Cycling out of Poverty supports students, health volunteers, farmers and small entrepreneurs with bicycles to improve access to basic needs and services as education, health care, work and income. We believe that a bicycle makes a difference in this world and is a...
THe MArches hive
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Stay up to date with all Marches Hive activity by viewing our news posts below.
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
Cooperatives stand together to end violence against women and girls
The ICA’s Gender Equality Committee marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November by hosting a webinar to show how cooperatives are tackling gender-based violence in their communities. Over 65...
The Social Value Podcast
Social Enterprise UK has launched a new podcast exploring the ways in which social value can be used to help businesses, the public sector and Government to develop a fairer, greener society. Social value is a way of maximising the positive social, economic and...
Q&A: Public-Common Partnerships
Public-Common Partnerships (PCPs) are a proposed approach to the common ownership and governance of assets and resources. Imagined as a reverse engineering of the Public-Private Partnerships that dominated the past 40 years, PCPs propose a role for public institutions...
Co-ops and cultural heritage: Mondiacult
A side event at this year’s UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development (Mondiacult 2022) looked at how cooperatives advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through culture and the creative sector. The session, led by the...
Canada’s housing co-ops beat the market on affordability, report shows
A study of rents in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa and found the difference is becoming more marked as inflation hits the private sector A report comparing rents in five Canadian cities found that co-op apartment rents were consistently...
Regulation inspiration: Ian Adderley of the FCA on the rules for the co-op sector
'Compliance and correct governance may seem daunting but it can have a real impact on people's lives' The Financial Conduct Authority currently regulates the conduct of over 50,000 firms in the UK to ensure they comply with standards of business governance and...
ICA Governance Committee launches enquiry into General Assembly election
The enquiry follows a dispute over the validity of 64 board-at-large election ballots where delegates mistakenly voted for too many candidates The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) is conducting an enquiry into its elections for president and board at large,...
Leaving Lincolnshire Co-op: CEO Ursula Lidbetter on her life with the society
'Because we know the place, we’re connected to people, understand their needs and respond to them' “A co-op is about providing something that people need, and doing it collectively,” says Ursula Lidbetter. “You’ve got to be connected to the people you are trying to...
New year honours list recognises contributions from co-op sector
A former Co-op Group executive and three community interest company (CIC) leaders are among those on the new years honours list. Helen Webb, who served as the Group’s chief people and services officer from April 2017 to July last year, was made OBE for her...
