In any town or city, or even neighbourhood or village, there is a wealth of intelligence, skills and experience that could contribute to change. Yet it is difficult to get traction around bigger agendas because people are disconnected - often polarised - and their energy is dissipated.

CANs - community agency networks, or citizen action networks - act as containers for that energy, bringing people together to cooperate and collaborate in ways that can benefit everyone.

[Here’s where we explain the CAN concept]

At the core might be those long committed to community organising - including social entrepreneurs, artists and careworkers.  But a CAN only comes into being when including the traditional excluded and designed to attract those who are disinterested.

Cosmolocalism marks the difference between a localism that cannot sustain itself because it is simply too small with limited resources of skills and expertise. And one that is able to build its own sustainable economy, entirely through access to the global commons.

This is subtly different from the old Green slogan, “think global act local”.  As much as we need an element of the biggest perspective in our local thinking, we now need more focus on the needs of people in their communities.

Cosmo-localism is more a global tool box of the best resourced solutions for your sized town, city or region, available to you as a blue-print, ready to be manufactured in a town near you.

“CAN” is a generic term that describes all community incubators, committed to linking the flourishing of people and planet. Very successful early forms include Mondragons, Transition Towns, Ecovillages, and certain forms of Municipalities and Cooperatives. More recent models include Civic Square and Cooperation Jackson. Each have philosophy, practice and ways of working that connect the well being of people to the flourishing of the planet.

The Alternative Global initiates and supports CANs starting up all over the world. Through a COLLABORATORY process and fortnightly co-creator calls, anyone can start one of their own with only a handful of collaborators. Our network of new CANs currently extends across the UK, Cape Town, Africa, Tijuana Mexico, Naples, Italy and California, USA.

In March 2022, a group of CANs have participated in the Presencing Institute's U-Lab process bringing 900 people together to act in convergence. Through this process we hope to develop better tools for initiating CANs and also learn valuable lessons about how to join CANs together in a global network.