Stir To Action presents a six-month programme of training workshops to build the co-operative capacity of local communities. These workshops will introduce participants to new tools, innovative strategies and the practices that can enable us to face up to climate change, financial crises and the other social problems we currently experience.
The workshop programme has been designed using some of the best practice around strengthening local economies, sourcing local, co-operative food, working with young people, bed-mapping local hosts and discounts for green travel.
We’ll be offering local food lunches to workshop participants, sourced from local co-operative food producers and members of the landworkers alliance. It’ll all be cooked in our Wonderbag non-electric slow cooker.
Come join us, get inspired and take some of these alternatives back to your own communities and organisations!
Book online using the buttons below or reserve your space via email to pay via other methods, or request a printed programme. For more information tweet us @StirToAction or send us an email [email protected].
Workshop Programme
Ethical Tea Blending and Tasting
22 February, 10am – 5pm
Red Brick Cafe £50
Spend a day with Carrie Gamble sampling different ethical teas from around the world, exploring the challenges of ethical sourcing internationally and, in the afternoon, creating your own personal tea blend! One of the blends created during this workshop will become the bespoke, co-branded blend that will be used and sold during the six month workshop programme.
Carrie is the founder of Dorset Chai Wallah, an enthusiastic tea drinker for many years and now a passionate advocate for good quality, ethical tea. She has a background of 17 years in management and development of community services for charities. She has co-led campaigns that have mobilised and benefited local communities. She has also spent time exploring alternative architecture, building a straw bale house and helping to plant permaculture gardens.
www.dorsetchaiwallah.co.uk
Citizen Journalism
7 – 8 March, 10am – 5pm
Chapel in the Garden £75
The Bristol Cable Co-op will facilitate a workshop on how to create a local platform for citizen journalists. Using participative methods these sessions will include a look at the state of local media, provide an insight into the strategies and challenges of setting up a media co-operative, explore the dilemmas of the editorial process and produce a story using multimedia. Participants will have the opportunity to publish their story that stems from the workshops on stirtoaction.com
www.thebristolcable.org @TheBristolCable
Alternative Finance
4 – 5 April, 10am – 5pm
Chapel in the Garden £75
The financial sector is notoriously destructive, but what alternatives might there be? In this workshop, Brett Scott will guide us through some of the problems of mainstream finance, and then look at alternative design principles for building a better financial system. We’ll discuss successful examples of alternative money systems, lending systems and banks, then try to prototype our own mini alternative finance projects. Can we build an insurance system for precarious freelance workers? Can we redesign the way shares work, to fund temporary initiatives? How about an activist hedge fund? Join us for a journey into a world of money, power and economic justice.
Brett Scott is a journalist, campaigner and author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press). He’s written for publications like the Guardian, Wired, New Scientist, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Aeon Mag and openDemocracy and has appeared on BBC World Update, BBC Newsday, the Keiser Report, and Arte TV. He has worked with groups like MoveYourMoneyUK, The World Development Movement, ActionAid, BBC Media Action, Open Oil, and the Finance Innovation Lab.
suitpossum.blogspot.co.uk @Suitpossum
Craftivism
18 April, 10am – 5pm
St. Michael’s Studios £50
Activism often conjures up the image of signing petitions, clicktivism, and loud and aggressive ways to demand justice. Craftivist Collective provides ‘slow activism’ that uses craft as a meditative tool to stop, reflect and act on injustice issues in a transformative and gentle way. In the workshop, facilitated by founder Sarah Corbett, we will cover different ways craft can be used in activism. We will critique the strengths and weaknesses of using craft in activism, methods to reach different audiences and fit particular campaign briefs, as well as take part in a practical craftivism activity. Join in this creative and thoughtful way of doing activism learning different techniques of using craft in activism for the different audiences you are trying to engage.
Sarah Corbett is an activist, author, and contributor to six books, and she also regularly giving talks and lectures around the world. She works with art institutions such as V&A, Southbank Centre and National Portrait Gallery, charities such as Save the Children and Unicef, and she has also collaborated with cult jewellers Tatty Devine and Secret Cinema amongst others. Her book A Little Book of Craftivism was released October 2013.
www.craftivist-collective.com @Craftivists
Shared Assets
2 – 3 May, 10am – 5pm
Chapel in the Garden £75
Mark Walton and Kate Swade will facilitate a workshop on community management and governance of land and natural resources. The workshop will draw on Shared Assets’experience of supporting new forms of management of woodlands, parks, green spaces, waterways and coastal areas. It will use case studies to outline the range of business models available for the development of landbased social enterprise and provide new tools to help practitioners make better decisions about growing and scaling up their work.
Kate Swade is a creative community-led regeneration practitioner with over nine years of experience helping people take more control of their environments and neighbourhoods. She has helped community groups and neighbourhood organisations across the country develop regeneration and building projects, from feasibility studies to final construction.
Mark Walton has over 20 years experience working with communities on environmental issues with experience of policy and research as well as practical experience of establishing and managing projects at a local and national level. He specialises in supporting collaborative approaches that empower others to take practical and effective social action. He is a member of Defra’s Civil Society Advisory Board and a 2012 Clore Social Fellow.
www.sharedassets.org.uk @shared_assets
Transition by Design: Designing & Communicating Values
17 May, 10am – 5pm
Salt House £50
Social and environmental activists and organisations are set around values that transcend profit making, but effectively communicating this against the noise of advertising and mass media can be very difficult. This day long workshop facilitated by Transition by Design aims to provide tools and approaches in design and communication for you as individual activists or organisations. Initially we will focus on the values and intentions of your organisation/campaign, and then on how to convey them. The workshop has an emphasis on participative processes and design-it-yourself approach to communication. It will also provide advice on how to get the most out of work with designers and design organisations.
T/D is a cross-disciplinary design collective operating at the junction of architecture, strategic design and social change practice. Our work focuses on the transition to an equitable and convivial low-carbon society. We have experience working with a range of organisations from grassroots activists and local food enterprises, to large NGOs and large scale campaigns.
transitionbydesign.org @convivialdesign
Renewable Energy Co-ops
6 – 7 June, 10am – 5pm
Chapel in the Garden £75 
Renewable energy co-operatives have taken off in the UK over the last few years as people work together to take power generation back into their own hands. Sharenergy is a co-operative helping people around the UK set up renewable energy projects funded by community share offers—from solar roofs to £1m wind turbines, from community heating to hydro projects. In these workshops, facilitated by Jon Hallé, you’ll learn all about the renewable energy technologies and what it takes to make them happen. Bring your ideas, learn from what is working elsewhere, and take the next big steps to getting power to the people set up in your area.
Jon Hallé has been working with renewable energy co-ops since 2003 and has been involved with many successful new models (and some instructive failures). He is a cofounder (with Eithne George) of Sharenergy, which has supported over 100 community renewable energy projects, including the UK’s first heat co-op, Scotland’s first 100% co-op owned wind turbine, and plenty of other interesting projects across the technologies and scales. Before that he was a programmer, waste oil biodiesel maker and environmental activist.
www.sharenergy.coop @sharenergy_uk
Craft Brewing
20 June, 10am – 5pm
Salt House £60
Learn to brew with the head brewer from GYLE 59, Dorset’s award winning craft brewery. On this workshop, facilitated by Jon Hosking and Amanda Edwards, you’ll be shown all the brewing processes needed to make your own beer from the raw ingredients of malt, hops, water and yeast. A full demonstration of the techniques and discussion of basic theory all mixed together in an enjoyable day’s experience.
www.gyle59.co.uk @Gyle59brew
Worker Co-ops for Young People: Create Your Own Work
4 – 5 July, 10am – 4pm
Chapel in the Garden £75
This interactive workshop facilitated by Rhiannon Colvin and Constance Laisné will empower young people (18-29 year olds) to take control of their future by learning how to set up co-operative businesses. With high youth unemployment, unpaid internships and exploitative labour market, co-ops enable youth to create their own work. Work that allows them to generate a fair income, do what they love and have a positive social impact.
Rhiannon founded AltGen when she got tired of applying for endless unpaid internships and decided young people could create something better if they started working together. She also believes in empowering people through education.
Constance is passionate about encouraging collaborative forms of creative work. For her, joining AltGen was a means of moving towards this aim within an organisation that shares her values and ethics.
AltGen.org.uk @AltGen101
Community Co-ops
5 September, 10am – 5pm
Chapel in the Garden £50
Community ownership is on the rise, enabling communities to get control of assets and services that they depend on, or want to see work better for them. This workshop facilitated by Dave Boyle will look at what community ownership and enterprise is all about, taking people through the stages that go from the first flicker of an idea through to getting up and running. Using interactive discussions, we’ll work together to figure out how to spot opportunities and think creatively about community problems and potential solutions, construct a business case, winning community hearts and minds so they get on board and then raising the money.
Dave spent 11 years working to help football fans build community-owned football clubs, and is now a freelance consultant specialising in community enterprise and community shares capital raising. He’s helped over 70 enterprises get up and running or raise capital, from Hastings Pier to the Bevendean Co-operative Pub, Sheffield Local TV to the Bristol Cable. He’s also worked with the Plunkett Foundation and the Making Local Food Work programme, and has provided support to the Permaculture Association and Sustain.
www.daveboyle.net @theboyler
Introduction to Linocut Printmaking
12 September, 10am – 5pm
St.Michael’s Studios £40
Spend a day with artist Luke Carter and learn about the process of making linocut prints, including transferring drawn images to a linoleum block, carving and single/multi colour printing processes. You will be introduced to a variety of techniques, tools and papers and familiarised with the work of some notable historic relief print makers. You’ll leave with a series of printing tests as well as one or more finished prints. You will also have the knowledge and skills you need to start lino printing in your own home. All materials will be provided, however you may wish to bring some sketches or photographs if you have a specific image you would like to see as a print. There will also be ‘soft cut’ linoleum available for those with rheumatic problems.
Luke Carter is a UWE illustration graduate who specialises in Linocut printmaking, having worked solidly in the medium for over three years. He makes both single colour and multi colour reduction prints usually with social, political or historical themes.
www.lukecarter.co.uk
TERMS & CONDITIONS
Refund Policy
Workshop spaces are limited so refunds will only be made if a written notification is received more than two weeks before the workshop date. Send written notification of cancellation via email [email protected].
For bookings cancelled two weeks, or less, before the event, no refund will be made other than in exceptional circumstances at the discretion of the workshop facilitators.
Please note that for bookings made two weeks, or less, before the event, the workshop fee will be non-refundable, other than in exceptional circumstances at the discretion of the workshop trainers.
No refund will be made for non-attendance.
Cancellation
In the event of cancellation of a workshop by the facilitators, we will
endeavour to inform all participants at least two weeks before the course is due to take place, although please be aware that this is not always possible.
In such an event, all course fees paid will be reimbursed in full, but we are unable to reimburse any other costs that may be incurred, such as travel, accommodation, etc.
In the event that dates have to be changed by the facilitators, participants may request a full refund if the new dates are not convenient.
Should you have any questions regarding these terms and conditions, please contact the workshop team.
Sponsorship
A limited number of bursaries are available through two local organisations.
Please direct all enquiries to Arthur Woodgate.
BYPAT (Bridport Young Persons Action Trust)
BYPAT is a charity supporting disadvantaged young people between the ages of 15-21. Beneficiaries must come from the local area.
BEST (Bridport Enterprise Supporting Training Ltd)
BEST is a voluntary community company working with the 19+ age group (no upper age limit). To qualify for support applicants are required to sign up to the ASPIRE Project: this entails a minimum of two hours attendance for mutually identified training, delivered by an award winning tutor, and at a mutually convenient venue. This is a free service covering West Dorset.
Travel
To encourage workshop participants to travel by green transport or public transport, we’re offering 5% off your workshop fee! All of the workshops are held within walking distance to Bridport bus station or bus stops.
Nearest train stations: Dorchester, Weymouth, Axminster
Bus: Bridport Bus station
From Dorchester: X31
From Weymouth: X53
From Axminster: X31
Local Accommodation
We’re bed-mapping the local area to find low cost accommodation for workshop participants. Please contact the workshop team for more information.
Old Bidlake Farm: Hassle-Free Camping
If you’d like to stay under canvas in the beautiful Marshwood Vale, just three miles north of Bridport, then you can take advantage of our special 20% discount by quoting STIRTOACTION when booking your accommodation.
