We don’t just want a bigger slice of the cake. We want the bakery. What do a GP practice, a brewery, a gaming company, a queer nightclub and food whole-sellers have in common? They're all worker-owned! This three-minute video re-caps Scotland’s latest gathering...
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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
Is your co-op or mutual sustainability ready?
The BCCM’s new Sustainability Strategy for Co-operatives and Mutuals course has been designed to help co-operatives and mutuals implement the Co-operatives and Mutuals Climate Policy. Our new, internationally accredited training program with consultancy...
Call for £40m investment into community shares
The Community Shares Unit, led by Co-operatives UK in partnership with Locality and Plunkett Foundation, has responded to the Dormant Assets consultation with a headline call for £40m to be invested into growing the community shares market. There is expected to be...
Help inform vital research on the state of the social enterprise movement
Will you play your part and help to map social enterprise in the UK? Evidence collecting for 2023’s State of Social Enterprise (SOSE) survey will begin from the end of January ! The State of Social Enterprise survey runs every two years and is the most comprehensive...
Reimagine and Re:wild Your College Campus
Re:wild Your Campus is giving college students the opportunity to reimagine their campus with a focus on climate resilience. The initiative is the result of a new partnership between the global conservation organization Re:wild and the student-founded...
CO-OPERATIVES FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
Tools to Measure Co-operative Impact and Performance In an increasingly performance-oriented society, metrics matter. What we measureaffects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things.”— Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul...
21 Children’s Books Spreading Love for Food and Community
This year, Food Tank is highlighting 21 titles to encourage young readers’ interest in the food they eat and the world around them. These books for the young, and the young at heart, tell the stories of community gardens, celebrate dishes shared between generations,...
Native American Indian Cooperative
StatementThe Co-operative provides incentives to 2,700+ American Indian artists representing over 410 tribal nations for the preservation of their contemporary and traditional crafts, culture, and education through involvement in Indian Culture Programs,...
Dairy business bigger than Apple & Microsoft put together: Experts
More than 1 billion people dependent on dairy for livelihood Dairying is possibly as old as civilization of mankind, yet the global experts said at the IDF World Dairy Summit 2022 at Greater Noida that its business is bigger than tech giants Apple and Microsoft put...
#cooper4dev
What is #coops4dev 🌍 ? As people-centred businesses, cooperatives are owned and run by their members, who have an equal say in what their organisation does and how it generates and uses profits.Cooperatives are a tried-and-tested model in international...
