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Report from MAN Up UK Summit in Hull

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Hello! I’m creating a little pictorial record of our MAN Up UK Summit in Hull. Participants will collect more notes over time, but for now you can see photos, small descriptions, and in some cases, video of web sessions. Enjoy!

Monday 5th – What, How, Why?

img_019810.00-16.00 Find out about Mutual Aid Networks, the international pilots and the vision for Hull. Kate MacDonald, Hull pilot steward introduces the day. Then Stephanie img_0210Rearick the Creative Director of the MAN, img_0199Madison, WI sets the scene. How can the Mutual Aid Network tools can help your project or help you do the things you want to do with money being the last option rather than the first? Where do Hull tools such as timebanking and Hull Coin fit in?

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Delicious lunch by timebankers, served at the Hive ——————–  🙂

 

 

2pm. MAN Pilot Site examples – Julia Ho of Solidarity Economy St. Louis and img_0211Stephanie Rearick of Madison WI share about their pilot site plans and learning so far. We go on to talk more about the Hull pilot (HUMANE – Hull’s Urban-Scale Mutual Aid Network Economy) and explore how it can help projects and communities in the city. For more information on the international pilot sites click here.

Tuesday 6th – Visioning

10.00-11.00 What is money? Community Currency Engineer, Matthew Slater joins us to talk about what money is and what it isn’t.

Matthew Slater is a world expert on complementary currency systems, software engineer, and co-author of the Money & Society img_0223MOOC.

Poverty and recession are not just a problem of greed and failing economic policies, they are designed in to money itself. Once you understand where money comes from and what it actually is, you’ll see why we cannot be serious about tackling poverty, without confronting our own, and our community’s relationship to money.

Mooc: http://iflas.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/money-and-society-mooc.html

Twitter: @matslats

img_022911.00-16.00 #thesocietywewant: Ahead of the London parliamentary launch of the Webb Memorial Trust (WMT)/Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) publication ‘Forging a Good Local Society: Tackling poverty through a local economic reset’ we along with WMT Director Barry Knight continue our Hull discussions focussing on visioning #thesocietywewant. In the context of the Mutual Aid Network Summit we focus on how timg_0244hese MAN collaborative tools can help us take practical steps to create this. Moving away from focussing on the problems, to asset based solution focussed action. Creating the society we want for all.

At 3pm we are joined online from Vancouver by Michael Linton the creator of the concept of “Local Exchange Trading System”, commonly known as LETS. He will be sharing with us his new initiative ‘Open Money’ http://openmoney.editme.com/nowofmoney.

 

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Lunchtime: Picnic in Queens Gardens ——————————————-  🙂

5-7pm Evening: Skillshare @ Ground, Beverley Road, HU3 1YE: ‘Inside-Out’ is a weekly informal and free art space at GROUND (workshop, gallery, studios, printing press and social space). Paint/draw/squick clay/drink tea. ALL WELCOME! 7.30-9ish Inside-Out is followed by Icarus Group (in association with mad pride) Mental health exploration group: celebrate, share, support and eat.

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a commons garden!

Wednesday 7th – Technology and Tools

8am Kundalini Yoga – Kundalini Yoga is known as the yoga of awareness. Based on 84 postures of Hatha, it brings together postures, breathing, chanting and meditation. A lovely way to start the day!

img_0260img_02559.30-11.30 Savings Pools: Sometimes you need money. The kind you get from your bank – for housing, utilities or transportation. We learn how we can connect with people to build and share a pool of money that can be made available when members need it. In this workshop we learn more about successful savings pool models and get access to resources to starting our own. Joined online by Phil Stevens from New Zealand who has been involved in technology, systems design, and activism for social and environmental causes since the img_02581980s. He is the chair of the Living Economies Educational Trust, a registered charity in New Zealand with an educational mission centered arouimg_0259nd alternative economic solutions for communities. He is also a champion of heterodox economic theory as a means of developing sound public policy, and to this end cofounded the New Economics Movement with Deirdre Kent.

Video of web meeting here. First half is Savings Pool workshop.

 

11.30-13.00 Communication skillshare: We learn to img_0261communicate our goals and project clearly and succinctly. Share your dreams in ways that others can join in realizing them!

Video of web meeting here. Second half is Communication skillshare, audio only.

 

 

 

img_026514.00-16.00 Decentralised Networks and The Real Sharing Economy: Technology has given rise to a number of successful companies that claim to be pioneering the sharing economy, start-ups such as Uber and AirB’N’B have managed to disrupt huge industries and now huimg_0263gely profitable from this technical innovation. But do these companies represent the real sharing economy or as some commentators suggested just devalued the economy exploiting others in the process?

 

This session looks at how the work of the Mutual Aid Network could work with the img_0266same technical innovations and create new opportunities to create and share value in a truly collaborative network.

 

The session is facilitated by Kaini Industries who have developed HullCoin using blockchain technology to create a digital social currency that creates a public ledger of social value being generated in Hull.

 

Visioning: How MAN tools can apply locally. Using the example of the Growers’ img_0268Network, we do a visioning exercise about how MAN tools can apply to meeting the goals of sustainable, healthy, equitable food access, inclusive communities, and economic regeneration.

See the photo for our raw notes (you should be able to enlarge it). Starting with the example of one participant’s plot of land which they have been granted for free, but for which they need to buy insurance. We see how savings pools could help with the insurance purchase and gaining access to more building space, food swaps and timebanking can provide access for people without enough money, Hull Coin can link the project with local businesses, timebanking can help facilitate collection and distribution of gluts, and more.

 

Thursday 8th Tools and Community Justice

Starting @ 8.45-9.45 with T’ai Chi – The ancient art of t’ai chi is a series of connected moves, focusing on posture, breath and balance. Having its origins in martial arts, t’ai chi is now widely practiced for its health benefits. Another way to get the day off to a great start!

10-12.30 Robust budgeting / Poshterity: Wondering how you can img_0273start implementing mutual aid into your everyday life? Robust budgeting (or Poshterity budgeting) can help you break down your personal expenses and inspire you to start immediately incorporating simple tools like timebanking and mutual credit. Our goal is to get rid of the stigma surrounding personal finances and start building collective wealth together.

We use Rob’s own life as an example, and find that although he already lives very inexpensively, he can save 420 pounds a month by using timebanking, food swaps, and Hull Coin to displace his outgoing expenses, and can end up with a net gain of 10 timebank hours per month which he can use to increase his access to wellness (t’ai chi lessons!), art supplies plus recorded and live music (swaps!), and education (more courses and skillshares of all kinds)

Community Justice: Venue: Andrew Marvell Business & Enterprise College

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Andrew Marvell School from the lobby. Fancy! Can’t take pix of students so this is all we’ve got…

13.15-13.45 What is community and how does timebanking connect us? Aimed at young people, this workshop will explore what is community and where do young people fit within it. This provides an introduction to timebanking and leads into the next session on Restorative Justice Youth Court.

14.45-16.30 TimeBank Youth Court Linking up with Lorrie Hurckes in Madison, Wisconsin, we will hear about how Dane County TimeBank is providing a positive alternative to the juvenile justice system. More information on the Youth Court here. http://bit.ly/2bJyMtc. This workshop will explore how we can work together with Dane Country Youth Court to create something similar here in secondary schools building on restorative practice already happening.

12-17.00 Skillshare: Herbal Medicine Intro & Community Raised Bed Building

Friday 9th: Tools in Context – Growers’ Network and Hull img_0271Pilot

8.30-11.30 Skillshare: @ Frith farm

Marquee Erection – We need a team of people to learn how to erect marquees being lent to us by Castle Hill Hospital. In preparation for our Growers’ Network Day Camp on Saturday 10th, Timebanker Allan will be showing us how to erect marquees for that event and for the Hull Harvest Feastival in October.

11.00 -13.00 Sociocracy 3.0 (also known as S3) is a free and open, principles based framework of patterns that support all aspects of img_0284 img_0279 collaboration. S3 enables communities to tap collective intelligence from its members in order to make more conscious and effective decisions together. Find out how S3 patterns can support us to operate in more just, participatory and effective ways! Here is a video link to a recent teleclass interview James Priest gave, hosted by Kiaros, a charitable organization that provides organisational consultancy to social group, social enterprises, NGS’s, non profits etc. . It looks at correlations between S3, sociocracy, holacracy, agile, lean, reinventing organizations, personal development, etc. The session will be led by Liliana David who img_0285serves internationally providing consultation, mentoring and training to organizations that wish to develop greater effectiveness and equivalence in collaboration. She combines a background in communications and business administration with her growing experience as a co-developer and trainer of the Sociocracy 3.0. framework.

Video of web meeting here.

14.00-16.00 Mapping for Equity in Action: We hear about the Mapping Summit held in Madison earlier this year and explore how these processes can be used in the context of mapping resources, skills and spaces for the Growers’ Network to increase local food img_0298production. We are joined by img_0300Lynn Foster and Bob Haugen from http://mikorizal.org/ (who are developing network operational software) “for transitioning to the next economy. Not this economy, the next economy. The next economy must be driven by human and ecological needs rather than profit. And it will be networked.”

This is followed with a discussion of how mapping tools can help the Hull Growers’ Network increase local food production. More info on Growers’ Network here.

Video of web meeting here.

 

16.00-17.00 Wezer: Learn about the MAP, or Mutual Aid Platform, that provides us with software to exchange resources and knowledge with our neighbors around the corner and around the world. Through MAN’s innovative Wezer platform, we are developing the capability to track offers and requests, manage our own businesses, facilitate projects, build websites, and communicate with everyone in the img_0302network–all in one software

Video of web meeting here.img_0308

 

Friday night – 3 Acres and A Cow at Ground  

Saturday 10th September – Outdoor Event 10.30 til late

Growers’ Network Camp at Frith Farm: Rounding off the week the Growers’ Network Camp is a day to reflect on the Mutual Aid Network Summit and to meet each other to share what motivates people in their own projects (whether individual or community) and how the network can work towards the overarching vision of creating a sustainable food system to the area. The camp will be held at Frith Farm, a recently established cooperative farming project and will include an introduction to the site and its approach to agricultural sustainability.

The day also incorporates a practice and planning session for the forthcoming 2nd Harvest Feastival (being held on 1st October). Feastival cooks prepare delicious food to share and there will be entertainment around a camp fire into the evening.

Beautiful! All of it! Especially the double rainbow that ended our day. Felt significant.

Stay tuned for updates on Madison MAN Up summit, Totnes visit, Amsterdam Peer Value Conference… All out of order because that’s how life is at the moment…

Thanks for reading,

Stephanie

Founder and Creative Director, Mutual Aid Networks

2 thoughts on “Report from MAN Up UK Summit in Hull

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