Building a more just and sustainable world
Building a more just and sustainable world
For Solidarity is an evolving website, digital map and programme of events developed by The NewBridge Project and Solidarity Economy Association working with initiatives across the North East.
We are collaborating to create a useful tool that can make visible and strengthen organisations, projects, initiatives and individuals in the area who are working to create a more democratic, socially just, and ecologically sustainable world.
In short, we’re creating a map of everything that helps people to meet their material and social needs in ways that don’t harm people or the planet.
Around the world, this type of activity is known as the solidarity economy.
The solidarity economy serves everyone. It is made up of different types of activity: informal meetings, grassroots organisations, and local community groups, through to legally-recognised businesses, associations, networks or organisations. These initiatives may look very different, but they are all, offering an alternative to the extractive and oppressive mainstream economic system and working towards building a just and sustainable world.
We believe the first step to strengthening our solidarity economy is to help people understand it better and to assist those working within it to support each other. We are collecting information (data) from grassroots organisations, informal meetings, neighbourhood projects, local community groups, co-ops, and associations that share the values of the solidarity economy, and using it to create a digital map and directory. As the map grows we will be bringing it to life with inspiring stories and video case studies.
This mapping will allow us all to:
The map will be a starting point for us to plan future artistic and community-led activities and responsive action to pressing social and ecological issues, through working closely with people and projects across Newcastle and Gateshead. This conversation will be community-led; building on people's’ experiences of living and working locally.
This work is part of a wider project to map the solidarity economy across the whole of the UK. For more information, visit the Solidarity Economy Association.
The NewBridge Project is an active and vibrant artist-led community supporting the creation of new and pioneering contemporary art practice through an ambitious programme of exhibitions, commissions, events and artist development. We believe a supportive network is a key instigator to continued creativity. We instil a spirit of collaboration, collectivity and community in our activity to generate peer learning, critical conversation and social interaction.
Solidarity Economy Association is set up to support the growth of the solidarity economy movement in the UK, and to connect it with the wider global movement. SEA believe that to create a just and sustainable world we need a transformation away from capitalism towards an economy that embodies environmental and social justice, diversity and pluralism, co- operation, self-management and ecological sustainability – a solidarity economy.