 He someone and welcome to this Webinar for Black History Month. I'm KarenGurbey, I'm a filmmaker, community filmmaker, a radio presenter and also a TV producer, and today we are going to be looking at the history of the cooperative movement through the lens of black history. Though thank you for joining us a we're going to discuss the perceptions of the cooperative movement today, globally and also here in the UK. And we're going to encourage you to volunteer your thoughts when you can. You can post your questions and thoughts in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. And we're also going to encourage the panellists to share their thoughts on this as well. So I am going to introduce you to our panellists. And the panellists that we have today who are going to give their thoughts and insights are Liz McIver, social historian and trust manager at the Co-operative Heritage Trust. Hi Liz. Hi Karen, nice to be here. And welcome. And we're also now going to see and hear from Claude Henriksen, MBE, who is the lead for coercive communities at the Leeds Community Homes. Hi Claude. Hey, how are you doing? Good afternoon. Good afternoon to everybody. Welcome. And we've got Rose Marley, who is the CEO of Co-operatives UK. Good afternoon. Hi Rose. And Christopher Oliver, who's the policy and research officer of the Uberlay initiative. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome. So welcome to today's conversation. I'm just going to let you know that a few things, a few housekeeping rules. The closed captions are available. Just click CC on the bottom of your screen. There's an option to view the full transcript with subtitles as well. And you'll be able to see the scrolling subtitles if you want to do that. And as I mentioned, there's an opportunity to put questions to our panel later on. So do put your questions in the Q&A box and later on we'll get through them as best that we can. But we're going to speak to each of the pan lists and just to hear therefore. So first I'm going to start with you, Liz. Can I just ask you a little bit about your role at the Co-op Heritage Trust? OK, so I'm the lead at the Co-op Heritage Trust. And it's a small team and quite a young charity that was set up in Greater Manchester initially to look after the physical assets, the heritage assets of the UK cooperative movement. And it was done really to protect them because the co-op movement was changing quite a lot. So we have a physical museum that's in Rochdale, the site of the first successful retail consumer cooperative society, just one type of co-op, that is. And we also have an archive which is in Central Manchester, Holyoke House. But really the story is national and international. So small sites, small team, big story. So that's what we're set up to do. We're set up to protect those assets and to share them and to encourage people to learn through cooperative values and principles. And just let's tell us why social history is really important. Well, there's a common understanding that, you know, if you understand the past, if you kind of are able to engage with it, that it helps you to plan for the future and helps you to deal with issues in your present. And there's a concern really that when people put things in the bracket of going, that's the past, we want to move on from the past. We don't want to focus on the past, that's true. But without the context of what's gone before, you can't, as a society, possibly hope to engage with the issues that come out of that past, that come out of that shared experience or shared heritage. History keeps you grounded, it gives you identity. It makes you think about what matters to people, especially those whose history is erased or minimised. And it gives you power, essentially, when you have an understanding of history and an acceptance of what's gone before, it gives people a power that they didn't have. So it's really important for us to talk about all aspects of our history, the challenging ones, as well as the positive stories. Yeah, absolutely, because it just really gives you some kind of grounding and it just shines a light on the areas of your life that maybe you just weren't unaware of really. And I just want to ask you about the black history aspect of that as well, because what have you been doing in terms of reflecting and taking a look and researching the black history that exists within the co-op movement? Okay, well we have to go back in time a little bit to the start of these conversations. So we were already aware, very much aware, our small team of how white centric of the story, the traditional story of the narrative is around how the co-op movement got started, who started it and how it spread. So we wanted to make some changes to that because it was a very polarised view, really. And we were looking into that to begin with, but what really kind of galvanised us wanting to change this was that the kind of response to the George Floyd incident in America and that in society generally, especially with younger people, that really triggered something into looking at how we represent people and stories across the board, not just in terms of this particular part of history. And really that has an enormous amount of capacity for us to change the narrative. So we started thinking, well, how can we reassess this? So there are several ways to look at it. Firstly, it looks on the face of it when you see an image when you walk into a building, it looks very white and it looks very male and we're aware of that. And that's because our history, if you like, as a movement is so complicated and in a way diverse and difficult to get to grips with, that most people only get the real surface level part of the story. So what they come away with is 28 white working class men in Rochdale form a co-operative and then everyone copies it and it's exactly the same. And that means that that that focus, that sort of visual idea gets stuck. So for a lot of people, it's the white movement and we know that's not true. It's absolutely not the case. And particularly internationally, lots of countries around the world have taken up cooperative values and principles and that is extremely ethnically diverse now and has been for a number of years. So what we can't do is find people very easily in terms of diversity is very difficult to find women. It's difficult to find people of colour people from different ethnic backgrounds in the old history. It's not impossible. It's just hard. And one of the reasons it's hard is because this is a working class history and working class people rarely write their own story. That story is written by other people who don't experience that, you know, who are literate, who have power, who have influence. And when that story gets written by other people, some of that gets lost. So we know that women were involved in the early movement. We know people of colour were involved in it. It's just really difficult to find them and pull them out and show visuals or evidence that that was the case. But we know they were there. And one of the things we wanted to do was to look for people in the in the history in the narrative and try to find the links and try to interpret those links a little bit better in the way we tell the story and in the things people see. But it does mean facing quite challenging things. And on the first glance, the cooperative movements history doesn't look as challenging perhaps as some other kind of movements or commercial organisations, but it doesn't mean it's squeaky clean and perfect either. So we know that cooperatives as societies traded in problematic goods from empire contexts and that despite their kind of campaigns for equality and equity, we know that they lived in a society where that wasn't the norm or the case. And that even when cooperatives campaigned for race rights and things like that and equal pay, that it was still not an ideal and that there were people still who had opinions that now we would find racist or prejudiced or biased. It's about trying to sort of own that and say we don't want to pretend the cooperative movement was always perfect. We want to be honest and say there were problems with it, but there were good things as well. So it's about a balanced picture. I mean, lots of things that you said there, which I know will be picked upon later, but I think just one thing as well to say is that some of that history is like hiding in plain sight, isn't it? And it's also about now we've got that awareness about maybe kind of bringing that into the story and into the reflection and asking people to share that so that story can be included. That's just a thought of mine there. I was going to say one of the things that really is striking when you're looking for people, people's stories within a movement, is that the movement doesn't focus on the individual, it focuses on the whole and the collective. So that's what makes it tricky, it makes it challenging. And people think their story isn't special or important because they weren't the CEO of an organisation or they weren't or they didn't achieve something by themselves. That's not true, because all of those individuals and their experiences build the collective. So actually you think your story is not special or important or unique. It is, and we want to hear it. That's it. Thanks for that. And I'm going to move on to Claude, because Claude, you've got a different aspect of how you've been involved in the cooperative movement. And I know there's just lots of interesting elements there. So I just want to tell us a little bit about your role, particularly maybe as well with Leeds Community Homes as well. Thank you, thank you for the invite to this Black History Month event for the co-operatives. Yeah, what I'd like to kick off by saying is that, in principle, my learning has been that whenever a group of people come together around a common issue or a common situation, they're actually a co-operative. We've got lots of different organisations, but actually, whether it's community land trust, community lead housing, you know, they're all kind of co-operatives. So, yeah, yeah. So my learning about co-operatives in principle being of that first generation of kids that was born, children that was born of the Windrush generation, you know, my mother coming in the late 50s, I was born in 60. We've had to kind of observe co-operation, people working together because at first, so in Leeds, they set up the United Caribbean Association, which was different people coming from different Caribbean, even though they were those African Caribbean. They were coming from different islands, Barbados, Trinidad, St Kitts and Neath, Jamaica, you know, so what they created was the United Caribbean Association. So in principle, that's a co-operative because it's a group of different people from different islands coming together. And what they then, because obviously in the 60s, we were suffering under the no dogs, no Irish, no blacks, so our black parents had to come together around issues like housing, employment, the children's education, their own entertainment, dealing with the police, health and well-being. Churches? Churches as well. Churches, I was just coming at that, you just beat me to it. Youth engagement, so all of these things were how we had to live within the system, so we were just naturally born in what is called classes now, co-operatives. So, yes, so, you know, and for me, going on just to come back to where, you know, the question was, was I got involved in a self-build back in the mid 80s when being a young male was hard to get accommodation, being a young black male was even harder to get accommodation. So we set up a self-build, a group of us came together, 12 of the 13 of us came together to look at the plan of building our own houses, because we'd seen that it being done in Bristol, we'd seen a project called Zanzili in Bristol. Further on in life, I found out that there's been community-led housing projects in Bristol, Birmingham, London, Liverpool, Manchester, which were black-led housing projects, so they were like in the early 70s. So I realised I was standing on the shoulders of others that had gone before me, so at the end of the day, we took on building our own houses, we built them, 12 houses, 92,000 bricks, 52,000 blocks, built a street of houses. So, again, as a cooperative and leading the way, I mean, I've gone on and I've done other things and now I became a cohesive communities worker with Leeds Community Homes, which gave me a chance to look at why there were more black people being involved in construction and building their own houses and taking control. So I became the EDI advisor, getting more black people to engage with community-led housing, which has gone on now. I'm now the EDI trainer with the 4 million homes and the cooperative CCH housing, teaching residents about being more involved, not just black and ethnic minorities, but all residents about being more involved. So becoming cooperative in the areas where they live, work together to kind of deal with landlords, so that's something that I'm on with as we speak and we're training all over the country, so that's with the cooperative housing movement. Do you think that you've described what you've done there, but do you think that particularly people from the African Caribbean and Asian communities realise that it's a cooperative? Would they describe it as that? That's what I'm kind of interested to know. How would they see that? No, no, because there's so many different structures out there now, so you can become a community-led housing project, but you can be a co-housing project, or you can be a self-built project. What I tried to say at the beginning of the conversation, the reality is, for me, under the umbrella of people working together for a common aim, it's a cooperative, they just have different labels, but they're still, I mean, you know, council officers are in principle like a cooperative, because they've come together to manage the finance on behalf of the community and deliver the services. So, you know what I'm saying? What I'm trying to say is that we live in a society that labels us still on things, but actually the cooperative movement umbrellas all of them different types and different names or strategy groups. So Claude, what would you say are the key challenges in getting more people from the global majority to actually be involved in the movement? Oh, wow. Well, you know, what I would say is, again, community land trusts, which is again a cooperative group, a group of people coming together to control land and build services. The cooperative movement started out of the civil rights movement in America in the mid-60s. So community land trust, again, is something that is about people coming together and solving their own problem, and that comes out of, you know, and it came through to Europe, to England. So when it comes to black history, black people have been at the forefront of showing people how to work together with all the things we've faced in slave man, colonialism, racism, and we're coming through all of that by coming together, sticking together, you know, and now in modern times that's called cooperative. Thank you for that. Interesting, insightful stuff really, and I love the way you can remember how many bricks you used to build that street. 92,000 bricks, 52,000 blocks. I mean, just to mention, as I've seen them come up there just now, Chaco is a co-housing project that just happened in Shappeltown, just finished, the residents have moved in. It's a global community, even though it's, you know, there are people from all over the world, or they descended from people that are all over the world. We've got the shardam, we've got Irish people, we've got Asian people, we've got Caribbean people, we've got African people, we've got English people, we've got some Scottish people in there. So the global majority, you know, in one sense is in there as well with the natural majority. Thank you, thanks. Now on to Rose. Rose, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your role as CEO of Co-operative UK? Yeah, my background is quite eclectic and diverse really. Yeah, I came out of, wonderfully came out of being born and lucky enough to grow up as a teenager through the Manchester period in Manchester. So I spent quite a lot of my time as a youngster trying to get backstage, and then that sort of became my career for the first 10 years of my life. So I've got into music management and all that type of stuff. And actually I'd say, from my perspective, it was music that brought diversity into my life because I'm from the north of Manchester, which growing up was pretty much a white working class ghetto to be entirely honest. So it was really that music that brought diversity into my life and some level of empathy around the challenges. And without going into my career history, I had never sort of had this vision to kind of be CEO of Co-operatives UK in such an important role as well, I believe, for greater good, for fairer society, for greater Manchester. And, you know, I've always been a social enterprise, social entrepreneur and social reformer. And so when I was originally approached, I've only been doing this role for just over two years. And when I was originally approached by recruitment agency to look at the role, I wasn't looking to move roles, I wasn't at all interested. And I'll be entirely honest with you because this particular recruiter was hounding me. I took his call after the fifth time. And he did know me. And he'd been leaving messages because he always used to ring me about various things involved, you know, sort of like Catholic related kind of positions. And he was ringing me saying it's not even religious, it's a little slightly dispute that. But basically, like after the fifth time, he said, what is it what's putting you off? And I said, have you seen the board? I'd gone on the website and he said, what? And I said, it's like all white middle class, you know, and I said back all these stereotypes, sandal wearing vegan middle class white, like, why would I want to be part of that? That was my genuine reaction. And even though I put myself now because of my career and kind of what I've done in the middle class bracket. So I was quite, you know, coming out of that like working class piece, I was really quite offended about the way the cooperative movement was perceived. And then there and then the comment I got back was that's exactly why we want you to look at the role. And again, it's really challenging, lots of reasons and our board in particular and lots of challenges around kind of diversity of that and biodiversity as well. I'm looking at social diversity and all the neurodose. So our board is actually more diverse than it maybe looks in a picture. But a big part of our strategy, you know, has this diverse, you know, that whole aim is to create a strong, sustainable and diverse movement for the UK. So that's in there strategically. So that's why we're doing things like, you know, obviously it stimulates your belly work, which we're going to go on to talk about. But I really love what Claude said earlier. And this really sings to me because I say, when you kind of look at my history, people are going, how did you end up doing that? And I've worked with as a cooperative, you know, so it's this idea that people coming together. And again, as part of our strategy, what you'll start to see now our membership categories used to be, you know, we have this whole like, when I first came into the role and I sat down with the board. And I said, we want to be diverse, right? Everybody's like, yes, of course we do. We want to be inclusive. Yes, of course we do. So why have we got this like, you know, 300 page rule book about exactly what you have to do to be able to join this movement. So we've really relaxed out some of those things that Claude's talking about. And we do have a category now for social enterprise, social purpose, people who might not be formally constituted as a co-op, they might not exactly be in that, like I say, very, very specific type of constitution, you know, community housing, community land trust, whether that's community benefit societies, whether that's, you know, co-ops, they're all in the co-op category. But now, like I say, you might have more of a community interest company that doesn't have, you know, the democracy built into the constitution, but they're there for the ethical and the fair trade and in the social purpose and why wouldn't we want those people to be part of that movement. So we're doing as much as we can strategically to open up these doors. But I'd say to Claude's point what, you know, what I also believe is lots of people are working cooperatively and running cooperatives, and that's not how they would describe themselves. And that's not how they believe that. But we've got tools actually that could help them because actually it's quite hard cooperating just to be clear. It's not easy getting everybody to a consensus and it's not easy, you know, co-operatives tend to be trying to solve problems that are really hard, that the markets failed and private businesses aren't in because it's really hard and there's no money in it. So it's not an easy place to be at all. So whatever type of co-operative you are, we want to kind of come to you. And again, part of our strategy does talk about inspiring communities in the right voices and in the right places as opposed to sort of sitting back and waiting for that to happen. But yeah, loads and loads of challenges, you know, Liz alluded to some of them historically, but you know, won't pretend as well that it's easy going forward. There's a lot of, you know, unconscious biases and, you know, it's something that we really, really have to try hard and continuously try hard to break down some of these barriers because genuinely I don't find that people when people do want to be inclusive and people do want to open up the opportunity. But I think we've got some structural issues about how we've kind of enabled that not being an easy thing. And also arose to say that because people aren't always aware that necessarily that they're operating as a co-op, but the often things with with, you know, you know, Black Asian Chinese communities is you're not aware of things to make you more robust or to help you be more efficient to give your co-op longevity. And by opening up the fact that you're more open to this, that will be in itself more inclusive, won't it? Because, you know, when I learn about this, I thought, oh gosh, there's been lots of occasions where being able to tap into your toolkit or your thoughts would really help. Completely. Let's say there's a long way to go. I think we've made, you know, some good steps forward, but there is a long way to go. And actually, you know, our arms are wide open for people who want to, who've got ideas about how we could do it better because we've got lots to learn. What would you say the difference is between how co-opsives are perceived here in the UK and abroad and overseas? What are the differences? Well, it's really, when you say co-ops, it's so diverse, like Claude, you know, had touched on that. So I think you have pockets that might be more working class or less working class in different types and sexes of co-operation as well. You've got the consumer societies, and like Liz said, you know, that very much came out of that kind of working class, you know, food poverty, bizarrely, we're back here again, aren't we? But you know, co-op group tends to have shops now in more affluent areas. And if you look at, you know, co-op group customers, I don't think they're the same type of customers as they would have been when the co-op movement started. And again, you know, what you do see in certain types particularly, I see this in some types of worker co-ops where the volunteering model is important and people contributing. Well, you know, volunteering is a privilege, you know, being able to work for no money already rules out a whole bunch of people. So you get older people because they've got more time maybe if they were tired, but also you get people that have got, you know, a kind of cushion in their income stream who were able to volunteer. So I do think this, I don't think it's easy to say across the board, whereas I say in some of the more creative and cultural co-ops, you do get a lot more diversity, but that's the same across all our sectors in the UK. Internationally, as Liz said, you know, again, huge privilege and opportunity that I have to lead this movement here in the UK. And, you know, I do get to go to places like I went to Brazil last year and, you know, the Akai Berry, you know, collecting, you know, I was the only white person there, you know, so it is really different in different territories across the world. I don't think this is a kind of, I don't think you can make the generalisation by saying the UK from what I've seen more than anywhere else it does present as white and middle class if you have to describe it. And that's something like say we've got to work hard to change those perceptions. And what do you think? I mean, you know, you have covered it, but just to say though, what do you think is missing to make that connection? If you can kind of like capture that, what is it that, you know, are people intimidated by it? You touched on the fact that volunteering is, you know, is a privilege because, you know, it costs time and money you might not have. But, you know, what other things are missing that would like draw people even if you're watching this to go? Do you know what I can actually contribute and make a change? Yeah, I think there's so many, like I say, so many barriers the way we communicate. I think our language is really confused and it's just so many things. When we say we're not diverse, you know, we're really old as well as a movement, you know, bringing young people is a real challenge. So there's so many things that we need to look at as a movement to be able to address and achieve some of those things. So, yeah, from my perspective, I think we've got like an understanding of quite a lot of the issues. But one of the things that it does make me smile, but it is actually a challenge. Like when we do get people particularly prepared, it's the people that are, you know, from a diverse background and that can be young people, like I say as well. And they start kind of, they come to us or they've part of a co-op or they're working with us. Everybody's so desperate, actually, to be able to welcome people to the movement. They do get a little bit mobbed and, you know, they'll get asked to be on everything, you know, so you have young people and then you start to see the same faces on all the boards and all that. So it's like getting that balance of kind of, like, say, because, you know, like I said, unconscious bias stuff where people recruit people like themselves and all that type of stuff that you generally get across, you know, business across all sectors. But like I say, I do see these things and I do say it to people, you know, they'll get asked to do everything and then it can be quite overwhelming and then they'll retreat. So I do think we need to, you know, if we had more options, maybe we wouldn't be putting it all on the same people. But again, I think we've got to work really hard to be able to do that. Thank you. Thanks for that. Now, Christopher, you've got exciting things to help. Tell us about Ubelly and Gorill there, please. Good afternoon, everybody. And yeah, it's great to be here. In Black History Month as well. And I think Black History Month is very important to engage in black study, which is a study of the history of the modern world in a way. And the development of both the Black Atlantic and the Caribbean and the Americas and out of that, but also Britain. And I think, and how race organises that development. And I think Ubelly is an organisation which I've recently joined as a policy and research officer. And Ubelly is taken from the Swahili word meaning the future. And Ubelly follows a tradition of analysing the sort of social, economic, political structures within Britain that sort of organises life and communities. But particularly in relation to community assets and thinking about African diasporic, but also global majority community assets in Britain and how they are operating within that environment that I described. Within the social, economic, political structures that exist within Britain. And I think, yeah, this conversation is really interesting from what people have said so far. And I think one backdrop perhaps to the conversation and perhaps and reports that I've been reading to, you know, in the, I guess grounding myself in this role at Ubelly is a report that Ubelly did in 2015 called a place to call home. And it reviewed and Ubelly work with organisations and people across the country, including Claude. And over the last year, I think, been in conversation with co-operatives UK. And, and yeah, this report called a place to call home reviewed the status of 150 African diasporic organisations, community assets in the UK across the country. And there's, there's many insights I invite everyone to to read the report as soon to be a revised edition of the report in the coming weeks. But one of the takeaways was that 54% of those African diasporic community assets, the buildings had insecure features. And, and therefore, and there are various reasons around the sort of, you know, socio economic conditions in which those community assets are positioned, the various pressures, therefore on the governance of those community assets, the sort of changing demographics, and the sort of intergenerational, well, the difficulty in succession planning of those assets. And, and also the sort of changing sort of nature of the economy as well. We now live in a sort of digital economy and, and so therefore, to our extent, you know, are these buildings and infrastructures attuned to this sort of emerging digital economy. And therefore, you know, the services that these buildings and organisations offer, you know, to our extent, can they plug in to that, that emerging digital economy. And, and so yeah, so Bele have been in conversation with, as I said, with co-operatives UK about think thinking about community share models as, and in relation to co-operatives and community benefit societies as a as a model to think about the ownership of assets, to think about, you know, the social benefit of such a model in terms of asset based development. And, and, and so we've, we're at the formative stages of, of imagining and designing a research method to first review, map the existence of black and global majority co-operatives in the world in Britain. And, but also, as, as has already been stated, to think about, because, because I think one of the tensions I think the panellists have identified is this tension between the legal definition of a co-op and a community benefit society or a co-operative. And then the perhaps the black and global majority cultural forms, which exist and operate, such as the partner to reduce, you know, the ability to acquire housing, for example, or, but also to arrange finances and, and, and raise, yeah, raise finances for various sort of economic social activities. I was speaking to a colleague yesterday who's Kashmiri, and she spoke of the committee, which is actually the word in, in her community for a partner. So a committee is, is very, very much, yeah. For people who don't know, should we say though, for people, we know what part it is, but not everyone does know what part there is. So it's, it's basically, isn't it? It's a group of people coming together in the community where, you know, so say 20 people join and each of those people have to put money aside once a week or once a month, and then it rotates in terms of who gets there then pay out of the total kind of like some of money. And it allows people to go on holiday, to buy school uniforms, to buy a house. And, and in the 50s and 60s, I mean, it's, it's continued on the 50s and 60s. That's what people use the partner or the committee in order to buy their houses by their home. And, and there's a big debate about partners now about, are the net, are the, are all those generations carrying on on what are the problems and some people are saying, you know, maybe it should be put into a kind of a more co-operative space formally, because somewhere are very successful and others have issues that if Claudin, Christopher, if you agree with that kind of summary of what partner is. Yeah, I would, I would just add to it because if I'd have done my presentation, it was, I'd broken it down. Parkhand was kind of set up for those that don't know because our parents couldn't get bank loans, they couldn't get bank accounts. So what they did, they pooled their money and one selected person got it at every moment and they could use that as a deposit to get their house or a deposit to get a car. Again, as a co-operative move, as a group of people coming together. So that's, that's how they tackled banking back in the 60s until, until banks thought we were credible enough as black people to have bank accounts. You know, back then we could get post office accounts and we could get building society, for example, accounts, but we couldn't get proper bank accounts. So yeah. Yeah. And I just wanted to ask you, Christopher, because just to be talking about community assets and, and I think that there's a discussion around that particular moment. I know Manchester and London in particular, and I just wondered if this is where you're coming from. Like, for example, the Caribbean houses or West Indians community clubs and what's happening is they're part of the community, but they were never owned. So you're vulnerable to a council or a landlord may be taken away. You're right to that building. And so that's where there's a vulnerability and also the succession issue. Is that the kind of thing that you're talking about in terms of when you're saying about community assets? Yes. Yeah. And, and a lot of from the research that Bella did a lot of these community assets and sent the centres that you describe was set up in the wake of various forms of we could describe as social unrest. For example, the 1981 uprisings and an organisation that I've worked with in Manchester, the Mosside and Hume Development Trust, for example, was set up after the 1981 uprisings in Mosside. And therefore, so I think it's interesting to consider the conditions within which a given centre or building or organisation emerges. And, and because I think number one, I think, I guess my elders or that is, you know, that is a significant moment, which then gave rise to a, you know, a centre. And then, but then, you know, over time, those that sort of understand the sort of history and the political economic social conditions in which that arose, they get older and perhaps, and maybe this is a indication or a nod to, you know, the education of my generation and, or the lack thereof of, you know, these histories and, and therefore perhaps not necessarily understanding the significance of such centres for certain forms of community development. I know that's the case with me and I've learned a huge amount from people I've elders that I've worked with in London and particularly Manchester. So, so I think education is really important for understanding these histories, but then also therefore designing appropriate models that are contemporary sort of situation. And, and yeah, to what extent is the cooperative model or, you know, how can it serve us in this instance, in these instances, and also particularly in relation to those 150 organisations that I mentioned that Rebelle reviewed, you know, how many of them could benefit from these models. So, yeah. Yeah, I'll come back to you on that, but like Liz, I just wondered, you know, like for you, are there any, you know, are there any examples heritage wise of good examples that people could learn from that, you know, that could be that could be adapted. And, and, and even maybe, you know, we're talking about black history, won't there any examples from that, from that particular aspect and that lens as well of history that, that could assist us here. Yeah, there are some. I think, depending on what it is you're specifically looking for, there are lots of good comparisons, particularly when it's community led activity. So okay, once you take yourself out of the retail part of the, you know, the obvious business transactional part of the movement's history, and you kind of look at the communities themselves. Actually, for one thing, most of those communities in the UK are more diverse than they seem at first glance, especially when you look at what they produce. So most of the time what they produce is writing on paper, rather than necessarily photographs or even films, but even when they do those photographs they're taken, usually with a lot of bias. So they'll leave out the people that don't fit the narrative of what they're trying to explain so that they look more credible this is kind of going way back. But we have modern examples as well. So when it comes to the diversification of the movement, worker co-operatives, different types of platform co-operatives, music co-operatives, actors, people who, as we've just been talking about, who use, if not a very rigid version of the co-operative model, they use the values of the co-operative movement to sort themselves out. Particularly, as Claude mentioned, in the 60s and 70s when people are saying we need help with this, we need to come together, we need to collectivise. There are examples of it, but what I find really interesting is that sometimes you will see that this group exists and they're doing some work, and once they and their immediate sort of membership has established themselves and they've given themselves better education opportunities and they've moved on, they've bought houses, they've got into college, they've got better jobs. That then folds, that community sort of set up, the building might still be there maybe that they used and they might be used for different things, but that initial group and how it ran itself, its governance, that's gone then, it evaporates. And you think well actually there's probably more to learn from interviewing people. So we're not talking about 200 years ago, we're talking about 20 years ago, 30 years ago. If we can capture some of that learning, a little bit like Christopher was saying that what people don't think is relevant. They say oh we opened this in the 70s or we did this in the 80s because we had nobody to mind our kids because we had to work two jobs or whatever it happens to be. They came up with a community solution, but they don't think they have anything to teach often. They think oh that was in the past, things have changed now, young people have changed their, you know what they're interested in, they won't understand it in the same way. But we need that evidence don't we? So where we might be able to find examples where we've said oh there's Indian women's co-operative that are making these goods for sale because they can't get into a market so they have to do it for themselves. There's an example, what about the more modern examples? We're not going as far back, we're going back to maybe parents or grandparents generations and actually that's the emotional connection for a lot of younger people. Oh my gran was involved in something, you know it doesn't have to still exist for it to have been successful. Absolutely, part of my work is doing that and you are right once you start asking people they do share really good examples of good practice and they don't, it's not really documented. And you know examples are nurses, dance groups, Irish dance groups, black dance groups, you know Indian dance groups, amazing examples of how you know trained generations of people to be very successful. But it's kind of taken for granted as well isn't it? And I think just to say maybe as well it's time for people to put questions in the Q&A box. But even to share those examples I think because we're like prodding people's consciences and sometimes grandparents tell stories and you know you kind of put it to one side until it's ready for you to do it and then really it's about tapping into that. In the way that you know Claude said that you know he's done you know and you know Rose will even have that history you know in terms of music there'll be lots of examples that might have taken for granted I think. And Rose just wanted to ask you about a social investment in community shares you know is there a way that you're looking at to make that more diverse and to make people more aware of it? Yeah we need to make people more aware of community shares generally actually but in terms of like saying like from a strategic point of view we're doing as much as we can so we have signed up to the social investment manifesto and we have done some work on sharia law and community shares and obviously really excited to see what comes out of the work with Ubellay. We've also we have a booster fund and now an access to booster fund so it means when you raise a community shares and sorry that's any to raise a word is just in case anybody viewing isn't aware of community shares I like crowdfunding but you get to own a piece in the co-op so you get that equity piece in there as well and it's only available it's through the financial conduct authority and here at profitives UK. We operate the community shares unit which is the the soft regulation of that market and it needs to be soft regulation it's interesting what you said about powder because it's getting the balance isn't it it's money needs regulating but also you don't want to kind of strangle hold the thing that's doing the good bit so it really is you know quite challenging but what we've been doing in that space in particular in our access to booster when we went so say for example. I'll give you the example of an easy one football club within short FC not far from here and wanted to become a fan led football club and they wanted to set out the drainage and put in new stands with our community shares offer and the fans raised 50,000 pounds and then co-operatives UK through the booster fund match that for another 50,000 pounds on our access to booster fund. We've got really specific targets to try and get into, you know, again, let's say more diverse communities. That's that's really challenging anyway, but also what's challenging and I do have a little bit poacherton gamekeeper in this conversation because I raised social investment as a social entrepreneur and me as now a middle class white woman but coming from that working class heritage. I find it really difficult to be able to speak in the language of investors and there's a huge language barrier that you know the kind of you know nobody wakes up and says I want to start a co-op you know people actually tend to kind of just find themselves cooperating. Or they're actually trying to solve a problem, you know, let's say the local pub or, you know, my community centres about to be taken off because people have a problem and they end up in actual fact running a business and it might be a cooperative or another farm of social enterprise. So, not only not only are they having to get all these skills of being able to run a business, then when they need some pump prime and an investment into that, you know, the way investors talk to them is like as though they've been to Harvard for 10 years. There's a real mismatch in social investment generally on this so the big piece to one pick there but let's say we've kind of done some very specific stimulation around those markets, but we're aware just putting it in a manifesto or just saying we're going to do it. We've done a lot of hard work and a lot of hard graphs are kind of, you know, get to that so again I think we're just on the beginning of that journey but I'm expecting us to find that that'll need a lot more support. So, you know, again it's this thing about what you were asking about the white and the middle class you know we've got 65% increase in community pubs actually we've just produced our cooperative a mutual report for 2023. That's one of the big findings that came out of it, but actually lots of that is in rural white communities. And then you start to think about that and it's important to the village you know they've got this pub that they want to maintain, but actually then you'll get a lot of people in that village that probably when you go back to the volunteering piece Karen. Well, I am actually a financial accountant and now I'm actually already a governor on a school that I know how to do governance and I'm, you know, so you're tapping into an audience that has already got quite a lot of those skills I needed to be able to deliver on a community shares offer. So I suspect not only is it going to be hard to find people, hard to convince people hard to get people to kind of start up. I believe that there'll be quite a lot of support needed along the way as well. So yeah, just wait a wee saddler there's no magic wand we can wave here. And we've just got to keep keep going and keep trying and be grateful of those little wins and not shy away from like that. You know I don't take the word overwhelming likely I do think it's quite overwhelming the task in hand but that shouldn't stop us from keeping trying. Thanks for that now. Just before we wrap up, we've got one question from the audience. We've got more than one question, but one question I'm going to put to you which is very current at the moment is, does being part of a co-op make you feel equipped to stand up to the current challenge in multiculturalism and the rise of culture politics? What can co-ops do? Can each briefly answer that? I'm going to come to you first Liz. Wow, that's a question. Well, OK, the complexity of representing co-operativeness, which is supposed to be politically neutral, but of course by being co-operative we are inherently being political because we're standing up for people's rights and equity. And that's not the same as equality. Equity and equality is not the same thing because we know we have to do more for people in order for them to have equal opportunity to raise their level of equity. I think being part of a co-op, for most people who knowingly join a co-op, they join it because of what that movement represents. But like Rosend and all the other analysts have said, some people accidentally start a co-op because they're trying to solve a problem. I think that the thing for us to remember that the sort of heritage keepers, if you like, is not to be frightened of getting it wrong. We have to be open to having conversations and to looking to fill the gaps in our narrative and what we collect and to be not put off by the pressure that can be put on by culture wars, which are a distraction, let's be fair, from what is the real issues in our society and dealing with those. Most people who are aware of these pressures are also aware that there are things that we really need to do to put pressure on our government, on our systems, our society to make those changes. We need to be part of them and we need to be able to, as much as possible, reflect that within our own practice and to recognise it and to call out when it's going wrong or we're not doing it properly. So, I know that's a little bit of a woolly answer, but I think it's something that most of us are really aware of. Claude? I think in this modern time every organisation should have an equality diversity and inclusion policy. It should have at board level, at staff level and at membership level, it should have a plan of how it's going to implement that because some of them won't have them now. It should have a plan how it's going to implement its policy and it should have an evaluation tool and funders should look at organisations, whether it's co-operatives or whatever. And they should be looking at the nine characteristics that are highlighted in the Equalities 2010 Act and they should be ensuring that representation for all groups based on the nine characteristics. Race is one of them, is upheld. So, that's what I want to see. I want to see everybody being understanding whether you're a board member or a staff member. You have to be dealing with equality. You have to be pushing that. It has to come from all levels. I take the point of government. Government is a separate entity. They talk a lot about it but they're not delivering it. We need to see more black people in positions of power and sharing their knowledge. Thank you for that and Rose. One of the reasons why I wanted to do this is because I also want ideas as well. Even the fact that I want to say we're doing what we can from the position we're in is the wrong way round. So, my challenge actually is I can't see who asked that question. I was just looking. I'd like whoever asked that question if you've got ideas actually to share them. Again, like Claude said, the awareness of it and actually not just putting the policy in place but are you evaluating it against it and how you're doing and just asking yourself those tough questions and holding the mirror up is what I'd say. It's not a period where culture is quite frightening really so we've got to stand up and be strong together in standing up to that. Christopher. Sorry about that. Yeah, I think it's a good question. I guess it's important maybe to make a distinction because legally co-operatives aren't necessarily designed to provide social benefit. They're designed to benefit their members as opposed to a community benefit society which is legally defined to benefit a community and it has to benefit a community in order for it to exist. But that's not to say that co-operatives shouldn't benefit a community and to be designed to meet a sort of social need. For example, Bele have just set up a housing co-operative called Gida housing co-operative and I'll post a link in the chat. Hopefully everyone can see it including the audience. Yes, if you can because we've got a wrap so if you can do that. I was just going to say that but then also that question or more broadly to what extent co-operatives or community benefit societies support black and global majority communities in terms of asset based development to attend to various social needs is a question that we're exploring with co-operatives of UK. So, as Rose said, we'd be very interested and it's an open invite to have further discussions like that with people that are interested. Thank you. Thank you so much. I mean we know this conversation could continue. Hopefully this is part one because it's just fascinating so much to learn and experience from all of you on this call. And we've had somebody in the chat saying that co-operative Heritage Trust Museum is a great place to visit. So if you look that up, I'm sure as well Liz will welcome you. So just to say thank you for joining us and for witnessing this. Thank you to Liz McIver, who is a social historian trust manager of the co-operative Heritage Trust. Thank you to Rose. Rose, yep. Thank you. Thank you to Rose. Rose Marley, CEO of Co-operatives UK. And to Claude Hendrickson, MBA, leader for co-historic communities at Leeds Community Homes, a bit of a mouthful there. Thank you Claude. And finally to Christopher Oliver, policy and research officer for the Bailey initiative and we look forward to seeing what unfolds with you there Christopher and all the work that you're doing. Thank you everyone for joining us. As we said, a recording will be available for you to watch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much guys. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good black history month. Exactly, yeah.