Forthcoming Events in our 2025-2026 Programme
Our meetings are held at Seven Arts 31A Harrogate Rd, Chapel Allerton, Leeds LS7 3PD.
If possible please arrive by 7.15pm for a 7.30pm start. There will be a £6 entrance fee to cover costs.
Our Scheduled Events in 2025-26:
Forthcoming Event: Wednesday October 14th.
Making the Invisible Visible: a new civic infrastructure for community empowerment, resilience and operationalising the commons
A talk by Peter Anderson and Joshua Malkin:
Community wealth building is not simply about municipal procurement, it is about liberating the hidden socio-economic potential of our communities.
Just as a person’s health depends on factors that are invisible, so too does the health of our communities. Every crisis that communities face - climate, health, food, the economy - lands somewhere local: a flooded street, a stretched surgery, a heatwave in a school. The communities that come through these challenges best will be the ones that can see clearly and act together.
Yet many things a community needs to be pro-active are invisible: live data about its own air, water and wellbeing; neighbours who share the same concerns but have never met; empty halls and unspent funds; public money decided out of sight. Meanwhile, the digital tools we'd naturally reach for are increasingly owned by the world's richest men, on their terms.
This talk makes the case for a different path - open civic infrastructure combining physical meeting spaces, hyper-local publications and a shared digital platform, co-owned by the communities that use it - and shows how any neighbourhood can start this month with three to ten people. Hundreds of communities that can see each other become a movement, capable of waves of coordinated action.
More information:
https://co-sy.org . https://about.co-sy.org
Biodata:
Peter Anderson is the founder of Co-Sy (Cooperating System) - https://co-sy.org, a civic infrastructure platform helping communities see the true state of their place, find each other, decide together and act together.
He has spent more than a decade building participatory democracy and community engagement tools, with earlier platforms used by councils and UNICEF and recognised by No.10 and NESTA. He is based in Swansea, where Co-Sy is building open, community-owned alternatives to the platforms being built to own us.
Joshua Malkin was one of the originators of a version of Community Wealth Building that he developed with the Commons Equity Society. He has a life-time track record of initiating and collaborating on socially innovative projects. Originally from Leeds he co-founded Interplay Community Arts in Armley, was co-convenor at the Civil Society Forum in London, was co-initiator of the Leeds Festival of Kindness Compassion & Wellbeing and is now a non executive director of Co-Sy.
You can contact use via email at cafeeconomqiueleeds2019@gmail.com, and visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/cafeeconomiqueleeds.
If you would prefer to use your phone you can access our Facebook page by scanning the following QR code into your camera:
You can also contact us via our' Contact Us' page, which you access by clicking on the 'More' icon, you can contact us, send us a message or, if you wish, ask to join our mailing list, which we will only use to advertise our own events and events from other organisations which we think you may also be interested in. We would also love to hear your suggestions for topics or speakers for our future events.
