News

SF agreed £2,000 to fully fund two places for worker cooperators on the Barefoot programme, to give them grounding and training to become co-op organisers and business advisors themselves. The programme takes on 15 people in each cohort, and will run for six months starting in September 2025.

£5,000 was unanimously voted by Solidfund members to support a workers' bid to take over 13th Note, Glasgow's popular vegan restaurant and grassroots music venue that has hosted gigs by the likes of Idlewild, Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand.

Solidfund members approved a £10,000 distribution to Hempen, a worker cooperative based in Oxfordshire whose mission is to grow and cultivate UK based organic hemp "for the health of the people, rural communities and the land."

SF agreed to donate £4,000 to the Gaza Crisis Fund set up by Yalla, a transnational worker co-op based in Palestine. During the emergency and invasion, the co-op's focus shifted from delivering projects to supporting worker members surviving in refuge, and helping rebuild their lives when the war ends.

SF members voted to subscribe €5,000 for co-op shares in GFF (Ex-GKN for Future) shares, to support workers at the former GKN automotive drivetrain factory near Florence to take control and convert the plant to socially useful production.

Fund members voted £2,775 to update and secure Kate Whittle's classic guide on practical governance in cooperatives, 'From Conflict to Cooperation'. Originally published in print only, it has been comprehensively revised.

Members debated and approved a £5,000 distribution to MyCool Class, to help with the growing pains of recruiting new teachers and students to the world's first international platform learning workers' co-op.

Members voted £7,000 towards startup costs for Selgars Mill in Devon - the first residential events and organising space for co-ops in the UK since the Co-operative College sold Stanford Hall more than twenty years ago.

Solidfund members supported and helped organise Cooperation Jackson's UK speaking tour in the spring, and voted money towards startup costs for a new All-Ireland solidarity economy network.

Solidfund members voted to make a £2,500 contribution to Birmingham Warehouse Café, which re-opened as a worker co-op in February.

Members voted to support Sailboat Projectand its new venture, Sail Cargo South East (SCSE), with £1,000 towards the cost of developing a strategic brand identity.

North Liverpool residents are opening a new launderette in the Everton-Anfield area. It's a worker-community coop, so its members will be both employees and service users.