Credit Unions and Local Money – Sue Bell / Financing the Commons Symposium / Part 2

Bell will present her lived experience and learning about health, education and finance within, private, state and community contexts. This includes within UK, Scandinavia, Europe and North Africa. In the 1980s she began to explore the relationships between poverty and health. Her research demonstrates the need for finding ways to exchange and trade beyond the colonised financial systems.
The intention of her presentation is to consider some of the issues in enabling local exchange schemes alongside our present financial systems. Real experiences and learning, from some examples in the UK, will be presented. The core issues of relationships between people and systems will be explored. This is particularly important as we focus on local exchange to beyond corporate and state, which creates rules and regulations, into the commons ‘ownership’ that requires rights and responsibilities. The presentation will conclude with a reflection on present potentials that are available for moving forward with the intentions of developing ‘the commons’.