York Central Learning Hub: Ideas for A Community Made Through Exchange
Haxby Bakehouse Bread toasted, broad bean hummus, salads - ingredients all bought from Food Circle
Big ideas that emerged from the 2018 My York Central public conversation about York Central included a community made through exchange, a space that enables everyday creativity and public and green spaces for growing.
We at YoCo: York Central Co-Owned want to push these ideas further and build a network to bring them to life on the ground on York Central.
On 18th July we explored what kinds of activities we want to make possible and what facilities and spaces we might need.
To run the event we collaborated with Choose 2 who run the café in Hull Road Park and work with young disabled people to develop their skills in food prep, health and safety and cooking. The event was funded by the University of York and was shaped through conversations with York Learning, Food Circle, St Paul’s School, Pig and Pastry, Good Food York, York Collective, Morrell House Housing Co-Op and many other people who care about local food.
The agenda for the event was to explore a series of interconnected issues related to learning, local food and economies – all held together through the idea of ‘exchange’.
Questions we used…
On York Central in the 2030s and beyond:
· Learning – What would you like learning to be and feel like?
· Local Food – What forms of learning and exchange around local food do we want to create?
· Economics – What economic structures might enable this, or be shaped by these activities?
· Exchange – What might a community based in exchange mean practically? What would you like to bring/share/teach? What would you like to take/learn?
We designed the workshop to prefigure or enact the very issues we were there to discuss. Steve bought the food from Food Circle – which runs a market twice a week at Tang Hall Community Centre and is actively seeking to understand what’s needed to build a viable local food system – and we chopped and prepared the food alongside each other as we had conversations. We had a team of facilitators who documented the conversations as they went and added post-it notes to the wall where we were able to cluster and build connection between ideas. All the post-its were photographed, added to flickr and tagged to enable further exploration of the emerging themes – see below for a quick summary of these.
York Collective and Morrell House Housing Co-op also facilitated a conversation about how small-scale local growers could connect with customers who want to buy their food.
18th July was one of the Red Alert weather days with extreme heat warnings, so a number of people were not able to join due to the weather and of those who came, many felt they could only stay for a short period of time. Nevertheless, we still had fruitful conversations.
All conversations were recorded on post its and clustered to creating continuity in the conversation throughout the day.
Emerging ideas
Exchange
The word ‘exchange’ figured strongly in My York Central and has been key to establishing YoCo – it clearly indicates a desire for an alternative economies for York Central. This event gave a chance to explore what this might mean in greater depth.
One key dimension is thinking of economy as being beyond monetary exchange – we imagined exchanging tools, equipment, knowledge, expertise or time. Reference points being LETS or Timebanking. There were questions raised about inequities already present in our society in setting exchange rates.
Different economic and governance structures were discussed including Community Land Trust or the potential to raise funds via Community Share Issues or Blockchain.
Work collectively with surplus
One way in which ‘exchange’ was explored was how to work collectively with surplus (a principle we can connect with Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healy’s Take Back the Economy where they ask: - What do we do with what is left over after we’ve met our
survival needs? How do we make decisions about this excess? How do we distribute surplus? 2013, p. xiii)
Quite a wide range of things were discussed that can be grouped under this heading.
· Gluts (have too many of a certain type of seasonal vegetable)
· Community batch cooking – sharing expensive ingredients that you only need a bit of, and collectively create a variety of meals
· Facilities not used out of hours (e.g. kitchens)
· Gardens of people who can’t look after them
In each case there was a sense of making more active use of resources through coming together.
Conversations on learning focused on the practical, hands-on, and social as well as the non-hierachical and reciprcoal.
Learning – skills sharing – is part of an alternative economy
Learning was imagined here in terms of mutuality and in non-hierarchical ways. It was also seen as usefully practical, hands-on, and social.
York Learning helped develop the agenda for the event – they have an interest in developing their adult learning offer and need a venue they can use. They are interested not only in enhancing what they can do but also enabling income generating types of learning to cross-subsidize other forms of learning and creating a partnership hub with shared spaces. Their offer would encourage regular footfall to the area through days and evenings in the week which can then support other businesses.
Rethinking support for people with learning disabilities
We were joined by York People First, self-advocates with learning disabilities. We talked about the issues with finding flexible support that enables you to stay out late or go where you want. Too often nights out are disrupted by shift changes (see Stay Up Late campaign). We talked about alternative approaches such as Key Ring or L‘Arche and how to build networks between people with learning difficulties (as has happened with those involved in People First) but also between people with and without learning disabilities who have a shared interested or live close by in a neighbourhood.
We talked about how much of that could happen as exchange – rather than state-funded support. While it was noted that the state support structures need to be in place, there was scope for more informal support to happen and that this could really make a positive difference
Racism
We discussed how race and racism is still something too often ignored in York even while the number of Black people and people of colour has grown. How can York be explicitly anti-racist and create spaces from lots of different ways of life?
The Hull Road Park allottment is looked after by The Conservation Volunteers and the young people from Choose 2.
Growing and Cooking
Linked to the broader economic and learning themes above were specific points about growing and cooking. We were joined by the University of York-based Fix Our Food project who shared their work on regenerative farming and a systems approach to healthy food for children.
Regarding growing, we discussed the need for amateur and professional growers and for skills development for them and the need for creative ways of growing (e.g. vertically, hydroponics). For cooking, we considered how food-prep could add value to local food (e.g. recipe boxes), that sharing knowledge on seasonal cooking could be important, along with collective cooking ideas such as community batch cooking.
References:
J.K.Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy (2013) Take Back the Economy : An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. University of Minnesota Press