While working at dozens of coworking spaces in multiple time zones, Johnson founded The Lab, a marketing club for indie coworking spaces, and Coworking Convos, a virtual event series to help coworking space operators learn, share, and connect. She also launched the Coworking Out Loud podcast, which explores coworking, community-building, and connectedness. 

Johnson has also devoted the last decade of her life to helping coworking space managers move beyond wifi and coffee to build community-centered spaces. “It truly, truly lights me up. Commercial real estate does not light me up—what lights me up is the humans within the building.” 

In her latest book, The Daily Co: 366 Days of Coworking and Community, Johnson shares one affirmation for building a coworking space for each day of the year. I spoke with Johnson about her work and the potential of coworking to help rebuild community in the post-pandemic world. 

Ruby Pratka: What first brought you into coworking? 

Cat Johnson: I worked in record stores for 20 years and started writing about music, which grew into arts and culture, which grew into writing about community projects, which led to coworking. Back in the early days, it was very much a movement. I realized, I don’t want to write about coworking—I want to be part of it. I started content marketing for coworking space operators. 

RP: What are some of the ways coworking has evolved over the past few years?

CJ: When I first found my way into coworking, there were probably a couple hundred spaces in the world. There are thousands now. It’s evolved from a pop-up thing into a major industry. But even with all of the razzle-dazzle of amazing, fabulous spaces, it’s still about what happens in a coworking space. That’s what separates coworking from office rentals.

RP: What inspired you to write a day-by-day book of community-building advice?

CJ: I wanted a place to put all the things I care about, in short snippets where somebody can just flip open a page, read a sentence or two—hopefully, it inspires some ideas—and then go about their busy day building community. This book is primarily for coworking space operators, but a lot of the content speaks to community builders at large.

RP: In the book, especially in the March section, you talk a lot about the pandemic. How did the pandemic transform coworking?

All of a sudden, cities were in lockdown and people couldn’t come in. Not all spaces made it. The ones that did, I think it made them more resilient. If we pull back to the big picture, the pandemic accelerated the remote work movement by 10 years. Now there’s this massive opportunity for coworking. A lot of people live in small towns where coworking couldn’t have been sustained before, but now with remote work, it can be. It was already a growing industry, and the pandemic really accelerated that. 

RP: How do you see the importance of building and rebuilding community?

My grandparents, in any given week had a church social, a bowling league, a poker night with friends, a golf league, the Elks Club. They had this really rich social tapestry, and that’s not where we are right now. There’s been a massive spike in loneliness and isolation since the pandemic. We have this digital-first culture where we’re everywhere all the time, and yet genuine connection is harder and harder to come by. I think coworking is part of the solution to that.

RP: What have you learned about how spaces can add that extra element of community?

The special sauce! I wish I could bottle it up and sell it—I’d make a billion dollars—but it can’t be bottled. An important part of it is understanding what your members are working on, struggling with, and working toward because that lets you create programming to support them. You can’t take what works in one space and put it in another space. It’s so specific to each space, town, community, and member experience.

RP: What do you want people to take away from this book?

CJ: I want people to read a blurb in the morning and be inspired. Being a community builder is hard, highly emotional work [that requires] a lot of multitasking. I want to give them a little support and remind them what they’re doing is really important, that it goes beyond filling offices. Even though they’re stressed because they have to fill those three vacant offices, there’s something deeper happening here.

The post Sharing the spirit of coworking day by day: Q&A with Cat Johnson appeared first on Shareable.

Beaudin, 25, is the coordinator of Le Grénier Boréal, an agricultural co-op in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, a village of around 450 people in northeastern Quebec, 550 miles northeast of Montreal. Longue-Pointe is one of about 20 villages strung like beads on a necklace, between Route 138 and the vast St. Lawrence River. The highway and the river are the villages’ lifelines, and depending on either one for supply shipments — as the Nord-Côtiers do — can be maddening. 

Ferry service is unreliable; a damaged ship can cause weeks of disruption. Beaudin says Route 138, which covers the 800 miles from Montreal to the village of Kegaska, is also occasionally blocked by debris or construction. The short local growing season, the lack of competition between shipping companies and the logistics of transporting food up the coast make many fresh-food products prohibitively expensive. Even when everything works as it should, Beaudin says, “People just don’t want to eat turnips that have been on a truck for twelve hours.” 

Le Grenier Boréal (“the arctic cellar”) is one of more than a dozen food co-ops that have sprung up in recent years to bring fresh greenery to Quebec’s food deserts. In Inuit communities in Arctic Quebec, the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec (FCNQ) has run community corner stores, outdoor outfitters and other enterprises for generations to keep food prices manageable, and the trend is catching on in rural communities in other parts of the province — buoyed, Beaudin says, not only by backlash against high food prices, but by a growing “back to nature” movement among young people.  

Beaudin and his colleagues manage several greenhouses and a pick-your-own program where residents can learn to prepare the berries and mushrooms that grow naturally in the area. They also provide food literacy programs and supply products and advice to village grocery stores — many of which are co-ops themselves — planting the seeds of what Beaudin calls “a little food revolution.” 

One-stop shop

There were once three places to buy groceries in Baie-Johan-Beetz, a tiny village an hour east of Longue-Pointe. By 2005, there was one — and it closed when its elderly owners couldn’t find anyone to take it over. The nearest corner store was in Natashquan, nearly an hour away; the nearest supermarket was in Sept-Iles, three hours west. Julie Plante, who teaches at the tiny village school, met with her neighbors to figure out a solution.

We realized fairly quickly that a co-op was the only way to go. — Julie Plante, co-founder of Baie-Johan-Beetz Solidarity Cooperative

What followed was a team effort worthy of a feature film. 

“We wanted to find land that went up to [Route 138] so we could serve people coming up the highway,” Plante says. “When we were looking for a piece of land, I realized that my own property went out that far.” Plante and her neighbors cleared and weeded the land bit by bit, filling holes and ditches with gravel from a nearby construction site. Building was the next step.

“All we wanted was a small building, but one day the mayor showed up at our meeting with an architect and told us that if we built bigger, but following sustainable development standards, we would be eligible for all these subsidies,” says Plante. 

The final project involved not just a small grocery store, but a community hub with a greenhouse, a gas station, an internet café, a postal counter, a conference room and an outpost of the state-run liquor store. The co-op also gets a five-figure subsidy from the city council in exchange for use of the conference room, as Baie-Johan-Beetz has no city hall. 

The co-op’s three full-time employees are supported by about a dozen volunteers who stock shelves, fix broken equipment and drive to the surrounding towns to pick up special orders. When a freezer broke, one volunteer drove it to town for repairs while others stored the food in their own freezers. “People are so happy not to have to go to the city for every little thing,” Plante says.  

But Plante takes issue with outsiders who refer to the North Shore as a food desert. “Nature is very generous to us,” she says. “People’s fridges are full of fish and meat, we have gardens and wild berries,” she explains. “But we can’t raise cows for milk, and there are a lot of vegetables we can’t grow. You need a store for that.”   

A store… and a greenhouse. Working with Beaudin and Le Grenier Boréal, Plante and her co-workers built a greenhouse where volunteers — which sometimes includes the five students that Plante teaches at the village school —  grow cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, asparagus and other vegetables throughout the short North Shore summers. “The taste of fresh vegetables is so different from vegetables that have been on a truck,” says Plante. “People love it.” 

She is quick to point out that maintaining the food co-op is “not a walk in the park.” “We can’t offer huge discounts, and if someone makes a special order, we can’t promise it will be there tomorrow morning,” she says, before rushing off to her shift at the cash register. “It’s also a lot of work. But it’s not just a grocery store — it’s our place.” 

Montreal’s markets

At the other end of Route 138 lies Montreal, a city of two million people. On the surface, the concrete jungle of Montréal-Nord and the riverside village of Baie-Johan-Beetz, couldn’t be more different. Instead of a forest of mushrooms and berries, Montreal-Nord is a forest of apartment blocks, most holding more than the entire population of Baie-Johan-Beetz. But the problems faced in Montréal-Nord, one of the city’s poorest districts, and on the North Shore are surprisingly similar. 

“We have food stores that close because they aren’t profitable, and if you have a car, you drive further and further away to get to the supermarket,” says Olivier Lachapelle, former coordinator of Panier Futé. Panier Futé was a once thriving food distribution co-op in Montréal-Nord that was shuttered in 2022 due to an inability to maintain economic viability. “If you don’t have a car — and we have a lot of elderly people and immigrant families for whom a car would be a huge luxury — it’s much harder.” 

In it’s prime, Panier Futé coordinated a volunteer-run bulk purchasing group where members had access to a range of fruits and vegetables for 15 to 20 percent cheaper than market price. In summers, they organized regular farmers markets, bringing fresh fruits and vegetables almost to people’s doorsteps. 

Anne-Marie Aubert is coordinator of the Montreal Food System, a municipal round table of nonprofits and government bodies created to address food insecurity. She explains: “[Montreal has] a poverty rate that’s higher than many Canadian cities, and also a very high rental rate as opposed to home ownership, which [exacerbates] food insecurity, because rent is a non-negotiable part of your budget.” She also observes that in areas with high immigrant populations, like Montréal-Nord (where Panier Futé operated), or high populations of less educated people, food literacy is also a concern. “The food is there, but if you can’t afford it or don’t know how to cook it, you can’t access it.”

The main challenge to food security in Montreal isn’t accessibility, it’s poverty. — Anne-Marie Aubert, coordinator of the Montreal Food System

Aubert and other urban food security activists believe that food co-ops and the city’s highly touted community garden program, in place since the 1970s, are band-aid solutions to the wider problem of urban poverty. “We’re not actually attacking the root causes, because it’s not in our power to do so, but we are helping people cope,” she says. 

Like Aubert, Lachapelle acknowledges that the fruit and vegetable baskets he and Panier Futé were able to distribute couldn’t solve the wider problem of urban hunger, but were still a necessary resource for vulnerable communities. “We can’t fight all the causes of urban poverty,” he said. “But we believe that food has an impact on fighting poverty. If you eat well, you’re in better health and you might be able to go back to work or do better in school. We [had] immigrants who volunteered with us and became more employable because they had work experience and felt better about themselves. It all starts with food.” 

This article was originally published on April 7, 2020 and was updated on October 20, 2022.

Check out these related articles:

• Green Haven Project is nurturing underserved communities one garden at a time
• Fighting for food justice in a Texas food desert
• 5 innovative solutions to food deserts

The post How co-ops are transforming Quebec’s food deserts appeared first on Shareable.

Despite ongoing fears about the virus, that same summer, thousands of British Columbians followed in the footsteps of people around North America and marched for action on racial injustice.   

In lieu of that transformative summer, a group of Vancouver activists, researchers and social entrepreneurs gathered around a virtual table to map out the role inclusive employment could play in crafting a climate-conscious recovery. 

“With the pandemic, as well as the discussions happening around anti-racism and how our economic systems uphold systemic inequalities… we were thinking about how building back better would look,” recalled Alice Henry, Just Circular Recovery and Transition project lead at Share Reuse Repair Initiative. “There was a lot of focus on green energy, but we felt we could be talking more about the circular economy, and how it can support social inclusion.”

Building the circular economy

The European Commission defines a circular economy as a system that “aims to maintain the value of products, materials and resources for as long as possible by returning them into the product cycle at the end of their use, while minimizing the generation of waste.”

The JCRT initiative aims to support companies that create safe, decent and meaningful jobs in the circular economy for job seekers facing systemic barriers. The hope is that this approach will reduce waste and support economic inclusion for historically-marginalized communities and individuals, such as those living with disability or facing housing insecurity. 

Neha Sharma-Mascarenhas is a researcher at the University of British Columbia and the author of a report, Exploring a Just and Inclusive Circular Recovery, that forms the basis for much of JCRT’s work. “The conversation around ‘green jobs’ has been around for decades,” she says. “However, with the pandemic, the job losses and the fragility of supply chains, more people recognized that we needed to integrate [green jobs and inclusive local employment].” 

Both Henry and Sharma-Mascarenhas say the circular economy is present in most people’s lives and circular practices have been common for centuries. Avoiding waste when hunting, canning fruit, quilting with scraps of old clothes or storing sewing supplies in a cookie tin are just a few examples.

Sharma explains that the answers to building a more just and sustainable recovery lie in using existing resources and being mindful of both our collective intake and output: “Reduce our consumption, consume the products we have for as long as possible, and when we can’t use them in the same way, repair them, reuse them or share them with someone who can. When that’s not possible, use the raw materials to make something else.” People who are employed in any of these job sectors — from those who manually sort recycling to those who develop apps to coordinate recycling — can be said to have circular jobs. 

“Share, reuse, and repair has tremendous potential to create inclusive livelihoods for all skill and income levels,” Henry explained. “Yet these opportunities are not well understood.If we don’t start talking about how the transition to an inclusive circular economy looks, [the potential to increase the accessibility and affordability of everyday life] there won’t be a transition.”

JCRT held an initial information session in March 2021. By early 2022, they hope to have an established network of circular businesses and employment service providers sharing connections and best practices.

Chris Nichols is the co-founder of Wood Shop, an East Vancouver worker co-op where workers who have had barriers to employment make custom furniture with reclaimed wood. The co-op has been active since 2014. Earlier this year, Nichols participated in a small business panel organized by JCRT. “I think the only way organizations like ours can grow their impact is through collaboration,” he says. That’s our greatest asset, and something we need to use to our advantage. I hope others can learn from the mistakes we made, and from the efforts we’ve made.” 

No time like the present

Henry sees Vancouver as a great drawing board for a circular transition.“There’s a great sustainability culture in the Pacific Northwest…and we have a lot of innovators and entrepreneurs focused on that here,” she said, citing Vancouver’s Project Zero sustainable business incubator as one example. The Vancouver Economic commission is among SRRI’s core conveners, and the city has imposed salvage and reuse requirements on many demolished homes. There’s also an established culture of sharing and repairing, with vibrant communities building around initiatives like the Vancouver Tool Library, the Thingery, repair cafés and repair co-ops. 

It’s worth noting that the economic and cultural shift created by the pandemic has also played a role in shaping the ideas people had about economic recovery and just transition. In lockdown, Canadians had more time to think about the future they wanted to build, and in some cases, more money and flexibility to put their ideals into practice. 

Cody Irwin is a self-described “circular economy nerd” and the founder of a catering company. As catering orders ground to a halt early in the pandemic, he was able to keep staff employed due to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, and retool his business. “Our orders dropped 98 per cent in four days, but as devastating as that was, it turned out to be an entrepreneur’s dream,” he said. 

Sharewares, Irwin’s new core business, provides reusable containers to five Vancouver cafés, allows takeout customers to return containers to any participating café using a locator app, and washes the containers in a centralized facility. 

Pilot project

Irwin, along with Rosemary Cooper of SSRI and Susanna Gurr of the Social Development Research Council, collaborated with students in the sustainable business program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) to develop a pilot project to hire people with barriers to employment in the company’s washing facility. He says the company is in talks with an organization that supports autistic job seekers, working toward bringing the pilot to life. 

The company plans to “start small,” hiring one or two autistic employees before scaling up their efforts to hire other people with barriers, such as teenagers and people facing housing insecurity. 

The BCIT pilot project also familiarized a cohort of students with the intersection between sustainable employment and inclusive employment. “It makes sense for the circular economy and meaningful employment for people with barriers to intersect; it was very eye-opening to learn about what that entailed,” says Kaede Mizukoshi, a member of the BCIT group. 

“The BCIT project is a great example of projects we might oversee in the future,” says Alice Henry. “What’s great about that project is it highlights how a circular business can begin thinking about their role in supporting their community on the social side (not just the environmental or business sides), even when they’re just in the start-up stages.” Henry says the project is currently applying for funding to test prototypes in deconstruction, reuse of building materials, and electronics recycling. 

For the moment, JCRT is focusing on the discussions that need to occur before a single timecard is punched. “I want to see a much richer conversation around what this can look like and also who it can benefit,” says Henry. “It’s not just about privileged [consumers] being able to feel better; this is something that can really benefit everyone, and it’s going to look different for everyone, too.”

Check out the related stories and resources:

• The Response Podcast: Crisis as a catalyst for transformation
• “Just transition and permanently organized communities” with Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan
• Free E-Book: Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the Age of COVID-19

The post This Vancouver-based initiative is rethinking recovery and just transitions appeared first on Shareable.

The Baobab, a cooperative café in Sherbrooke, Quebec, was founded in 2018 as a hub for L’Accorderie Sherbrooke, a time bank and skills exchange, one of 12 such networks across the province. As coordinator Catherine Larouche explains, the goal of L’Accorderie is to set up a “parallel local economy” using hours as currency. If a member performs a service for another member for an hour — this can be anything from dog-walking to home repair to piano lessons — that hour is added to their time bank account; they can then cash it in and request a service from someone else. 

Before the pandemic hit, members would go to each other’s houses, or meet at the Baobab or other neutral locations, to provide the agreed-upon service. Suddenly, that couldn’t happen.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, we did have a slowdown of spontaneous exchanges,” says Latouche. “Meeting in person is so much easier than doing everything by Zoom, phone, or email. You used to be able to take someone aside at the Baobab…and now you have to track them down.”

L’Accorderie wasn’t alone. “People have changed their ways of sharing during the pandemic,” observes Graziella Michel, cofounder of a web-based skill-sharing platform called Skillharbour. “There’s been a big shift from in-person to virtual meetings.” She says there’s also been a marked increase in demand, from people stuck at home and suddenly eager to learn new skills. 

New challenges

The pandemic has created many challenges for skills exchanges and other sharing initiatives that rely on person-to-person contact. Paul Magder is cofounder of the Toronto Repair Café (TRC). In “normal” times, the monthly “repair cafés” organized by Magder and TRC volunteers, held in libraries or church halls across Toronto, would attract as many as 200 people, each carrying a broken item that they wanted to learn to fix. Skilled volunteers — jewelers, tailors, electricians, computer technicians, engineers — would repair a range of items, from necklaces to lamps to laptops and cameras, while walking participants through the repair process. 

“It has been tough,” admits Magder. “What we do — face-to-face, nose-to-nose repair work– will be some of the last stuff to come back.” The TRC has organized online repair cafés via Zoom, and, like L’Accorderie, had to deal with a new set of challenges. “There are safety issues when you’re trying to walk someone through repairing an electrical appliance; there are tools you need that not everyone has…and when you’re trying to show someone how to sew up a hole in their shirt, it can be hard if their lighting isn’t perfect,” says Magder.  

Initially bereft, but determined, Larouche, Magder and their volunteers got busy creating workarounds and wrestling with the new needs the pandemic created. “We were worried about losing the link between our members. We recruited 20 people to make courtesy calls to older members, we set up an errand assistance service for members who couldn’t go out, and members got busy sewing masks,” Larouche recalled. Activity picked up as members adapted to physical distancing and videoconferencing.

“People have set up Zoom yoga classes, a dog-walking service, tech support, renovations, offered to drive people to appointments, these are things you can do at a distance,” says Larouche. The Baobab Café is even humming again; Accorderie members film weekly Zoom art classes on its concert-less stage. Magder and his team set up drop-off systems and virtual workshops, focusing on repairing bikes and sewing machines, which were suddenly getting more use.

One general repair clinic organized in November in conjunction with the public library in nearby Brampton, Ontario, drew hundreds of people from around the world via Zoom and alerted Magder and others to the potential of the new medium. “We had someone who couldn’t figure out how to install a door handle because of a lock on the door,”  said Magder. “Normally, that would never come up, because you have to bring [your item] to the event. But on Zoom, we were able to talk them through taking it apart and reassembling it and getting it working.” 

The great rethink  

Peter Mui is a California-based engineer and entrepreneur and co-founder of Fixit Clinic, a network of repair cafés around the United States from which Magder and his fellow volunteers took inspiration. Fixit Clinic’s goal is to fight overconsumption, waste, and planned obsolescence one repair job at a time, through events where participants learn to repair their own items with coaching from an experienced volunteer. An irrepressible optimist, he immediately points out the ways he believes moving online has improved the clinics. 

Mui refers to the online clinics as “a completely different product” than the in-person events. There are no walk-ins.  In order to be assigned a virtual Fixit Clinic coach, a participant has to have a solid Internet connection, be able to explain the problem with their item concisely, be at ease on camera, and ideally have some tools at the ready. They also have to be ready to work. “A lot of people came to our [in-person] events because they wanted free repair…but we’re serious about teaching people to fix their own stuff,” he explains. “The best thing about doing events on Zoom is that it forces that issue — we can’t touch the item. They have to fix it on their own.” 

Fixit Clinic also works with similar organizations in Europe, and going virtual has allowed fixers to tap into a vast hive mind of expertise. “One side effect of these virtual clinics is that every item gets so many eyeballs on it,” says Mui. “We had a woman in Millbrae, California who had a fan that wasn’t working because of bad circuit board components. Danny in Belgium diagnosed what the problem was, Howard in Minneapolis figured out what parts she should order on eBay…and another coach in the Bay Area got her soldering tools. Over two or three sessions, we taught her to fix her fan. The fan works!”  

Mui observes that the pandemic has increased interest in repair, out of necessity. “During the pandemic, people have not been able to get repair [personnel to come into their houses],” Mui explained. “Then, when you can call a repair place, they’re backed up for months, but during that time, you still need a working dishwasher. Now, you can point your smartphone at that dishwasher and we can help you figure out what’s wrong.”  

At the very beginning of the pandemic, the word “shortage” was everywhere — people were concerned about running out of food, of toilet paper, of masks and ventilator parts, and in some places that became a real possibility. “The big lesson of the pandemic is that supply chains are very brittle,” Mui observes. “The further you move away from the things you rely on, that creates a systemic risk. How do we return to a more local type of manufacturing paradigm, where things are designed, built, and repaired locally [and sheltered from that risk]?  My secret plan for world domination involves turning everyone into a local fixer.”

This pandemic-produced marriage of the global and the hyperlocal is inspiring to Graziella Michel. “We’ve always done skills exchanges,” she says. “Hundreds of years ago, maybe, it was just with our neighbors and family, But now we have the possibility to take it anywhere in the world, and that’s a great opportunity.”  

The post A new landscape for skill-sharing emerges from pandemic aftermath appeared first on Shareable.

The Organic Soup Kitchen, Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara’s Organic Soup Kitchen made its first batch of soup in 2009, and has been formulating, making and delivering organic soups for people recovering from cancer in the Santa Barbara area for more than a decade. When lockdown first hit in March 2020, the small company’s phone “started ringing off the hook” with inquiries from community members who were scared to leave their homes, Chief Operating Officer Andrea Carroccio recalls. “In the beginning, there was a lot of food scarcity, because [shoppers] were buying everything up to feed their families. We are dealing with low-income people, including seniors, who have some food insecurity, and our soups are often the only good meal they get in a week.” Carroccio and her team now deliver meals to 600 elderly or vulnerable people per week around Santa Barbara, who pay on a sliding scale.  

Montreal Botanical Garden, Montreal, Quebec

When lockdown hit Montreal, the horticulturists at the Montreal Botanical Garden lost precious time that would ordinarily be used to plant ornamental gardens. Conscious of residents’ concerns about the food supply, they scaled up their vegetable garden instead, planting a hectare of cabbage, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, melons, beans, root vegetables and carrots. More than 500 cases of fresh vegetables were delivered to four local nonprofits working with food-insecure people, according to garden director Anne Charpentier. “We normally do a demonstration garden, so people can see different kinds of peppers and how a pepper grows,” she says. “This year, the emphasis was on productivity, not variety, and there was much more work involved in the harvest — more like farming than gardening!” When restrictions on gatherings relaxed during the summer, the garden held socially distanced vegetable-growing workshops. “A lot of people discovered the joy of growing [their] own vegetables this year,” Charpentier says. “Whenever we get past the pandemic, we plan to go back to our mission of showing off plant diversity, but maybe we’ll find a happy medium.”     

Olio, London, UK (and around Europe)

Olio is a food-sharing app that was launched in London in 2015. Its original goal was to prevent food waste by connecting people who had small amounts of food to give away with people who needed extra food. “Obviously, good food shouldn’t be going to waste when there’s someone nearby who would love to have it,” says founder Saasha Celestial-One. She clarifies that Olio’s mission is mainly one of waste reduction. However, “We’re quietly very proud of the impact we’re having in the lives of [food-insecure] people,” she says. “The pandemic has significantly increased the number of people who need food because they lost their job or their children aren’t getting free school meals.” At the same time, Celestial-One believes that, as the pace of life has slowed down during the pandemic, people have become more aware of food waste. “We’ve seen more sharing in the past five months than in the [previous] five years,” she says. Users report that the free, anonymous app removes the stigma and bureaucracy around requesting free food. “Almost everyone can make incremental improvements to their lifestyle which seem small, but at scale can make a massive difference” for the climate and for food security, she observes. “We’re all part of the problem, but we can fix it together.”

Essential-FAM, Oakland, California

Before the pandemic, AshEL Seasunz Eldridge was a musician and Xochitl Bernadette Moreno was studying herbal medicine. Now, the nonprofit they cofounded, Essential-FAM, connects Oakland, California residents living in homeless encampments with healthy food and natural health products.The two friends met in the early days of the pandemic, distributing leftover food from the Oakland Unified School District to people living in tent encampments in Oakland. When schools closed, they distributed food donated by local gardeners, farmers and community groups. “We had restaurant suppliers who were just sitting on food; we would get no food one week and tons of food the next week and we had to be present to use that supply,” says Eldridge. The needs for food and sanitation also became more acute, as gyms, cafés and churches closed and events where free food was usually handed out were cancelled. Amid the crisis, though, Moreno and Eldridge witnessed an encouraging convergence of efforts. “We saw mutual aid networks spring up [among] people who had been working in the camps for years, and it was through those networks that we were able to set up distribution for different things,” Moreno adds. A Michelin-starred chef and a massage therapist have also pitched in to help camp residents. “The pandemic did have a huge impact on food security, and for a while people were living on peanut butter, but now they’re eating really well,” says Moreno. “The level of care we have been able to provide is amazing.”

Grow Free, Strathalbyn, South Australia (and around Australia)

 In 2013, Andrew Barker started growing organic vegetables in his back garden and giving them away to people in the neighbourhood. Some of his neighbours asked to help, and Grow Free was born. Grow Free now has about 300 free food carts around Australia, mostly stocked by amateur gardeners growing their own produce. “It’s about growing our own healthy food in good soil … and giving it away so everyone eventually has access to good food,” he says. Australia has endured overlapping crises this year: the pandemic hit near the end of a catastrophic bushfire season, and travel restrictions have led to a shortage of agricultural workers, leaving some food to rot in the fields. Barker says many Australians are concerned about the future of the food supply. “You take out one little link in the supply chain and the whole thing just crumbles,” Barker says. At the same time, Grow Free has been, well, growing. “It’s been a challenge keeping track of where the new carts are popping up,” he says. “People are seeing the need for it.” Some of the carts have been emptied within minutes. “We’re just going to keep getting hit with more crises; if it’s not a pandemic it will be something else, so we have to get busy creating the solutions,” he says. “Getting back to growing our own food is part of that.”

FoodCloud, Dublin, Ireland (and around Ireland)

FoodCloud was founded in Dublin in 2013 to bridge the gap between businesses with surplus food, including supermarkets and farms, and community groups that need it, while reducing food waste. At the beginning of the pandemic, as panic buyers cleared grocery shelves, the group saw a 90 per cent drop in donations, according to CEO and co-founder Iseult Ward. During the initial lockdown, Ireland’s police and postal workers were pressed into service supplying elderly and isolated people with food and information, locating thousands of newly food insecure people. FoodCloud pivoted from a food waste prevention focus to a food security focus, distributing food around the country with support from the public sector. “Just to see the Gardai [police] vans pulling up outside our warehouses and filling up with food, that’s real,” Ward says. She believes the pandemic has exposed underlying weaknesses in food systems. “We’ve seen a spike in surplus at the same time as we’ve seen a spike in need; our food systems are set up so they’re not very flexible, and if one customer at the end of the supply chain disappears suddenly, that food can’t be diverted unless we redistribute it … our food systems aren’t able to deal with shocks. That awareness is there more than it ever has been, so as long as we don’t forget that, I think we’ll see more progress.” 

Bear Clan Patrol, Winnipeg, Manitoba  

 The North End of Winnipeg is one of Canada’s poorest communities, and arguably one of its most close-knit. For years the Bear Clan Patrol — a volunteer community safety group founded on Indigenous principles of nonviolent conflict resolution — has maintained a presence in the area, providing safe walks and rides and running cleanups and mediation services. For the past two years, they’ve also distributed food hampers, no questions asked, to several hundred North End families. During the pandemic, they’ve turned to delivery, making 400 hampers a day with food donated by supermarkets. “What goes in the hampers is probably what goes in your cupboard: pasta, [macaroni and cheese], soup, hamburger, pork chops or fish … we’ve secured some hams for the holidays,” says board member Brian Chrupalo, a longtime police officer and North End native who speaks with the precision of a cop. “We don’t want it to be just a box of crackers and a can of soup.” Volunteer delivery drivers service 21 routes around the North End. “People have said that if we weren’t distributing this food, they would either be stealing or dumpster diving,” he says. “The need is there. Fortunately, we have great [volunteers and staff] and they’re proud to be putting food out for our elders and our community.”

The post Sharing to create more food secure cities during COVID-19 appeared first on Shareable.

At the same time, organizations that supply food to Montrealers in need were seeing demand creep up and distribution capacity drop. As borders slammed shut, concerns were also being raised about the country’s fruit and vegetable supply chain, heavily dependent on foreign importations and foreign labor. Rumors of food shortages were spreading, and people were rushing to grocery stores to stock up. 

To help, Botanical Garden staff swung into action, converting the 3,000-square-meter Jardin des nouveautés (and a few smaller educational gardens) into vegetable gardens, doubling their vegetable production capacity. The vegetables will be donated to community organizations, providing fresh greens to Montrealers in need. 

Charles-Mathieu Brunelle is the director of Espace pour la vie (Space for Life), a vast educational complex in the shadow of the city’s Olympic Stadium which contains the Biodome, a nature museum, along with a planetarium, an insectarium and the Botanical Garden. “Espace pour la vie exists not only to connect people to nature, but to contribute to the community,” he says. “We all thought about what we could do to help.” 

Brunelle explains that the roots (pardon the pun) of the idea stretch back as far as World War I, when “victory gardens” became popular. “The idea at the time was to encourage people to grow their own food, so that trains that were ordinarily used to transport food could transport soldiers,” says Brunelle. The Botanical Garden was gradually built over the course of the 1930s, and during World War II, its founder — a monk known as Frère Marie-Victorin — set up a demonstration victory garden to provide five people with fruits and vegetables for a year. Brunelle estimates that the modern victory gardens, totalling a hectare of space, will be able to provide 100 people with fruits and vegetables for a year. Gardeners will grow kale, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, beets and rutabagas, along with a selection of herbs and hardy local berries. 

“This isn’t just a symbolic gesture; it’s real help,” says Anne-Marie Aubert, coordinator of the Montreal Food System Council, a regional round table on food security which brings together more than 200 public, private and nonprofit organizations involved in various stages of food distribution. “People are concerned about the availability of fruits and vegetables because there may be a labor shortage in the fields this summer, and [adding more vegetables] will improve the quality of the food distributed by food banks.” 

While the Botanical Garden may be the city’s largest communal vegetable garden this summer, it won’t be the only one. Surveys show that between 35 and 50 percent of Montrealers practice some form of urban gardening. Mayor Valérie Plante answered the pleas of thousands of gardeners when, on April 30, she approved the opening of the city’s 97 community gardens — although those on the two-year waiting lists for some gardens will have to keep waiting. A multi-sector working group called Cultiver Montreal, which promotes urban gardening, recently received a $45,000 city subsidy; according to CTV News, one of its programs is a seed delivery service for home gardeners.  

Espace pour la vie will also encourage Montrealers to learn to grow their own food, with a series of bilingual, online videos about urban gardening. The videos will be available in French and English, and some will be targeted to children. Brunelle hopes that later in the summer, the garden will be able to host in-person workshops to demonstrate vegetable-growing techniques. 

“At the Botanical Gardens, we have done education programs with kids where the kids recognize car logos more readily than they recognize different kinds of birds or plants,” says Brunelle. “People don’t know what’s around them. Even in the thirties, Frère Marie-Victorin saw that we were losing that connection with nature. Food self-sufficiency is the basis of everything; it allows us to feed ourselves and realize that nature feeds us.” 

“This crisis has made a lot of people aware of the importance of food security and food self-sufficiency,” says Aubert, herself an avid window-box tomato grower. “We were already seeing a bit of a resurgence in urban gardening and buying locally, but now even more people are seeing the value in those approaches. Lots of people are going to be growing food on their balconies now, because we’ve all seen the value of being able to feed yourself.”

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This article is part of our reporting on The People’s COVID-19 Response. Here are a few articles from the series:

• Coronavirus catalyzes growing wave of grassroots action despite social distancing
• The coronavirus pandemic calls us to share more than ever
• The People’s COVID-19 Response needs you
• 10 ways to share during the COVID-19 pandemic
• The pandemic isn’t a portal, yet
• The Response: Resisting COVID-19 with mutual aid in Chico, CA
• 20 ways Shareable readers are helping during the pandemic

Download our free ebook- The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters (2019)

The post COVID-19 pandemic brings new growth to Montreal’s urban gardens appeared first on Shareable.

More than 100 library staff volunteered to pitch in with the food distribution scheme. They packed their first hamper on March 25. “We’re working five days a week, putting together 500-600 hampers per day [at our main distribution center] and getting them set up to go out to the branches,” says MacFayden, a regional manager, in a rapid-fire interview before the day’s food distribution at the Albion Library gets underway. 

Ryan Noble is the executive director of North York Harvest, one of the Toronto region’s largest food banks. He explains that as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many smaller nonprofits which distributed food aid closed their offices, and volunteers at those organizations — mostly seniors — were concerned about leaving home. “Most of our food gets distributed through volunteer-driven agencies… and when schools and community centers closed, we lost another link in the distribution chain,” he says.  

That’s where the libraries came in. “Food banks raised the [distribution] issue with the city council and the emergency operations office, and the idea of using the libraries came together very quickly,” says Noble. 

Library staff deep-cleaned the TPL’s Ellesmere Sorting Facility and created a storage space and a hamper-assembly area. “They [library staff] sort, we transport,” says Noble. To minimize crowding, recipients call ahead to request a hamper and receive an appointment time or date, although people in need who drop by unexpectedly on distribution days are not turned away empty-handed. Distribution staff respect strict social distancing and wash their hands every 15 minutes to keep themselves and others safe. Hampers contain food that is “as accessible and culturally neutral as possible,” including canned goods, rice, beans, and usually some perishables like vegetables or yogurt, packed with love by local librarians. New children’s books are also included in hampers for families that request them. 

“In general, libraries are great distribution points,” says Noble. “They’re safe, accessible, welcoming, dignified, and usually close to where people live. Lining up to use a food bank is a difficult experience; it’s a public admission that you need help. It’s hard for people, especially now, when we’re starting to see some people who have never used a food bank. We want to make sure people have a dignified experience.” He also points out that library staff have experience working with the public, including vulnerable people. 

“We know how to move stuff, and we serve the public every day,” says MacFayden, the library manager. “We are a public service and we were so sad to see the library close, but this gives us purpose and a way to help.”

Montreal library provides safe space for city’s homeless

In normal times, thousands of people from all walks of life come to Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque for a bit of peace and quiet, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that the front hall of the largest library in Quebec has been transformed into a daytime respite space for homeless people. 

“We normally have several thousand visitors a day, and at least 200-300 are homeless people,” says Jean-Louis Roy, chief executive officer of Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec, the government agency which oversees the Grande Bibliothèque. “Like anyone else, they come to the library to use the computers, to look for work, to look things up and to rest. We’ve done some workshops with them over the years — they’re not strangers to us.” 

Roy says the city initially asked library administrators to consider using the hall for food distribution, before deciding it would be better used as a day shelter. In three days, Roy says, the library and the city had addressed insurance and liability issues, deployed security guards and filled the space with 50 socially distanced lounge chairs. People can use the space to sleep, connect to Wi-Fi, use the washrooms or just enjoy the calm. City staff help users get in touch with their families or with health and social services providers if need be. Masked and gloved city employees dispense hand sanitizer. Most people stay for an hour or two. On a recent snowy Thursday afternoon, silence pervaded the space. “It’s a respite area with as many services as we can provide,” says Roy. 

Roy and his team see the service as part of their basic civic duty. “There are thousands of homeless people in the city, and the malls and other libraries and all the places they normally go to get inside are closed,” he says. “We have a choice to either wall ourselves off from everyone or open things up and make life a little easier for people, and we choose the latter. Some doors have to open — in a coordinated way — but they have to open. We hope that we’ll set an example to show people that solidarity within the city exists even in a pandemic.”  

Roy says the shelter hasn’t had any major difficulties so far, either with violence, cleanliness, social distancing or logistics. He says the city’s collaboration has been essential. “It’s a little like an orchestra that has to play from the same sheet music, everyone from the building maintenance staff to the communications people. We, the library, can’t do this alone and the city can’t do it without our space. It will be interesting to see what lessons we’ll learn after three or four weeks of this, but for now we’re just happy to see people’s faces once they’re in a space that’s safe and warm, with no one telling them to move along.”

##

This article is part of our reporting on The People’s COVID-19 Response. Here are a few articles from the series:

• Coronavirus catalyzes growing wave of grassroots action despite social distancing
• The coronavirus pandemic calls us to share more than ever
• The People’s COVID-19 Response needs you
• 10 ways to share during the COVID-19 pandemic
• The pandemic isn’t a portal, yet
• The Response: Resisting COVID-19 with mutual aid in Chico, CA
• 20 ways Shareable readers are helping during the pandemic

Download our free ebook- The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters (2019)

The post Canada’s libraries step up to help vulnerable people during pandemic appeared first on Shareable.

School systems in Indigenous communities in far Northern Quebec have come under criticism in recent years for dropout rates of over 70 percent and for failing to prepare students for post-secondary studies. Isaiah is one of the first graduates of a job skills and empowerment program for Indigenous youth-centered around a FabLab at the First Peoples Innovation Centre (FPIC) in Gatineau, Quebec.

"The FabLab's way of working is very close to traditional Indigenous methods of teaching and learning," says FPIC founder Céline Auclair. "You don't have instructors talking at the learners for hours. You learn by doing and watching people doing things."

The FabLab, which will be open to the public in a few months, is part of a growing movement of Indigenous-centered collaborative workspaces in Canada. Those who have worked to establish the centers say that they combine a very contemporary way of working with respect for the values of the first North Americans.

Aspiring Indigenous coworkers are developing spaces of their own at places like the FPIC, Canoe Coworking in Winnipeg, the city-funded Indigenous Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Toronto and the Songhees Innovation Centre (SIC) in Victoria, British Columbia, founded in early 2017 as the first Indigenous-centered coworking facility in Canada. "In recent years, there have been so many different kinds of coworking spaces popping up across North America," says Jeff Ward, an Indigenous software developer who is one of the cofounders of the SIC. "There was nothing with an Indigenous focus."

Corporate coworking spaces "weren't quite the right fit for me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why,” says Tara Everett, founder of Winnipeg-based Canoe Coworking. "Then I started realizing that as an Indigenous person, we do business differently — our approach is much more holistic."

Canoe Coworking founder Tara Everett hopes to create an Indigenous-friendly coworking space in the heart of Winnipeg, where nearly one in seven residents identify as Indigenous. Photo courtesy of Everett

"In a business incubator like ours, bad ideas get weeded out pretty quickly and good ideas can develop faster," says Jonathon Araujo of Pontiac Consulting, one of the groups driving the Toronto project. "We want to create a cooperative, welcoming place."

Ward has already begun to see the benefits of bringing Indigenous co-workers from different fields together in a single space. "I'm working with an Indigenous graphic designer who I might not have met otherwise… we're working with The Moosehide Campaign and Indian Horse Films. I'm really excited to see what will happen."

Jonathon Araujo Redbird (left) and Jacob Taylor (right) of Pontiac Consulting are working with the city of Toronto to create an indigenous coworking space and business incubator. Photo courtesy of Taylor

Ward's space, rented from the Songhees First Nation, is starting to fill up with Indigenous organizations that have put down roots there and individual coworkers who come in for a few days or a month. "Once we get the 'hot desk' spaces filled and hire a full-time coordinator, that would be a measure of success for me," he says. "I want to get this place full of Indigenous innovators every day." His ambition is to develop the space into an entrepreneurship hub for the community.

Everett and Ward say having Indigenous-specific spaces gives members a chance to feel safe and considered and to work with like-minded people. "Coworking isn't just shared office space, it's also a community," says Everett. "Winnipeg is home to innovation centers doing amazing work, but if you're working on Indigenous governance, or issues around missing and murdered Indigenous women, it's great to have an Indigenous community to come back to."

For Everett, building a supportive space means setting aside an elders' lounge for older community members and giving members the possibility to "smudge" — carry out a cleansing ceremony involving burning herbs — inside the space. For Ward, culturally relevant décor and the Songhees First Nation café in the same building, with its offerings of "Indigenous comfort food" like salmon and fry bread tacos, play a role.

"Being in a space where you don't have to constantly explain your culture is really nice," says Everett, who is Anishnabe and grew up in Winnipeg. She hopes that Canoe, in addition to encouraging entrepreneurship, will "provide a bit of a bridge" between Indigenous and non-Indigenous entrepreneurs.

"As people have gotten to understand the benefits of coworking, the support has been outstanding," says Everett. "I've seen trepidation turn in to interest and empowerment."

"Indigenous people were the first co-workers," she says. "It's commonly said that coworking was brought about in the 2000s, but when I started to understand it more as a movement, I realized we had always been collaborative — before there was money in North America, we were always sharing resources or time or expertise. That's how I see the coworking movement."

Header image of Songhees Innovation Centre courtesy of Jeff Ward

The post Empowering Canada’s Indigenous communities through coworking appeared first on Shareable.

“Democratic member control, including the right to raise resolutions for changes to the business, is a long-standing principle of cooperative governance that has historically been fulfilled through in-person meetings and votes,” says Mike Cook, Stocksy’s acting chief executive officer.

Cook says that as a platform co-op with members in over 65 countries, traditional methods of participatory governments must be updated if Stocksy is going to “walk the walk… to become a worldwide [participatory] platform.”

“In traditional co-op systems, members would vote on resolutions during an annual general meeting, which isn’t possible to do fairly when you have members who speak various languages and live in time zones all around the world,” Cook says. Since 2014, Stocksy’s resolutions have been proposed and voted on through an online system allowing members the time and space to review and discuss the proposals as they’re able, but the process wasn’t perfect.

“Last year, the board was concerned about the backlog of resolutions and wanted to do whatever was possible to speed up the resolution process, so we went directly to the membership and asked them exactly what they wanted out of the system,” says Holly Clark, an artist and member of the board of directors who helped develop the system. The specifics were then hammered out by Cook and members of the board of directors, and the current resolution system was born.

Increased member participation in governance decisions through the platform has led to the removal of the co-op’s 1,000-person membership cap, among other changes. In this case, the resolution was “pitched” to members by the board. The process is a two-way street, Cook says, adding that members are free to envision their ideal co-op and pitch their own governance ideas. “At our core, there’s a tool where members can directly and democratically affect the direction of the company,” he says.

Members can initiate the resolution process in two clicks by posting an “idea for discussion” on a specialized platform on the Stocksy intranet. When an idea is posted, a round of voting begins automatically and a discussion space for that idea is created. “This first round of voting indicates whether or not membership believes the idea is one worth additional attention, providing a quick way to assess and prioritize ideas,” Cook says. “This gives all our members a chance to read, translate, talk about, and think about our resolutions.”

Recent resolutions that have been put to a vote have drawn 36-40 percent turnout from members. “I thought that was low, but I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are surprised by that level of engagement,” he says. Cook says the new process has driven a healthy, substantive democratic debate among members and between members and the company’s leadership: “When you see the debate that occurs in the forums, you see how seriously this is taken by our members.”

“Climbing To Great Heights” by Catherine MacBride, provided by Stocksy.com

When an idea for discussion is first posted, members have at least seven days to vote on whether to advance it to the next step of the process. Members receive automated messages letting them know how many days are left to vote once a quorum of voters (10 percent of artist members) has been reached on any given resolution.

When an idea for discussion has passed a member vote, the board reviews it to assess its feasibility and its potential impact on the business. Once the board accepts an idea, it passes the idea to the newly created Resolution Committee, a joint committee of board members and artist-members, which works to develop the best draft of the resolution before putting it forward for a final vote. Reminders are sent out to all members throughout the voting period, and once voting closes and votes are calculated, the results are displayed in the members’ portal.

In theory, the board does have the power to reject an idea, but Cook says that rejection is unlikely “unless board members have a specific concern that they would like addressed.”

“We have had a few resolutions where there has been a conflict — a situation where the board has had to rule that this is not in our best interest,” says Cook. “When we do decline [to advance a resolution], the reason why is posted in the forums.”

Dissent does happen. “Believe me, it’s not all positivity and backslaps. One of the most fundamental features of a democracy is dissenting opinion,” says Clark. “As members point out not just the pros, but also the cons during decision making, our collective genius kicks in to problem-solve, and that’s when the magic happens.”

Clark says that by making it easier for individual members to participate in governance and propose ideas, the co-op is tapping into a vast global hive mind of knowledge, talent, and experience. “Our members come from a variety of diverse backgrounds,” she says. “We are not only photographers, but also graphic and industrial designers, small business owners, writers, coders, parents of huge families, yoga teachers, models, students, attorneys, and more. Our collective genius is vast. Imagine all that brainpower combined to generate ideas and troubleshoot challenges.”

Header image “Synthesizer” by Audrey Shtecinjo was provided by Stocksy.com

This story was sponsored by Stocksy. The company provided editorial input for this piece.

The post Platform consensus: How Stocksy achieves democratic governance appeared first on Shareable.

A platform cooperative, as defined by the nonprofit Cooperatives For a Better World, is “a digital platform — a website or mobile app that is designed to provide a service or sell a product — that is collectively owned and governed by the people who depend on and participate in it.” Platform co-ops integrate the centuries-old concept of cooperatives (businesses owned and operated by workers or members, such as some community grocery stores and credit unions) with the 21st-century device of an online platform — a digital interface used to sell a good or service.

For Stocksy acting CEO Mike Cook, the platform cooperative model is “the right one for us — full stop.”

“The big appeal for coming on board with Stocksy [as an employee] was that their way of doing things just seemed fairer,” Cook says. “The artists are the engine of the enterprise — not only should they have a larger say in what we do, but they should benefit in a fairer and more equal manner.”

“Lots of companies claim to have artists’ best interests at heart,” Cook says. “Some may even be doing it reasonably well, but none have it built into their DNA — in the actual structure of the company like Stocksy does.”

He says that the pay structure was developed by asking the question, “how much can we pay the artists while ensuring we can still run the company?” “For instance, if we hold a special sale on any of our content, the artist’s portion is not discounted. They still receive the full royalty payment,” Cook says.

Although the business remains a for-profit company, payments to artists “hold an equal place at the finance table” with revenue, he says. This emphasis on a fair deal for the photographers and videographers as well as the clients has led to the development of a core group of committed, satisfied contributors.

“Double Exposure Of Woman’s Silhouette And Amethyst Crystals” by Hayden Williams, provided by Stocksy.com

“As a co-op, it appeals to me, because you’re treated like a valuable contributor and not just a number,” says photographer Colin Anderson, from Melbourne, Australia, who has been a Stocksy contributor since early 2018.

“The royalty rate for photographers is one of the highest out there, it seems, and the co-op aspect really makes everyone truly invested in contributing to its success,” says San Francisco-based contributor Diane Villadsen. “I love looking through other artists’ work and reading the Stocksy blog. I think the great content drives many people to their site.”

Royalties from Stocksy proved to be a lifeline for contributor Julia Forsman during a period of political and economic instability in Turkey. Forsman was based in Istanbul for over a decade but recently relocated to the U.K. “Shortly after moving from Istanbul after the attempted military coup I had an epic Stocksy month that enabled me to have a break of several weeks to concentrate on settling our children in a new country. Ultimately all our ideals and values have to be directed towards career sustainability.”

“Stocksy’s business model was set up to share value with the contributors and offer images that were good (quality) and sustainable,” adds Forsman, a longtime freelance photographer who became a Stocksy member in 2015. “I wanted to join because so much of life now is a rush towards the fastest and cheapest. Stocksy felt like a refusal to join the rush to the bottom but rather a chance to catch a breath and create something outstanding.”

Stocksy’s structure also allows artist members to connect with Stocksy employees and each other, and have a day-to-day voice in the running of the company through group meetings, online forums, and an online platform allowing members to propose resolutions which are then voted on.

“I am so impressed with the sense of community, the feedback and help that management and the other photographers are constantly offering,” Anderson says. “Most of the management and staff are photographers as well, so they understand the creative process… the forums are so informative, I find myself spending more time on them than on any other social media site.”

Photographer Sara Wager turned to Stocksy after an unfulfilling experience with a corporate stock photography site. “Stocksy gives a fair price for good work and also isn’t a faceless Goliath. They are approachable and helpful and able to offer ideas when asked.”

“The Horsehead And Flame Nebula In A Traditional Palette” by Sara Wager, provided by Stocksy.com

For photographer Audrey Shtecinjo, who is based in Belgrade, Serbia, the platform has become an indispensable global online community. “Although they often work on different continents with no physical contact, Stocksy’s contributors feel like they are part of the family,” Shtecinjo says.

The next article in this series will explore how Stocksy works to build that family and ensures that artists’ voices are heard in the site’s governance and development.

The post A platform to stand on: How artists reap benefits from Stocksy’s cooperative framework appeared first on Shareable.