway and again this is an experience of having gone to university and done a masters and been around young people that are also at university and you know in those things but people are so open-minded and people like young people see the world in a very fluid way that I think is a really exciting it's a really exciting time to be like in in in these projects and in these cooperatives and think about things in a different way and like young people are a lot more aware that the world is changing and want to be that change as well like I know that I went back to my high school and there was like a gender neutral toilet when you know when I was at the high school there would never have even been there was never talk of you know gay was still used as an insults it's kind of like the world is changing so quickly and that change is being led by young people so I think it's it's not so this isn't you know it's not an answer of how we can get people involved but it's more just stressing that I think young people are receptive to hearing these alternative ways of living and of working and an alternative future and it's yeah it's kind of like it's the best time to be in a cooperative really because you've got an audience an audience of people that are willing to hear it so fingers crossed anyway yeah I think that sounds great um yeah are there any other questions and Jen had asked if there were any this was specifically about housing cohorts but I suppose we could broaden it to all cohorts are there any difficulties of living or working in a in a co-op absolutely yeah so yeah we started no 100 percent there are like like ongoing in my life at the moment like community lovely word when you think about it abstract in the real it means dealing with people on a one-to-one basis um trying to like organize towards a shared goal whatever that looks like um and and people get on each other's nerves um we say the wrong things we we we hurt each other inevitably um I know that I've done that um and yeah it's hard because you're sort of coming from the perspective of I'm going to accept you as Mike or we're going to try and do something together and you know it's it's not a um I know Boston I'm going to tell you what to do I don't really care about your feelings it's not that and with that comes so much I I could really talk about this for a while um but I guess like something I said earlier just like trying to acknowledge that that we are inevitably going to cause each other harm just by existing in this world but especially by trying to organize together and and trying to acknowledge and work within that yeah talked to each other a bit better I don't know does anyone else have anything to say about this I think particularly like in a housing cooperative because obviously we all have kind of the relationships you have in a house um but then also we also have like we're also in a working relationship as well because we have to manage everything within that house um and there's kind of I guess like like individual dynamics and then you're also kind of like managing the group dynamic as well so there's a lot of dynamics going on there um and obviously yeah yeah so I guess that's like yeah what I would yeah would say is a difficulty um but it's also great as well because you learn lots of skills like active communication um because there is you are you know you're yeah yeah I guess like an HMO in the private rented sector I mean like yeah you don't have to act you're not kind of you don't have to actively foster kind of like those kinds of relationships your housemates because you're not working with them as well um but I think yeah I've learned a lot in terms of kind of conflict resolution and active communication that you wouldn't necessarily learn in kind of other settings um which is yeah really good skills to have yeah I think that that it's obviously there's loads of difficulties there's difficulty in every every kind of setup but I suppose the specific difficulties are that you end up with conflicts and there is not a simple predefined hierarchy to to like fall back on so in a traditional working like top-down structure it might be that you have a disagreement with somebody and then it's like well whoever's more senior gets the last say uh and we don't have that and so that means that we have to talk about it and and like understand each other and all of those other terrible things um and I don't know I think that it's I think those are easier though because you have that preconceived uh you kind of you already know that you're going to have to have those conversations I think and anyway when it all gets like quite hard I remind myself that easier is not always better um and I don't think it's necessarily more difficult or or less difficult really but um but it's also true that sometimes things are like I wouldn't it would I think I would be very unlikely to go back to working in a traditional way because I don't think I could give up the um the like amount of autonomy and freedom and um I don't know whatever decision-making power that I have at the moment uh in return for maybe sometimes like simple ways of making decisions because I get to say or somebody else gets to say that was a bit of a ramble as well. Yeah definitely echoing that. Sorry Taston. Sorry yeah um I thought should I get started on the problems in co-ops and I thought no I shan't and then I thought yes I shall um but I think one of the points that's also really important today is that the same structures that exist outside of co-ops still exist within co-ops like there's no separating kind of the patriarchy or racial inequalities or like gender inequalities and class inequalities from co-ops and I think that we like want to exist like we think that they're like these like little like utopias where like none of those things exist but they do and I think that's something that we need to be aware of even you know that those things can still crop up and part of those problems is the fact that they're internalised so people aren't necessarily thinking of it as oh this is a co-op led by a man or whatever you know but it's it can still be the case just by how we're raised and how and how people communicate with each other on those levels so I think co-ops are a good place to be in that they act in microaggressions that's the word Jen thank you um like like when you co-ops seem to be full of people that are more aware of those issues and more aware of addressing them within themselves than in my experience working in other in other kinds of organisations but they do still exist so I think um yeah I guess that's not a problem specific to co-ops but I think sometimes when you are in an organisation where it's like oh this is great it's a lot harder to address those issues as well when everyone like no one wants to hurt each other's feelings so it can be like harder to say actually you are hurting my feelings and and address it in those aspects so yeah I think that's still being aware of the wider world that we inhabit within a cooperative it's an issue so much so all of you yeah absolutely spot on saying things that I couldn't I couldn't articulate thank you so much um yeah um I can see that we've only got like a handful of minutes left have I made that phrase up I'm going with it um Layla are there any other questions um that oh yeah of course okay um so so maybe we should um maybe we should wrap up there um because I know that Petra wants to say a couple of words about um The Hive who have very kindly helped us um put on this webinar today um and just want to say a really quick thank you massive thank you to all of the speakers Lucy, Tamsin, Connie, thank you so much for joining us and all of the audience people audience people members that um you know who you are thank you for coming today um and we hope you we maybe you think a little bit inspired if you were little bit um Petra over to you um I'm not a young person so um thanks very much um Sim and for all our speakers today it's it's been a joy listening um the passion and and the enthusiasm there has been been marvellous wonderful um and just hearing all those different perspectives or different co-operatives um I hope that everyone on on the call today has found that really useful and interesting um so yeah so we um delighted that through The Hive business support program and our partnership with Co-operative Bank that we've been able to bring this webinar to you today and and and we have supported um co-operatives over the last six years through the Hive business support program and also through Co-operative UK our resources on our website um and other advice that we can give um and I know um I remember Lucy coming to one of my is a co-op right for you sessions um back when I can't remember how long ago it was now so it's great that through The Hive we followed your journey and we were able to support you in those early days um and lots of other co-operatives um so uh there are other Hive webinars coming up in the series I think um my colleague Layla put the link in in the chat um and so if you want to join others you're very welcome to um the Hive business support program the link will share that as well after the event or through the chat um there is support available to anyone setting up a co-operative um and people can apply for that support and we also have what we call our online step-by-step tool so anyone that kind of wants to work through their business idea and wants to think about what they need to think about before they apply that's a really useful step-by-step tool and there are lots of resources on on that website um so I'd really point people to that um and you know we even have an online registration tool and lots of different ways to to help you um and of course once you get support through The Hive you can then become members of co-operatives UK and then we have lots of advice and services that we can offer um our our co-operatives and our members so I think that's all I want to say and just you know a big thank you again to everyone it's been lovely listening to everyone and hearing those stories and um I hope that participants on the call today have been able to kind of be be um inspired by that to think about you know their new co-operative or their existing co-operative and getting new members etc um is there anything I've missed Leila should I've mentioned anything else or is that and I think we'll this record this is being recorded so we'll share that as well afterwards um so that's available to everyone so that's enough from me I think and we're just just a minute over so um but if anyone does want to have any specific questions after this um we you can post it to our email um which ladies just posted in the chat um and we can pick those up as well um and respond to those so thanks very much again thanks Sim for um hosting today and thanks again to our speakers