There is no one way that co-operatives work on a day-to-day basis. Some worker co-operatives might keep fairly conventional office hours and have regular meetings on a set timetable. Other co-operatives, especially consortia of independent artists, might meet rarely, but keep in touch through phone calls, emails, skype, wikis or web forums.
“We're open two days a week at the moment. All of us work on our own art during the week and at the moment, and then we each do one day a fortnight in the gallery – Saturday or Sunday. We share the other work – marketing, accounts – and some of it can be done when we're on duty but some of it we take home.”
Beverley White, Beach Hut Gallery
“Everybody has defined roles and responsibilities according to their skills, so there are specified designers and editors, marketing people and an accountant, but we all have equal power over the company and the directions it goes in. There is a weekly co-op meeting but we delegate day-to-day decisions to the various teams. The meeting is the sovereign body which everyone then reports to.”
Chris Brazier, New Internationalist
“We all work from home and share jobs like checking the emails, post and phone messages, sort out any unpaid bills, and then we work on things like networking, investigating opportunities for fundraising, writing applications and so on. If there was a project on than we'd be delivering that.”
Keith Jafrate, Word Hoard
“We work remotely - we've all got our own spaces in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We come together maybe once a month to have a formal meeting with an agenda. We review our financial position, future opportunities. As we're not working in one office and we're not seeing each other day to day, our communication has to be very sharp, and we rely heavily on technology to communicate with one another. On a daily we might be going to a client, taking a brief, putting together the work the client requires. If we were pitching for business one person might take the lead on that process, but it wouldn't be left to them to get on with it, a document would be circulated, everyone would comment on it. In some ways we're much more productive because we don't have a space because we can focus on the meetings. And invariably we meet for a drink or a meal afterwards...”
Liz Taylor, The Very People
“There isn't a typical day. Sometimes everyone's in, heads down, getting on with their own work. There's always somebody with a deadline. But once a month there's a co-op meeting for all the members and directors to talk about where the co-op is. We also have collaboration meet-ups, and sometimes co-working days when people who aren't members can come in and try co-working for a day.”
Paul Robinson, FlyThe.Coop
“We have a big fortnightly general projects meeting where we talk about all the client jobs, and then smaller ad hoc ones more frequently. Then we have a co-operative development meeting where we talk about co-operative issues and broader business development. They pull us away from being glued to the screen - we turn on the answerphone, we have to do that because in our business the phone's always ringing, there are always clients and suppliers phoning up with queries.”
Steve West, The Graphics Company