Did you know that Wicked Elephants is a co-op? Founding the organisation using a cooperative business structure was a very deliberate decision as we firmly believe that co-ops can help forge the kind of world we want to see!
So what is this kind of world we want to see anyway?
Essentially, we envisage an economy of relationships rather than one of transactions. A world where communities of practice take precedence over competitive commerce. A world where we can have challenging conversations with dignity, presence and respect and where our focus is on building a vibrant and sustaining future together. Moving from ‘me to we’.
2025 is the United Nations International Year of the Co-op, and WE recently attended and led a workshop the Co-op Assembly in Sydney. Our experiences at The Assembly only affirmed our choice of business structure!
Our own session at the event was a lively and interactive session on collaborative strategic planning led by Sophia van Ruth and Caresse Cranwell. Participants were led in a modified 3D modelling process to explore what good democratic member control could look like in practice for a co-op. You can find out more about how Wicked Elephants does collaborative strategic planning here.
In addition to leading our session at The Assembly we encountered a staggering and inspiring diversity of businesses living out similar values. We heard stories of:
- Cooperatives breathing vibrancy back into rural communities which were losing essential services such as their post office by bringing these services into the cooperative ownership of locals. Profit motives soften as communities cooperate to meet their own needs.
- Artist co-ops pooling their resources to breathe life back into old-style printing presses
- Housing co-ops finding ways of meeting the basic human need for shelter and community despite an international housing crisis.
WE could map out for you how the International Cooperative Principles are such a natural fit for Wicked Elephants, but that might be a bit boring and dry, and so WE’ll leave you to click through to The Principles and draw your own conclusions if you so choose. It might also be interesting for you to reflect on how these principles sit with your own practice – whether you are part of a co-op or not.
Instead – WE’ll finish with a loosely-haiku-inspired poem about the Cooperative Assembly
Swimming together in word and deed
Holding a future we want to see
Values affirmed in solidarity
