New Cooperative Management and Marketing Programme at Essex

Thanks Peter, have emailed :+1:

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Hi all,
Just following on form Aaron’s last comment, I’d be interested in attending (with an Agile Collective hat on)
I’ll drop you an email now, Peter.
Thanks,
Richard

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Hello,

This sounds interesting, and we would be interesting in finding out more. I’m going to try my best to attend (I have a tender deadline) however my colleague Alan will attend the call regardless.

We are in the same town as Essex University being in Colchester.

Ben

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Hi Polly,

I hope this finds you well.

Looking forward to you attending the meeting on Friday! Could you possible email me directly at pbloom@essex.ac.uk so that I can directly add you to the Zoom meeting tomorrow?

Many thanks!

Best wishes and in solidarity,

Peter

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Hi All,

I have now sent out a Zoom invite for our meeting tomorrow to all those who expressed interest and emailed me. If I have missed your email or you are interested and have not yet sent me a direct email then please do so and I will add you to the meeting ASAP.

Many thanks again.

Best wishes and in solidarity,

Peter

Hi @PBloom and @Kayleigh - thanks for flagging this up! We’ve been chatting a little about this in an email thread with @polly and @gemmacopeland - it sounds really interesting and we’re certainly up for exploring more. However, our main concern is that 120 hours is a fair amount and honestly as a really small team we’d be worried about not having the capacity to make sure the placement is good quality. As @polly has mentioned, thinking about being able to spread someone over different small co-ops might go a way towards addressing this.

None of us are working tomorrow, so we won’t be able to join the call, but looking forward to hearing about the discussion - if you could post any updates here that would be awesome! :smiley:

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Hi Lucy and Polly,

Thank you both so much for your thoughtful and very insightful response. The possibility of spreading them out across co-ops is a great idea!

I am happy to post further updates as requested. However, perhaps we could also find a time to meet next week to discuss further at a day and time that works best for you.

Many thanks again.

Best wishes and solidarity,

Peter

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@PBloom thanks for meeting with a few of us today! Here’s my notes from the call:

  • You told us that you feel there are lots of new, diverse co-ops, but there isn’t much in the way of shared, formalised, relevant management knowledge for them to draw upon. Also, those going into co-ops have redundant information in the form of capitalist indoctrination. In addition, you want to make the argument that over and above any other factors, co-ops just work better (more resilient, etc.)
  • You’ve got a programme accepted that’s initially for 10 students who will work for 120 hours over the course of an academic year with one or more co-ops. You told us that you’re open to the idea that @Lucy raised around working across a few CoTech co-ops. We suggested an active project that promotes co-operation among co-ops might be a good idea.
  • We had a chat about decision-making with co-ops and how that can be surfaced. @richard pointed out that Agile Collective already run school experiences for 16 year-olds and talked us through how that works.
  • We talked about how, although this is a programme that CoTech can help shape, you might need to be more specific about the options here. For example, we talked about the time commitment and when that could take place.
  • Finally, you said that you’d create a new thread to crowdsource some themes that students could focus upon which might help scaffold CoTech co-ops engagement with you.

Hope that helps! I enjoyed the conversation. Thanks to @alanpeart for being there, too :slight_smile:

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Bugger, I lost oversight of this thread and then didn’t get a calendar invite so totally forgot. Sorry!

Sounds like it was a productive call though. I’d be really happy to speak at a later date about next steps etc. I’d really love to see how we can coordinate a placement - the easiest thing for me to grasp would be one that primarily supports the newish coops who are based at SPACE4. That’s not to be exclusionary though, of course would want it to be useful to the wider network.

Polly

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Would love to hear more about that @richard! :slight_smile:

Hi Doug and all,

Thanks so much for meeting with us on Friday and for this excellent summary.

It was very helpful indeed and exciting! Based on our discussion I am now creating a draft of the “three options” we discussed for co-ops to participate including (1) the student fully “embedding” themselves in a single co-op (2) the student works with a group of selected co-ops on a common ‘problem’ they share and (3) the student works across a number of co-ops to explore different ways they approach a common ‘theme’.

I will also send to you all further information about the processes and administration of the work-based learning “placement”. We have designed it so you have maximum flexibility in terms of participation and the minimum of bureacracy.

Many thanks again!

Best wishes and solidarity,

Peter

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Dear All,

I hope this finds you well!

Thank you again for all your interest and valuable insights regarding the creation of the “Cooperative Management and Marketing” programme at the University of Essex. We are excited to move ahead with you on this initiative so as to strengthen and spread cooperative knowledge and community building among both students and co-ops.

Based on our discussions, I have put together the following general information that we can use as a foundation for constructively moving forward.

Overview

“Cooperative Management and Marketing – Capstone Module” is a new final year project (‘capstone’) module that focuses on managing and marketing cooperative and worker-owned businesses. Direct involvement with cooperatives is a key part of the module and the research project the student will develop will tie in closely with the real-life organisation(s). It has a distinct focus on cooperatives and takes a work-based learning approach. Students in the module will have an academic supervisor but will also work with and potentially across cooperative organisations. The final output is a short dissertation/extended research paper produced by the student based on their academic learning within the module and practical experience with the co-operative organisations.

Timeframe

The module runs throughout the Winter and Spring academic terms (from October – April). During this time students will attend scheduled lectures and meetings with their academic supervisor. They will also undertake a work-based placement with one or multiple co-operatives. This placement will nominally be for 120 hours but is flexible in terms of both its ultimate time and arrangements based on the agreed preferences of the student and the participating co-operative. In the summer term (beginning in May) the students will submit an independent research dissertation based on their placements but supervised by the academic team at the University of Essex.

Before the official start of the module in October, the responsible academics will select that students for this pilot module in July and then help partner them with participating co-operatives throughout August and September.

Options for Involvement

We proposed three main “options” for undertaking this work-based learning with co-operatives. They are as follows:

  • Option 1 “Fully Embedded Placement” : In the first option the student would embed themselves with one co-operative and work with them on a specific research topic that is of specific and shared interest to both of them. This arrangement would be agreed between the co-opt and the student including the logistics of their time spent with the organisation.

  • Option 2 “Shared Placement” : In the second option the student would work with 2-3 co-operatives to help them address a shared challenge that they are currently facing. The student and the co-operatives would collaboratively agree as to how to best structure the placement for this purpose.

  • Option 3 Exploratory” : In the third option the students would choose a research topic and then explore it across explore a number of participating co-operatives. This could include attending their meetings, interviewing their members, embedding themselves for a day in their operations during a specific project, etc…

Administration

The administration of these placements will be overseen and primarily completed by the University of Essex. The University has extensive experience both with these types of initiatives and in ensuring that they are of minimal burden to participating organisations. The precise “paperwork” relevant for co-operatives is as follows:

  • Tripartite Agreement signed by placement provider, academic supervisor, and the student. This sets out the role and responsibilities of each party. It is not legally binding in any way and is purely an agreement to remind participants of their roles.

  • Copies of Employer Liability Insurance and Public Liability Insurance. We would need to see a copy of the ELI and PLI of each co-opt taking part in the module.

  • Employer Heath and Safety formsStudent placement health and safety | University of Essex. These have also been amended for smaller organisations and we are also currently asking to see organisations Covid-19 Health and Safety plans.

Additionally, we will provide the following for students:

  • Student Risk Assessment Form. This is something I would work through with each student to ensure they are aware of any risks involved and to provide them with guidance on what to expect from their placement provider. https://www.essex.ac.uk/-/media/documents/directories/health-and-safety/student-placement-ra-record.dotx

  • Pre-training. There are two moodle courses for preparing them to undertake the placement with you. We will also run an hour session on Preparing for your placement year that covers everything from what to expect, health and safety, well-being and assertiveness tailored specifically for the programme.

We also offer and facilitate the opportunity for co-operatives working on sensitive projects to have students sign an NDA form (though this is considered relatively unusual).

Next Steps

Over the month of July we will officially select the students who are taking the module. We would also like to use this time to continue to identify co-operatives who would like to participate in the initiative. It would be good for us to identify which options interested co-opts would prefer and the topics they would be most interested in students to research.

I know a range of co-ops have contacted me vial email to express their interest in participating. I would like to set up another meeting for the last week of July for all those interested. If you could again email me so that I can add you to the Zoom meeting that would be great!

Many thanks.

Best wishes and in solidarity,

Peter

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Hi Peter,
I’ve just had my attention drawn to this post by @richard, a colleague at Agile Collecitve. I understand that he is already in touch with you but after reading your last post I just wanted to express my enthusiasm for the initiative and say how happy I am that it is happening and how excited I would be to be involved. I look forward to hearing more and hope that Agile Collective has a part to play.
Many thanks,
Finn

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Hi All,

I hope this finds you well and that you are looking forward to a nice weekend!

Thank you all again for your interest in participating! We are so excited by the response.

I would like to set up a Zoom meeting for all those who have expressed interests next week. How would next Thursday work for everyone? Thus far I have the following list of potential participants:

• Joseph Davies-Coates (United Diversity)
• Doug Belshaw (We are open Co-op)
• Aaron Hirtenstein (Agile Collective)
• Richard Rowley (Agile Collective)
• Finn Lewis (Agile Collective)
• Graham (MC3/Platform 6)
• Polly (member of outlandish)
• Gemma Copeland (Common Knowledge)
• Ben Phillip (Creative Co-op)
• Lucy King (InFact Digital)

If others would like to join please do let me know. In the meantime if you would like to join in the ZOOM meeting please email me at pbloom@essex.ac.uk. Once I know who will be able to attend I can then sent out an invitation and we can agree on a time and date that works best for everyone.

Many thanks again.

Best wishes and in solidarity,

Peter

Hi Pete,

I’ll liaise with my fellow members but Thursday afternoon works fine for me (can’t do the morning).

Thanks,

Aaron

Member, Agile Collective

Thanks very much, Pete.

I can make most times Thursday except 11-12.30 and 3-4.

Best wishes,
Richard

Hi everyone! Just wanted to give an update on this.

@PBloom, @richard and I had a meeting a couple of weeks back where we came up with some final proposals re. how this scheme is going to run. @PBloom has since gone away and done some organising work to bring it to life. So -

  • The scheme will start with 2 virtual meetings of 90 minutes each, attended by the students participating in the programme and CoTech members

  • We encourage as many members who are interested and available to come :slight_smile: you don’t need to have shown any previous interest or signed up to anything, and you don’t need to prepare in advance - just show up and share your wisdom.

  • The sessions will be on ‘Co-operative Management’ (28th October, 9-11am) and ‘Co-operative Marketing’ (2nd December, 9-11am) - I’m sure we’ve all got things to say on both of those :sweat_smile: please do put them in your diaries, and we’ll share Zoom links when the time comes

  • The goal of these meetings will be to discuss the topics as a group, and provide students with some information and fuel for thought so they can independently pin down a focussed research topic which they are interested in looking into further, in the new year

  • When working on their research project (starting Jan 2021), students will not be placed specifically with one co-op, but will be encouraged to contact members from various co-ops in order to get input for their final research topic. Of course, all co-op members can then decide for themselves how much time they’re willing to give, if any. We decided on this, because for well rounded research speaking to just one co-op doesn’t seem that useful.

  • There will also be a discussion forum where students and co-op members can interact - this will be on the uni platform, Moodle - joining instructions will be posted shortly.

Hope that’s all clear and helpful - any questions please ask, and do come along to the sessions and encourage your fellow co-operators to do the same. This is our chance to mould young minds :nerd_face:

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Join the first session this Wednesday at 9am!

This is an online Zoom Webinar (click the link to join, or paste 94584298703 into your Zoom client).

A further update - we had the first call, and it was really positive. Super nice to meet lots of young people interested in co-ops, it made me remember why what we’re doing really is cool and special! :sparkling_heart:

If you would like to join the discussion forum, that would be great. We are hoping students will be able to ask questions and gain some valuable insights and advice which will help give them ideas re. their research topic. Also, it’s a forum - so you can participate as much or as little as you want, only answer questions you are interested in, take as long as you need to reply etc. We are all busy people so the goal is for it to be as accessible as possible (let me know if there’s anything further we can do to that end!)

To join the forum go here, sign up to MoodleX and then enter the enrollment key - BE940

@harry @SzczepanOfAnimorph @chrislowis @dajbelshaw - I know you all professed interest at the Cotech call yesterday, so this is me chasing you, and asking you to share with the rest of your co-op too :slight_smile:

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Hello everyone! Call tomorrow morning 9-11am on Co-operative Marketing. If you want to be added to the Zoom invite, email @PBloom - pbloom@essex.ac.uk