A flurry of cooperative-related news stories flickered across our screens recently and we thought it might be interesting to collect them for a round-up. Here’s everything from the world of cooperatives that caught our attention, in no particular order.
039: Bits, bobs and co-ops
Fontstand is becoming a co-op
Fontstand is a service for discovering and trying high-quality typefaces and they just announced that they will transition to a cooperative, owned by the type designers on the platform. We’ve been saying for years that there should be a cooperatively structured type foundry and it’s so cool to see Fontstand take that step! Unfortunately we couldn’t dig up any further information, beyond their announcement on Mastodon.
Shout-out to zoraLit, Greenheart, Limeleaf and 101lab!
There’s a new literature agency + community in town and it’s organized as a cooperative: It’s called zoraLit and they even got featured in the taz newspaper. More than a year ago, we talked to some of their founders about their plans and now their co-op is a reality—congrats!
Another shout-out goes to Greenheart, a worker-owned digital studio from Sweden we recently connected with. We love to see more agencies with this structure popping up!
Fellow worker co-op Limeleaf is celebrating one year in business and they recorded a 30mins podcast about their journey so far. Happy birthday!
Finally, our friends from 101lab are planning to launch their EU-hosted cloud solution (as an alternative to MS Teams, Dropbox, Google Workspace, Zoom, etc) as a cooperative, owned collectively by its users. More information can be found on this page, with an introduction event happening on April 26!
Our client DemNext teams up with Mondragon
Democracy Next is always at the forefront of democratic innovation and they’ve turned their attention to the workplace, partnering with Mondragon, the largest group of worker-owned cooperatives in the world. Together, they’ll explore new ways of democratic decision-making and governance. A perfect match—read their announcement blog post right here.
“If you have a social mission, go into business”
Speaking of Mondragon: Tommi shared this article in our internal chat—it’s an interview with Frederick Freundlich, a professor at Mondragon University. He says:
“Most people who go into business, I imagine, don't do it with a social vision. They go into business to live a good material life and be the leader of an organization. On the other hand, you have activists—people who are interested in social change and are concerned about an equitable society, sustainability, social justice—who see business as the enemy. They don't see it as an avenue through which to pursue their goals.”
He then quotes a Mondragon manager:
“If what we want is an economy based on democracy, human rights, and sustainability, then we're going to have to create businesses based on democracy, human rights, and sustainability.”
True that.
Long-running digital consultancy Bocoup is now worker-owned
Way back, when I started my frontend developer career in the 2010s, I remember stumbling upon a digital studio called Bocoup. It’s cool to see that they are still around, but even better that they recently became worker-owned. They have two blog posts about the transition, Ciao Bocoup and Bocoup Is Now Worker-Owned. Welcome to the club!
A quick message from AOC
Wait for it! (Youtube Shorts link)
History lesson: the Liberated Broom cooperative
Jacobin has a fascinating article about the rise (and sadly fall) of the Liberated Broom cooperative:
“In 1975, over thirty women cleaners at Belgium’s newly created Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL) went on a three-week strike, ‘fired’ their boss, and decided to launch a self-managed cooperative instead. Their experiment in radical economic democracy — which they named ‘Le Balai Libéré’ (the Liberated Broom) — allowed them to triple their salaries, grow the cooperative to over a hundred workers, and demonstrate that workers can manage their own affairs.”
Cooperative history is chock-full of underdog stories like this one, in which regular people stand up and take matters into their own hands. Also, look at this bad-ass meeting photo from the documentary …
Our work: new visual branding for Platform Coops
We recently worked with the wonderful people from Platform Coops on a branding refresh, including a new logo. You can see some of the results on their social channels already. Goes without saying that working with other cooperatives is always a special project for us.
An open letter from 70+ cooperatives
Shortly before the German elections, 70+ German cooperatives (including us, of course) signed an open letter, advocating for a resilient democracy and an inclusive society. Read the letter here, in German, and also my LinkedIn post about it. The taz newspaper also printed it in their weekend edition, which you can see below …
Village One out and about
Doro and I attended the yearly gathering of German cooperatives (Jahresempfang der deutschen Genossenschaften) and bumped into many familiar faces … events like this one always demonstrate how broad the cooperative ecosystem really is, from housing, to insurance, energy, and worker-ownership. As per usual, we sticker-bombed the event and we also heard that some of our stickers have apparently made it to Hamburgs Genossenschaftsmuseum. One more reason to plan a visit soon!
#GenoDigital CoopCamp, second edition
At the end of February, our friends from #GenoDigital hosted the second CoopCamp (a barcamp-style conference), bringing over one hundred cooperators together, from all over Germany. So many interesting topics and conversations, we had a blast! We’re hearing the next one is already being planned—more info here!
One topic on the side was sharing which cooperatives we’re all members of … here are the ones I remember: taz newspaper, SuperCoop supermarket, Green Planet Energy, Subvert and Hostsharing. The lesson being: There are always more cooperatives around you than you think—in Germany 24 million people are members of a co-op. Mindboggling.
Cooperative events and conferences this year
Well, we definitely can’t attend all of these and the list is not meant to be exhaustive, but here’s a list of a few events on our radar:
- April: Cooperatives build a better world – a global outlook on the role of cooperatives now and in the future (in Sweden and online)
- May: Worker Co-op Weekend 2025 in the UK (Sev and I might attend)
- July: ICA Global Research Conference in Canada: Intercooperation for our common futures
- July: Co-op Congress 2025 in the UK (with Grace Blakely and Cory Doctorow, among others)
- October: workers.coop Autumn Assembly 2025 in the UK
- November: Conference on Cooperatives and the Solidarity Economy in South Africa
- All upcoming #GenoDigital events
- All upcoming UK events from workers.coop
We’re always happy to give talks and share our knowledge at events or meetups, so if you want us to give a talk or take part in a panel discussion, do reach out! Just last Monday Doro talked about our experience with workplace democracy at this meetup.
Finally: “Cooperatives build a better world”
It’s still the UN’s official year of cooperatives and we try to do our part to spread the word: After all there’s often a surge of cooperative activity in times of crisis—regular people take matters into their own hands, building human-scale businesses, keeping rent affordable through housing cooperatives or taking control of crucial infrastructure, e.g. the energy grid. Cooperatives also play an important role in fighting inequality, as these structures will never create billionaires, exist to support their members and are always oriented around real human needs. That’s why more visibility for cooperatives is so important in this moment in time.
It’s a wrap!
Let us know if you found this round-up interesting—you can always reach us under hello@village.one. We might do this again if there’s enough feedback!
Take care,
Harry and the other cooperators from Village One