Financing the Commons

This AA symposium focused on local economies and alternative financial systems is a partnership with the Centre for Applied Research in Empowering Society (CARES) at London Metropolitan University.

Our urban environments within neoliberal politics are shaped today by monetary values as a major driver of how buildings look, how land is used in our cities, and how this in turn impacts our behaviour. As urban practitioners or citizens, we are not equipped to engage with this and creatively re-design out its limitations. This symposium will bring together creative and innovative economic thinkers, and those making projects using alternative financial structures in the city.

How can urban practitioners lead in redesigning economic value that could re-imagine neighbourhoods, high streets and civic infrastructures? At the heart of this symposium is how local social infrastructure framed as the commons, can become financially viable as a movement, a discourse and practice. The symposium hypothesises that if grassroots organisations make up a legitimate political sector, how that impacts who are political decision makers and what the role of the neighbourhood becomes. This has macro ramifications on critiquing the current problems with representational democracy and looking at how the neighbourhood as the locus of political decision-making can become a way to implement deliberative democracy. This also has ramifications on what constitutes contemporary civic spaces in the city outside its historic conventions.

Schedule:
11-11.15am Welcome
11.15-11.30am Introduction by Torange Khonsari
11.30-12.30pm Keynote by Bronwyn Williams (Online)
12.30-12.50pm Sue Bell, Credit Unions and Local money
12.50-1.10pm Ivo Schmetz, Solidarity economy (Online)
1.10-1.30pm Discussion and Q&A

1.30-2.30pm Break

2.30-3.30pm Keynote by James Quiligan
3.30-3.50pm Louise Haagh, UBI
3.50-4.10pm Greg Fisher, Complexity Economics
4.10-4.30pm Nick Almond
4.30-4.50pm Hillary Powell, The Bank Job
4.50-5.10pm Discussion and Q&A
5.10-5.30pm Closing remarks and summary

5.30-7pm Drinks reception