Mutual Aid In Sussex (MAIS)

Please note the change of location for this event – it will be at Coachwerks.

Brighton and Hove house prices are nearly 5 times more expensive in 2015 than in 1995 (from £50,000 to £295,000 on average) and it has the highest share of privately renting households (32.5%) of any town and city in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Rip-off rents and letting fees, damp housing, overcrowding and evictions are all too common.

Housing co-operatives are one of many ways to create more genuinely affordable and secure housing in the city.

On Tuesday 29th November at 7PM at Coachwerks, Mutual Aid in Sussex have organised three people to talk about how they set up their housing co-ops and how they work:

* Andrea Jones, as project manager, is currently helping set up Bunker, a housing co-op for low-income families. She is involved with the network of Co-operative Housing in Brighton & Hove (CHIBAH).
* Allie Cannell who fairly recently helped set up Skylark, a housing co-op for young people.
* Helen Russell helped expand Two Piers, the largest and longest-running housing co-op in Brighton & Hove. Helen has clocked up 33 years of co-op living, warts and all. She is the Secretary of CHIBAH, the Chair of the Brighton & Hove Community Land Trust Steering Group, and initiated the rebirth of the Confederation of Co-operative Housing in 1991.

There will be time for both an introduction to housing co-ops as well as more in-depth advice on how to set them up. Space will be given for questions and networking.

If you’re sick of paying for the holidays of the 2% of the adult population who are landlords, or just want more affordable and secure housing, come along to this talk!

Tuesday 29th November at Coachwerks. The talk will start at 7pm. FREE.

A brief introduction video to what is a housing co-op (focused on student housing co-ops, but relevant to all housing co-ops)

The next Mutual Aid in Sussex (MAIS) meeting, on Wednesday 19th October, will include a talk with Kayla Ente (Brighton & Hove Energy Services Co-op – BHESCo) and Will Cottrell (Brighton Energy Co-op) about what they’ve been doing in Brighton & Hove, plans for the future, and how people can get involved.

Brighton & Hove Energy Services Co-op (BHESCo) is a not-for-profit social enterprise bringing together the community of Brighton and Hove to develop renewable energy projects, improve energy efficiency, reduce fuel bills and tackle fuel poverty.

BHESCo help homes and businesses reduce their energy costs by developing and installing renewable energy and energy efficiency systems at no upfront cost to the customer.

 Kayla Ente, founder and CEO of BHESCo, has a distinguished career in sustainability and renewable energy, having worked for Greenpeace International, Nuon (the Dutch utility), and Ecofys (European pioneers in renewable energy). She has helped to develop wind farms in China and Spain as well as solar power projects in California and Hawaii. She moved to Brighton in 2012 and founded BHESCo in 2013. Since then BHESCo has completed 5 renewable energy projects in the Brighton area, with a further 7 new projects in development, including a ‘food waste to energy’ plant in Hangleton. Kayla and BHESCo’s grand vision is to establish a community owned renewable energy tariff available to residents of the local area

Brighton Energy Coop (BEC) is about community-owned renewable energy. Basically, we get a load of people together, everyone puts in a little bit of cash and collectively we are then able to build large scale renewable energy systems.

Money raised from selling the electricity flows back into the coop – it’s then distributed in the form of our community fund, interest to members and paying back capital. Our host sites benefit from the cheap electricity that our panels provide.

Will Cottrell has driven BEC forward from its inception. Overseeing both new project development and fund-raising for BEC, he has experience in the technical and financial aspects of renewable energy, as well as marketing and communications. In 2014 he was awarded Community Energy Fundraiser of the Year; in 2015 he also won the People’s Environmental Award’s prize for Energy.

Come and join us: Wednesday 19th October at Coachwerks, 19A Hollingdean Terrace, Brighton. If you can, please bring vegan food to share. The meeting will start at 7pm, with the talk from 8pm.

Details below – every Saturday between 12:00 – 16:00 – at Coachwerks. At the same time Coachwerks Wholefoods Co-op is open so you can get your shopping while you fix your bike. Mutual Aid in Sussex is helping organise these weekly bike fixing sessions.

The recording of this talk can now be found below:

The next Mutual Aid in Sussex (MAIS) meeting, on Wednesday 21st September, will include a talk with Dave Boyle (Director, Community Shares Company) about how we can use Community shares to fund our community and co-operative ideas, using examples from Brighton & Hove and around the country.

Dave Boyle

Invented by the co-operative movement in the 19th century, withdrawable share capital has come out of the sidelines and suitably refreshed and rebranded as Community Shares, and is the means by which community enterprises are funding the acquisition of pubs, the development of renewable energy, building sports stadia, funding accountable media and much more.

Dave Boyle has worked on over 20 shares issues including the Bevy Co-operative Pub and Exeter Street Hall in Brighton, and will explain what Community Shares are, why they work well for co-ops and community enterprises. Not only are they the right kind of money, but they show a way in which sustainable and solidarity local economies could be built.

Come and join us: Wednesday 21st September at Coachwerks, 19A Hollingdean Terrace, Brighton. If you can, please bring vegan food to share. The meeting will start at 7pm, with the talk from 8pm.

**Please note: This talk was moved from 22 June to the 20th July. **

The next Mutual Aid in Sussex (MAIS) meeting, on Wednesday 20 July, will include a talk with Zoe Wangler, founding member and director of the Ecological Land Co-operative (ELC).

ELC was set up in 2009 to address the lack of affordable sites for ecological land based livelihoods in England. The co-op purchases land, obtains planning permission, and installs the infrastructure to create clusters of three or more affordable residential smallholdings.

Zoe’s presentation will set out what the co-op does, its roots, and why the members chose to be a multi-stakeholder co-op. She’ll share some of their failures and successes, their plans for the future and the challenges they face.

Come and join us: Wednesday 20 July at Coachwerks, 19A Hollingdean Terrace, Brighton. If you can, please bring vegan food to share. The meeting will start at 7pm, with the talk from 8pm. 

The Ecological Land Co-operative from Ecological Land Co-operative on Vimeo.

Chris Funnell (Co-operative Assistance Network) giving introduction to co-operatives and the co-operative movement (see his full powerpoint below). Photo by Adi loosli.

On 11th June 2016 Mutual Aid in Sussex (in collaboration with Free University of Brighton) hosted a day long event called Co-operative Alternatives, with eight separate workshops (plus two plenary sessions) and a number of stalls promoting local and national co-operative projects. The full schedule of the event can be found here. The powerpoints of those who used them on the day can be found below:

• Chris Funnell ( Co-operative Assistance Network) on Introduction to co-operatives and the co-operative movement
• Helen Russell (Co-operative Housing in Brighton & Hove, CHIBAH) on How to set up a housing co-op?
• Will Cottrell (Brighton Energy Co-op) on community shares and attracting funds into co-ops

Helen Russell (Co-operative Housing in Brighton & Hove) giving workshop on How to set up a housing co-op (see her full powerpoint above). Photo by Adi loosli.

In total, we had 96 people attend the event (plus about a dozen or so organisers and people helping out on the day).

Feedback from people attending was hugely positive, such as:

Once again, a big thank you for organising the co-operative alternatives event. I learnt an awful lot about the roots of the co-operative ethos & feel very inspired in regards to developing our values after Mike’s presentation plus some good pointers for conflict. I feel very proud to be a part of the co-operative movement. I am definitely up for being involved with MAIS on more events like this and hope to see you all again at meetings soon. – Polly from Kindlings Outdoor Play And Education Workers’ Co-operative

Thanks again for putting on the event – as I said on the day I’ve been really wanting to be a part of something and to connect with people already doing brilliant co-operative things down here, so it was much appreciated! – Sarah Owen

We feel we have both helped many people in their own projects, and also strengthened the mutual aid network in the area.

As a result of the day we have already had people interested in starting up new co-operatives, offering to host smaller events and to get more involved in helping run MAIS, and we’ve had numerous people telling us that the event was directly beneficial to them and their co-op.

The day was a huge success promoting co-ops and strengthening the co-operative network in Sussex.

We were able to raise around half of the costs from donations on the day for the event and also had the support of Lush and the Worker Co-op Solidarity Fund

One of several stalls at the event. This one was for the Sail Boat project – a workers’ co-operative. Photo by Adi loosli.