Going Back Home

Plunkett went back to its roots with a visit to Ireland last week. Minister Tony Killeen made the invitation when he spoke at our AGM. It was a wonderful opportunity to use our standard tool of analysis of "What would Horace have done"?

First call was Cork where Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Agency, was holding a conference on Ireland in Uncertain Times. The event provided an excellent insight into the challenges of Ireland's rural communities. The economic briefings made it clear that the impact of global recession was happening harder and faster in Ireland than in the UK by every measure.

Teagasc director Gerry Boyle gave an inspirational and challenging speech. He spelt out the opportunities, but set the challenge as being the lack of organisational capital. Communities needed to be enabled. Farmers had to move from producers to retailers. "The worst deficit is that people are unable to contemplate change." This was followed up by Gerry Scully, Teagasc Programme Manager, who called on agencies to "co-create solutions with people."

My other Cork highlight was the inspiration of meeting Brian Phelan, who created Glenfinn Freerange Duckeggs, a wonderful example of what can be achieved in uncertain times.

Then it was on to Dublin for my first ever visit to the Plunkett House, the first ever home of the Plunkett Foundation and still home to the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society. Its Director General (and Plunkett fellow) John Tyrell gave me a marvellous tour of where it had all began.

Then it was on to meet Minister Killeen to share first impressions. Using Sir Horace's mantra of Better Farming, Better Business and Better Living, I said that I was hugely impressed by how much Teagasc was still providing research based knowledge to farmers in exactly the way that Horace had called for in Ireland over 100 years ago. The real opportunity seemed to me to be a strong desire to connect the economic challenges with Ireland's strong community base. However, I wasn't hearing any reference to community-owned models such as co-operatives and other social enterprises.

The scale of the challenges are such that, to quote Gerry Scully, "more of the same will not be good enough." What was striking was that the chance to do things differently was already waiting to be used from the approach used by Sir Horace and the incredible team of people who worked with him to tackle issues of equal weight in Ireland all those years ago.

Making Local Food Work Conference

The second Making Local Food Work conference was held in Bristol last week and what an event it turned out to be. The first had sold out its 150 places in just a few days, so we took the bold step of booking a 250 place venue for the second. This sold out too with a waiting list.

The main thing that I loved about the day was the wonderful variety of people there. They must have come from every aspect of the local food movement and the learning between them made the event worthwhile.

The speakers didn't disappoint with Tim Crabtree as inspiring as ever on Bridport, but now complete with animated slides. Barny Haughton of Bordeaux Quay came straight from Keith Floyd's wake to wander through why local food mattered to him. My quote of the day came from Professor Kevin Morgan. In an impassioned speech asking why food wasn't part of modern city planning, he heaped praise on projects such as ours. But, he added, how to we prevent them from being "islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity."

It is a point well made. The desire to connect seemed to be the undercurrent of the day and it is something that we'll need to put our minds to.

Green care and community ownership

Fascinating trip this week to speak at a Green Care conference of academics looking at Green Care and agriculture. Green Care is a very broad church but can be defined as "to use nature

to produce health, social or educational benefits" In the UK, this is best shown by care farms, that provide a wide range of experiences on farms to benefit people faced with such issues as addiction, learning difficulties and many more areas. You can find far more out at the National Care Farming Initiative, a really inspiring organisation.

Plunkett was asked to out this work in a wider social enterprise perspective. To do so, I suggested that there were three main categories of enterprises involved. The first was those, such as care farms, based on existing agricultural businesses. The second was enterprises established to deliver green care, such as Walton Lea. The third was existing social enterprises who could add green care, but weren't set up to do so. I suggested, for instance, that Fordhall Farm was, in essence, providing green care for all. My main argument was that this third category, if rooted in community ownership, could offer not only a route from social exclusion, but also a route back into social inclusion.

Another plea was to recognise that many of the development needs of green care enterprises were close to community enterprises and it was important not to reinvent the wheel.

What inspired me most was the group's determination to provide evidence of the impact of giving an individual a green care experience. This could be a powerful tool to help convince policy formers and I wish them every success.

Right to Try gets manifesto endorsement

Congratulations to the Co-operative Party for becoming the first political party to adopt Plunkett's Right to Try idea in its manifesto. Whilst the Foundation is politically neutral and seeks to influence all mainstream parties, we are delighted to recognise this endorsement.

Right to Try is a simple idea. All too often communities hear of the closure of a shop just as it is about to close its doors. This then creates an almost impossible task of deciding that the shop could be saved, rallying the community, setting up a new organisation, raising the funds to save the shop etc. All this has to be done before the failed enterprise can be bid for. All too often this results either in having to restart the enterprise or, in some cases, the shop being lost to private housing.

Right to Try calls for the a community to be able to express its interest in trying to save a shop and being given a period of time to put its proposal together. This simple breathing space could save an enormous amount of stress for many communities. It would also encourage shop owners to discuss plans in advance.

We'll be raising this idea with all parties, but congratulations to the Co-operative Party for getting in first.

Plunkett AGM

Annual General Meetings are often not the most inspiring events if you've helped organise them, but our AGM last week left me with a spring in my step.

It wasn't just the pleasure of sharing a platform with inspiring people from Feckenham Village Shop, Community Transport Association and Thames Valley Farmers Market Co-operative. It was the sense of connecting our past with our future. It was great fun to share some of our future plans, but it was also a privilege to celebrate our Irish roots. Ninety years ago, Sir Horace had planned that we would be based in Dublin and Oxford. Well, we managed both but not at the same time! I summed up our links to the past as being an organisation whose head is in Oxfordshire and whose heart is in Ireland.

So we were delighted that the Irish Government sent Minister Tony Killeen to join us in our 90th anniversary. He spoke warmly of the role of Sir Horace and how he hoped that Ireland could learn from the path that the Foundation has taken. Our roots were also represented by John Tyrell who, as head of the Irish Co-operative Organisations Society, represented an older brother or sister to our own as it was created in Sir Horace's middle years and we in his later ones.

It was a great pleasure to see both John and former Plunkett Chair David Button receiving their Plunkett Foundation fellowship to recognise the enormous contributions.

Some organisations forget their past, other forget that they also need a future. I don't think that we could be accused of either on that day.

Back to College

Last week saw me going back to college. Not, I hasten to add, because of the start of the new school year, but two events both held in Oxford. The International Co-operative Alliance Research Conference at Queens College, Oxford was quickly followed by the Society for Co-operative Studies Conference at Ruskin College, Oxford.

Spending several days immersed in academia had me thinking about its relation to our work. It seems to me that there is great opportunity, but the challenge is finding the right people to link with. Put simply, I'd suggest that the academics fell into three distinct groups.

The first are completely dispassionate about co-operatives and approach them with all the passion of one who is about dissect a frog in a biology class. This group rarely manages to connect with the passion of the movement, but is thankfully very small in number.

The second group cares about the sector, but produces work which has little if any application by real enterprises. This is the largest group.

The real value lies in the third group which not only cares but also produces work which could be taken and used on the ground. Few in number, the potential of these of great and Plunkett looks forward to working with them.

24/7 Service to order

My favourite shop visit of the week was the village store that gave each of its regular volunteers a front door key. They could then come down to the store at any time, day or night, to meet their retail needs and those of their neighbours. I won't mention where in case their insurance company doesn't like the idea. Volunteers shared stories of just popping in because their neighbour had run out of coffee.

I don't think that this is a model of customer service that any supermarket managers will be rushing to copy in the near future.