Cooperation

Our little group of a dozen families was running out of time. After meeting every weekend for three years to plan our hoped-for cohousing community, and after investing much of our savings to acquire a few acres of land,...

A documentary video from the Cincinnati Union Co-operative Initiative shows how the city's Northside neighborhood is using community ownership to solve the problem of urban supermarket shortage.   Image courtesy the Cincinnati Union Co-operative Initiative

John and Peter were joined in their conversation on March 8, 2018 by Walter Brueggemann, co-author of their recently released new book An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture. Also joining them were special guests and friends Peter Pula and...

Kettering Foundation president and CEO David Mathews explains how people and communities can get greater control over their collective future. One way to do this is to ask questions that will reveal new possibilities for acting together on shared...

An animated archetypal flood story that imagines how politics was first created. It counters the idea that public deliberation is some kind of new technique to be used on communities and encourages a notion of democracy that is citizen-centered.   The...

In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote a word and then carefully expunged it, smearing the ink and overwriting it so as to completely obliterate the original. Using spectral imaging technology in 2010, Library...

Excerpts and illustrations from For Communities to Work, by David Mathews, © the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, posted by permission. To download the complete work click here. Having spent studying communities, the Kettering Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization, has...

In his presentation, “Change the Conversation, Change the Culture,” at the International Institute for Restorative Practices 19th World Conference, Peter reviews the basis and protocols for the small group methodology of community engagement and talks about his views on...

January When we lose the ability to care for our neighbours, we also inadvertently chart a course towards a future wherein that carelessness becomes our inheritance. Neighbourliness is embodied in the practice of welcomiReflectionsng the stranger at the edge, and the...

What are Stone Soup Moments and how do you know that one has occurred? The soup created by Bev Webber, a Red Seal trained chef, and served at the Unitarian Church  community roundtable was corn chowder. But it was actually...