Common Knowledge crafts digital tools that enable communities and causes to make radical changes

We’re delighted to profile an organisation that’s new to us, but which has been doing the work of crafting digital tools that serve empowered localities and communities since 2018. They’re a workers-cooperative called Common Knowledge, and it’s exciting simply to list their recent work:

Cooperation Town

We came upon Common Knowledge from a tweet by the National Lottery’s Cassie Robinson, praising their process in co-creating action networks for Cooperation Town - an islands-wide network of food cooperatives, which was kicked off in London’s Kentish Town during the pandemic. (We’ve just realised we already covered this initiative in its earliest stages last January, inspired by its anarchist rhetoric and practice).

It’s a great example of post-Covid “building back better”, and the workshops show how the construction of these platforms can happen with bottom-up community power in mind. Below is an extract from the first blogged workshop (and here’s workshops two and three, which really shows CK’s meticulous methods):

Food co-ops are small, 10-20 household groups of neighbours who benefit from the economies of scale of working together as a team. They arrange a regular supply of affordable food to all their homes by pooling money and time, making decisions together and then distributing roles to make it happen.

Compared to a food bank or a food larder, a food co-op is more involved. Co-op members do tend to get cheaper food, through bulk orders from the surplus food providers like the Felix Project, FareShare or local suppliers. Through membership and participation often emerges strong neighbourly bonds, a community rhythm and a bolstered appreciation of the power you have, through others around you, to change things for the better. [Editor: We’ve covered food coops in the DA here and here].

After figuring out food supplies, some Cooperation Town co-ops have gone on to recognise other neighbourly needs, for example childcare provision, that could also be organised collectively. They began to think bigger and more creatively.

In this way, networks like Cooperation Town seed new community connections and begin to paint a more vibrant, dynamic and empowering picture of a social reality than what many experience today in Britain.

Another world is possible… but how do we get there?

It can be exciting to hear about this idea and see it work. Many people have voiced interest in starting a food co-op in their area after hearing about Cooperation Town. But what the network's organisers noticed is that turning that enthusiasm into action is a challenge that repeatedly resurfaces in the 'lifecycle' of each group and the network at large.

Community organisers and those substantially involved in 'people work' are well-versed in the power of direct one-to-one relationships. They have the capacity to allay fears, build confidence and fill in many of the blanks that it takes to get things moving. It's what Cooperation Town's network coordinators have spent much of their attention doing with new and emerging groups, and has arguably been the driving force of the network so far.

As the network continues to expand, they are increasingly concerned to shift gear away from this one-to-many organising model, in recognition of some very well-documented limitations experienced by many networks, and towards a more 'distributed' model:

Though more horizontal when compared to traditional command and control leadership, distributed organizing often relies on a central coordination group to launch the network and to drive it towards common goals and milestones. When done properly, it can help a movement or campaign scale rapidly and channel huge amounts of collective power.

For example, there's only so many hours in the day to keep in touch with everyone which can risk the sustainability of the strategy. Besides, who knows best? Increasingly the groups' participants are those asking, figuring it out and answering questions. Coordinators of a network can capture some golden nuggets of 'good practice' but there's no single answer in what is a very context-dependent community project.

A reliance on paid network staff, cash grants and a select few financially self-reliant volunteers can cement a hierarchical power 'over' relationship stemming from philantrophists 'down' to participants, encouraging forms of gatekeeping that are common in NGO-led and progressive initiatives.

We're reminded of an observation by Stripe Partners' field notes from Dundee:

Eddie [a food larder organiser] feels a lack of autonomy over the everyday decisions that get made; everything that he wants to do or change has to be voted on and signed off by the centre’s local management group. This has meant that he once had to turn down funding as he hadn’t sought the correct permission from the committee to apply for the grant in the first place and so the action was blocked.

Autonomy is what Cooperation Town wants to cultivate at a group level. To get there, they need to form the right kind of relationships at the network level to match.

Exploring what this might look like encourages us to imagine how everyday people can work locally and support one another trans-locally through solidarity not charity, everyday government by the third sector and liberal, conditional generosity.

***

Here are more projects:

AIRSIFT

A Dustbox, from Citizen Sense

Airsift is “a platform to analyze citizen data. It is developed as part of the Airkit tookit that provides resources for you to set up a citizen-led monitoring project to keep track of air quality in your area…Air pollution is a planetary health emergency. Air quality monitors are not always located where air pollution is occurring, and citizens might have many reasons to gather data to document and analyze air quality.”

Airsift allows access to the “Dustboxes” in each area of the country, to compare air pollution; it lets you input your own data as “Observations”; it allows you make a graph and do “Analysis” of air quality over time; and finally, you can grab wider attention by composing “Stories” from your data.

NHS New Deal

From Common Knowledge: “Just Treatment is a patient-led organisation campaigning to ensure everyone has fair access to high quality healthcare.

“We worked with them on their new NHS New Dealcampaign. The campaign calls for proper funding for our NHS, support for doctors and nurses, and putting the health of patients above the interests of big corporations.

“The website offers an entry point for people to get involved in their people-powered campaign. From there, Just Treatment organisers can connect with these people directly, suggest ways for them to take action and put pressure on politicians to meet their demands.”

Peace Insight

From Common Knowledge: “this is an online platform for local analysis, insight and mapping on peacebuilding around the world.

“We designed and developed a new website that highlights the stories of local peacebuilders. The new website allows for more content discovery and cross-linking between sections, weaving theoretical techniques of peacebuilding into stories about these techniques in action.”

***

More from Common Knowledge here.