What you can do
Projects and activities to help your local economy thrive
These are projects and activities that support, or provide infrastructure for your local economy to thrive.
Organise an event
Organising an event is often the first key activity to engage with your local community, businesses and other organisations. Check out our events section to get you started.
A REconomy exchange system
As a new kind of local economy emerges, what might be a vision for an exchange system that would best support it?
- Alternative banking and currencies
- Complementary currencies, LETS and Timebanks
- The gift economy and community exchanges
New local banking models are emerging like Robert Owen Community Banking (also in our top 20 enterprises)
Inspiring enterprises
Find out about the UK’s top twenty Transition Enterprises. A Transition Enterprise is a financially viable trading entity that fulfils a real community need, delivers social benefits and has beneficial, or at least neutral, environmental impacts.
Influence local public procurement policy in favour of local businesses
There’s quite a bit of activity in this area, though we haven’t yet come across any Transition groups directly involved in influencing local public sector spend. Meanwhile here’s a range of useful reports that might inspire you to begin…
- The benefits of directing public spend into local economies are beautifully highlighted in this FSB report which has great statistics about actual/potential impacts. Here’s a specific example for Manchester City Council with progress update (all reports by CLES) and another example in Preston.
- CLES uses a process to understand how public sector spend circulates (or not) in your local economy – based on nef’s LM3 model.
- Nottinghamshire County Council are focusing on promoting local micro-providers of health and social care
- The Welsh Assembly have done a lot to increase local public spend and benefits in the social housing sector, and toolkits are available.
- From the US, the Evergreen Co-operatives in Cleveland are leveraging a portion of the massive annual spend of anchor institutions into the surrounding businesses and neighbourhoods – here’s a related article from nef explaining some issues with the UK’s Social Value Bill.
- A Totnes project that’s linking local food businesses across the supply chain
- A South West based network of local action groups and councils building a sustainable energy future.
Enterprise incubator space
- REconomy Centre, Totnes, website just being built meanwhile read more about it here
- We just started a national REconomy pilot project to explore community-based support and investment for new enterprises – more info will be posted on this website as useful findings emerge.
Increase community ownership of land and other key assets
- Groups are becoming landowners, like Melbourne Area Transition, bringing 10 acres back into community ownership
- Transition Town Totnes & partners are turning a large brownfield site into a Transition-led live-work-leisure space
- Comrie Development Trust in Scotland are revitalising an old army camp for local business & community use
- Lots more examples and support are available via Locality’s Asset Transfer Unit
Explore the potential to develop or strengthen local supply chains
- A Totnes project that is looking at increasing local food supply, starting with local crops
- Linked to the development opportunities above, we can also explore and promote the use of local building materials
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