SolidFund members discussed and voted in favour of a proposal to donate £500 to a fledgling project aimed at preserving records from the wave of British worker co-operatives and co-operative development in the 1970s-1990s.
SolidFund was born out of an idea we had at the first Worker Coop Weekend, in 2014. One reason for setting up the Fund was to guarantee we could hold worker coop gatherings every year. So check out Worker Coop Weekend 2016, 6-8 May. This year it's in Staffordshire.
Co-operatives UK has just published new research on worker co-ops, by Virginie Pérotin of Leeds University. Titled 'What do we really know about worker co-operatives?', Pérotin's paper refutes one or two widely shared assumptions.
CICOPA, the world federation of worker coops, has released a video reflecting the inspiration and experiences of young worker and social cooperators from 9 countries.
With support from the Fund, three members of Belfast Cleaning Coop visited Custom House Workers' Coop in east London in June 2015, to show support and learn from each other.
Fifteen brave souls congregated last Wednesday in a theatre rehearsal room in Hackney with plenty of flipcharts, marker pens and laptops, to build the SolidFund website.
We've just published a short report on the Fund's first year, which sums up how and why we started, and what's happened in the 15 months since Member 001 signed up.