Practical Support

Re-Organise is a small project but we want to use the limited resources we have to support university staff and academics in incorporating coopreative resources into their teaching and research.

We are keen to help co-develop learning resources such as slides or content and help with readings. We are also able to provide industry links to guest lecturers from cooperative businesses and the development side of cooperatives.

Here are a few examples of cooperatives included in courses or institutions from around the world to help provide inspiration of how we can do the same here in the U.K.

St Mary’s University in Vancouver Canada runs a masters degree in co-operative management. In Cork, Ireland the business school hosts a Centre for Co-operative Studies. In the Basque Country Mondragon University works closely with the worker co-operative federation in the town. The University of Wisconsin has a Centre for cooperatives which undertakes research, outreach and teaching. These are just a few examples but there’s plenty to be inspired by and to bring back to institutions in the U.K.

Our project is one of the few that are supporting cooperative education in the U.K but there are institutions and organisations doing elements of it and useful examples in the past. Co-op College provides further education and does education abroad. The co-operative University project active until just recently and documented in this bibliography also provides inspiration and lots of information. Adminstered by Co-op Culture and Stir To Action the Barefoot cooperative developers course deals with business skills. For younger people there is Woodcraft Folk.

A cooperative is an organisation run and owned by its members to meet their collective needs.

To find out more, watch this video:

To learn about the cooperative movement:

Alternatively, for more information, visit the following website:

Starting a cooperative, just like any other business, requires careful thought, funds, and a business plan.

As well as having a business idea you’ll need to decide whether or not a cooperative would be the right way forward for you and your colleagues. 

You will then need to choose a co-op structure and register. This includes deciding on your legal form, choosing your type of cooperative, discussing decision-making processes, and forms of governance. 

To find out more, visit the following website:

There are many different types of cooperatives that you can set up. One common form is a worker’s cooperative which is a cooperative owned and self-managed by all of its workers. 

The below document from Seeds for Change will provide some support and information to help you set up your own worker’s cooperative:

Setting up a Worker’s Co-op: A Short Guide

Seeds for Change UK

Download PDF

An alternative cooperative that you can set up is a housing cooperative. This is a cooperative in which the group of people who live in a house also manage and control it.

You can find out more about this below:

If you need overall support with your cooperative, you can join a community from Radical Routes which is made up of member cooperatives, allowing them to become associate members and assist you with any help you may need.

If you would still like some more general information surrounding starting up your own cooperative, the following article from The Guardian sets up an outline on the basic information of how to set it up.

This article is Part 1 of a multi-part series on cooperatives, so continue on reading Parts 2 and 3.

workers.coop aims to organise worker cooperators and supporters, and defend and advance the shared interest of worker co-ops. They are a democratic, member-driven organisation with two types of member: worker co-op enterprises, and individuals who contribute their labour through one of their working groups.

On their website, you can discover more about specific case studies, as well as any resources openly available to you.

If this interests you, you can open their page here: