We’re delighted to announce that both Citizens UK and a select group of Co-op organisations (brought together by socially-minded, Birmingham-based solicitors Anthony Collins) will be returning to Greenbelt this summer for our 45th festival edition, Acts of the Imagination.
It was great to work with Citizens UK last year and to learn about their community organising method as they ran a day of workshops equipping festivalgoers to go home to make change where they lived. This year, their connection with the festival will be around their report on ‘Missing Muslims’ (about the low levels of Muslims involved in civic life in the UK), their Community Sponsorship scheme (connecting communities with the chance to welcome refugees into the UK), and their Living Wage campaign (ensuring that employers go beyond the minimum towards a rate of pay that actually enables people to flourish).
Anthony Collins Solicitors have once again built bridges for us into the Co-operative movement – so that this summer Co-ops UK and Mid-Counties Co-op (including Co-op Energy) will be back at Greenbelt, together with some other smaller cooperatives, all working together to make a difference in the world by doing business for the common good. And, as a result of their returning, we will once again be hosting The Exchange venue – as a hub for enterprise and re-imagining business for social good.