When the pandemic started three months after Cooperation Town had launched, the team were thrown into responding to a crisis which immediately revealed the inequalities in the UK food system.
“We started doing Covid food distribution straight away, we distributed around 80,000 meals,” co-organiser Shiri Shalmy, said, explaining how they temporarily became the biggest food distributor in Camden, their base.
Set up to build a network of food cooperatives in London and across England, Cooperation Town gives groups of neighbours the means to organise together to buy groceries that are sourced in bulk, and distributed at a very low cost.
The pandemic offered the small core team time to reflect on their goals and put some of their ideas to the test. They established themselves as a workers cooperative and developed their Starter Pack, a toolkit intended to make the process of setting up a co-op easy and accessible.
Four years on, Cooperation Town has around 33 cooperatives, each of which decides how they will organise their co-op and are responsible for the day-to-day running of the group. Each co-op is different, as it’s shaped to meet the needs of its members.
Unlike food banks, in the co-op model, there are no givers and receivers: it is a model based on solidarity, not charity.
Two co-op members planning together.
In 2021, Cooperation Town received funding from JRCT to support three part-time roles, setting up their distribution hub in Camden, and re-printing the starter pack. The distribution hub enabled them to circulate food by the pallet, rather than by the box, further reducing the cost to each co-op member.
“It was built into the model that every group would be different, and it was really important for us to have the kind of funding that allows us to maintain that level of flexibility - being able to respond to people, to listen to people, take feedback, be self-reflective, and be experimental,” Shiri said.
Cooperation Town’s model is built around the idea that anyone can be an organiser.
“We have a lot of people who say ‘But I’m just a mum’, which is crazy to me because nobody’s ‘just a mum’. Mums are organisers, without mums there’s no community,” Shiri said.
The team have also found that there is another demographic that is often invisible to white communities but is an essential figure in global majority communities – the role of the Aunty. They advocate for the importance of acknowledging the impact that these figures are already having in their communities, and work to invite them as organisers, helping them to actualise that work in a way that not only improves the conditions in their communities but also builds collective power through the co-ops.
Whilst many people may feel hesitant at first, Cooperation Town believes that by organising through something very simple and accessible – redistributing food – people can develop the skills and the confidence to be organisers in their communities.
A central feature of the model is that every co-op is unique because it will adapt to the needs of its members. A co-op in a rural area will be quite different to one located in central London.
All co-ops make use of some kind of community space, it could be a community centre, a mosque, a church, a library, or even the lobby of a GP practice. Part of the support that Cooperation Town has provided members has been to reclaim these spaces – questioning why a community centre is charging a fee, or why a space is inaccessible. Maintaining and revitalising these spaces is another facet of how co-ops can build collective power from the ground up within their community.
Most co-ops meet every week, but each one uses the space differently; sharing knowledge, socialising, and exchanging experiences, as well as sharing resources. Establishing the hub has also created space for activities beyond the original food distribution plan. For example, co-op members needed a place to do laundry, and so they have transformed a spare room in the hub into a free community laundry room.
Some members have faced challenges in heating or cooling their homes, so the hub has created the Gospel Oak Living Room, providing a space for the community to gather, support one another, and use as they need
Fundamentally, the cooperatives support communities in organising and accessing food. However, they go beyond this by equipping the community with tools and confidence to address other needs of their members.
A co-op space being used as a play area for local children.
The estimated potential savings from co-ops in Camden amount to around £1,500 per household each year.
The funding from JRCT afforded the organisation the time and security to pursue further fundraising efforts, enabling them to establish themselves as a trusted and secure entity for three years, leading to the development of valuable partnerships.
Moving forward, the organisation aims to maintain flexibility, embracing uncertainty with confidence. They hope to expand and replicate the hub model in other locations, adapting it to the needs of different communities. The goal is to create spaces that not only serve logistical purposes but also empower the community to utilise the space as they see fit. Cooperation Town also seeks to influence policy-making, as a cooperative economy has now become an integral part of Camden's mission.
They have developed a unique model that combines traditional professional organising with the informal network of support, facilitating the redistribution of resources.
- Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust made a grant of £149,340 to Cooperation Town in November 2021 through our Sustainable Future programme. A second grant of £496,311 over five years was made in August 2024.
All images courtesy of Cooperation Town.