Co-operative Fortnight 2020

Every year Co-operative Alternatives with hundreds of co-ops and organisations across the UK work together to promote co-ops during Co-op Fortnight (22 June to 5 July, 2020).
This year, we want to harness some of the new co-operation we’ve seen during the coronavirus pandemic to change society for the better. Co-operative Alternatives is organising an online event on the 2nd of July for all co-operatives in the North and South of Ireland.

Co-operative Fortnight – Co-operating for an alternative future
Online Thursday 2nd July 2020 from 6.30 to 8.30

If co-operation and mutual aid have been the mitigating features of the Covid-19 crisis, could it also cure the ills of our economies?

This event brings together the community of co-operatives in Northern Ireland to discuss the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. First, we would like to offer co-operatives a space to come together and share their experiences over the past few months, how they have been affected and how they have coped with the pandemic and the measures put in place by government (lockdown, business support schemes, etc). The event also provides an opportunity to discuss how we can build the foundations for a fairer and more sustainable economy, by placing co-operation, solidarity and mutual aid at the centre of our economic relations with each other. Co-operatives can play a crucial role in the transition to a greener and fairer economy and we would like to gather you thoughts on how we can intervene to give them more visibility in the imminent debates around the future direction of the economy post-Covid19.

Join the  Co-operative Alternatives’ event on the 2nd July 2020 at 6.30. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/co-operative-fortnight-co-operating-for-an-alternative-future-tickets-109838826888

Other Free Events online for Co-operative Fortnight 2020

Evening Lecture with Sonja Novkovic: Humanism, participation and co-operative governance
Monday 29th June from 6.30 to 8.30
Sonja Novkovic is one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of co-operatives. She is Professor of Economics and Academic director of the International Centre for Co operative Management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada.
This lecture promotes a discussion about governance in co-operatives from a humanistic economics perspective. How is human dignity, democratic decision-making, and engagement of members and stakeholders safeguarded in co-operatives as people-centred organisations? What structures are deployed to ensure such engagement? What are the processes co-operatives use to avoid the pitfalls attributed to them in the corporate governance literature (property rights problems; slow decision-making processes; conflicts and heterogeneity, among others)?
The lecture promotes a conversation about these competing understandings and their implications for co operative governance.

For more information and to book your online place visit https://ukscs.coop/event/2020-coopsfortnight-virtual-lecture-with-sonja-novkovic/

Evening Lecture with Andrew Bibby : Reassessing the early productive cooperatives: worker democracy then and now
Friday July 3rd from 7.30 – 9pm
Andrew Bibby is a writer and journalist who has written widely on the co-operative business model for the national press and for national and international co-operative organisations.

Britain’s early cooperative movement didn’t just intend to run grocery stores. Even before the Rochdale Pioneers launched their society in 1844 there had been several attempts to develop co-operatively run mills and factories. What was called productive co-operation was to be a significant, if often controversial, idea for the whole of the rest of the nineteenth century.
The story of these co-operatives, direct ancestors of what today we would call workers’ co-operatives, has been forgotten – or perhaps, as Andrew Bibby will suggest in his lecture, conveniently written out of the official account of British co-operation.

For more details and to book your free place at the webinar lecture organised by the UK Society for Co-operative Studies, please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/coopfortnight-ukscs-lecture-andrew-bibby-tickets-79946639551 .