Using principle 6 to solve the capital conundrum A new venture from Oliver Sylvester-Bradley of the Open Co-op and Leo Sammallahti of VME Coop When it comes to marketing their businesses, co-ops often hit the same challenge: without the profit-driven model of...
THe MArches hive
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In 1997 the Robert Owen Group launched a co-operative school centred initial teacher training project through the Marches Consortium and in partnership with the University of Gloucester. The scheme rapidly grew and became the largest of its type in the United Kingdom , successfully training over 3,700 post graduates who now work in our schools and colleges with many at senior leadership levels. Alongside this we launched a Master’s level programme for trainers in schools and for former trainees and teachers to access as career progression.
It became clear that the absence of an institute of higher education in the Marches sub region posed a real impediment to developing research, seminal thinking and platonic discourse. We often ignore the valuable infrastructure that comes with a quality centre of higher education. The Directors of the Marches Consortium developed a Robert Owen Learning Academy in Leominster and encouraged many ‘hub’ schools to have satellite post graduate libraries for their ‘clusters’.
This is all now background history but our 1998 creation of “query” as a radical journal of left field thinking has now in 2021 led to the addition of this section to the Marches Hive website. We want to stimulate thinking, discussion and the sharing of relevant news and knowledge.
We called the original 1990’s journal query because our minds turned to the creation in the 1870’s of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society which started life as as ‘Health and Education Fund’. In 1920 Walter Conway , Aneurin Bevan and others formed the radical Query Club as a new development. The Club was a cross between a debating society, a mutual support group , a focus for sharing contemporary knowledge and a body set on advancing radical thinking to address the issues of the day. In those times adult education was very much in cells following on the model of the early Methodist house groups.
We believe the challenges of today in many ways mirror those of one hundred years ago and we do encourage everyone’s to engage with query and to share your thoughts, views, knowledge and understanding so that we can all grow together . Thank you
News Articles
The Social Enterprise UK Christmas Gift Guide 2022
Social Enterprise UK is delighted to launch its 2022 Christmas Gift Guide, featuring products from Social Enterprise UK members! It’s got your Christmas shopping covered from chocolates to socks and babygrows to growing herbs. The guide is full of presents with...
Imperialism and the Diggers
On 1st April 1649, two months after the execution of Charles I, the Diggers, a group of poor radical agrarian protesters, arrived to farm unused land at St George’s Hill in Surrey, England. Prominent Digger Gerrard Winstanley wrote, “England is not a Free People, till...
Co-ops and local development
Impact Conference looks at co-ops as engines of local development The event, organised by US apex NCBA CLUSA, looked at projects in Africa and heard updates from sector representatives in Ukraine This year’s NCBA CLUSA Coop Impact Conference featured sessions on the...
Co-op launches leading new colleague fertility treatment policy
New enhanced policy supports individuals, partners and surrogates receiving and recovering from the physical and psychological effects of fertility treatment. New research from Co-op finds over two fifths (45%) of people currently undertaking or have undertaken...
Seasonal Greetings
On behalf of the Robert Owen Society Board of Directors we would like to offer to our members, supporters and followers all good wishes for a festive Christmas and a peaceful and co-operative 2023. We live in rapidly changing times where our people are increasingly...
Failure is an option
written by Kelly Bewers and Dan Woolley illustration by Heather Savage The Hubble Telescope, one of the most incredible inventions in our recent times, was designed with failure in mind. Kathryn Sullivan, one of the astronauts onboard Hubble, explains in her brilliant...
Citizen Network Osk
Citizen Network Osk: A new co-op for a new world of connections Responding to global crisis with 'a network of people and trust, which is values-based, and works on the street level' A new global co-operative has launched with the aim of connecting people and groups...
New Models of Farm Succession appoints Resonance as Finance Partner
We’re pleased to share that Resonance have joined the New Models for Farm Succession project team as our finance partner. The project is researching ways in which farmland owners could better transfer land, through sale or asset transfer, to...
Case Study: The Islington Model
In 2010, Islington’s Fairness Commission reported that the borough is a place of stark inequalities, ‘two Islingtons’ where acute deprivation still exists side by side with extreme wealth. On the one hand, Islington is home to some of the wealthiest people in the...
