Edinburgh co-operative thoughts
Introduction
I'm interested in the possibility of getting together with like minded individuals and setting up an Edinburgh housing and worker co-operative group with a view to buying some land and using low-cost and sustainable building techniques to create somewhere fantastic to live, work and play.
The project will aim to incorporate and facilitate many examples of best practice in the field of social ecology. My main inspiration is the Homes for Change and Work for Change schemes in Hulme, Manchester, along with many other varied built environment projects, linked to below.
This project is in the pre-alpha/pipedream stage, thought I've created a group on riseup.net for interested parties to communicate - https://we.riseup.net/edinecocoop
update: this page is badly in need of updating and reformatting.
Funding
Various possibilities for this. Grants and loans are also available from certain organisations.
- Low Carbon Building Programme - "The Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) is a Government programme in the United Kingdom administered by BERR (formerly the DTI). It offers grants towards the cost of installing domestic microgeneration technologies and larger scale distributed generation installations for public buildings and businesses, provided energy conservation standards are also met."
- Scottish Enterprise? rootstock? Arts groups for arts areas (gallery, theatre, etc)?
A Vague Roadmap
- Work on research for everything
- Gather like minded individuals
- Formulate group ideas on everything
- Legalities, logistics and other organisation
- Grants, fundraising, etc?
- Barn raising?