What are we doing?
The NewBridge Project and the Solidarity Economy Association are collaborating to create a useful tool that can make visible and strengthen organisations, projects, initiatives and individuals in the area who are offering an alternative to the extractive and oppressive mainstream economic system.
In short, we’re creating a map of everything that helps people to meet their material and social needs in ways that don’t harm people or the planet, contributing to building a more just and sustainable world.
Around the world, this type of activity is known as the solidarity economy.
What is the solidarity economy?
The solidarity economy serves everyone. It is made up of different types of activity: informal meetings, grassroots organisations, and local community groups, through to legally-recognised businesses, associations, networks or organisations. These initiatives may look very different, but they are all working towards building a just and sustainable world.
You can find out more about what the solidarity economy is at https://www.solidarityeconomy.coop/what-is-se.
Why are we doing this?
We believe the first step to strengthening our solidarity economy is to help people understand it better and to assist those working within it to support each other. We are collecting information (data) from grassroots organisations, informal meetings, neighbourhood projects, local community groups, co-ops, and associations that share the values of the solidarity economy, and using it to create a digital map and directory. This will be available on a special website we are creating that will also contain other information, including inspiring stories and video case studies.
This mapping will allow us all to:
- Recognise and celebrate what is already happening in our region;
- Look at what is missing;
- Join the dots to create a collaborative and stronger voice;
- Enable us to better share resources and drive forward change.
The map will be a starting point for us to plan future artistic and community-led activities and responsive action to pressing social and ecological issues, through working closely with people and projects across Newcastle and Gateshead. This conversation will be community-led; building on people's’ experiences of living and working locally.
This work is part of a wider project to map the solidarity economy across the whole of the UK. For more information, visit https://www.solidarityeconomy.coop.
A note about data sharing
The data we are collecting will be used to create a digital map and directory for this project. We will be publishing this data under what is called an Open License (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Database_License), which means that it will be possible for others to republish it for other maps and directories, or alongside other sources of data. We’ll clearly indicate in the survey which information will be open and publicly available, and which is purely for our internal use.
Want to be involved?
We’re asking people to share information about their initiative with us by completing this short survey, it should take you no more than 5-10 minutes to complete.
