{"id":37626,"date":"2018-09-11T07:34:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T12:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37626"},"modified":"2018-09-11T07:34:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T12:34:03","slug":"this-currency-is-designed-to-benefit-the-local-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37626","title":{"rendered":"This currency is designed to benefit the local community"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This currency is designed to benefit the local community<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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This article was\u00a0adapted\u00a0from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons<\/a>.<\/a>” Download your free pdf\u00a0copy today<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Brixton district in South London’s Lambeth borough has been a bastion of progressive thought and culture for decades. After the financial crisis of 2008, local businesses were struggling and had trouble securing loans from banks. An area that had once thrived began to stumble.<\/p>\n

The Brixton Pound (B\u00a3) was launched in 2009 by Transition Town Brixton to support local businesses with a local currency that would “stick to Brixton.”\u00a0The founders of the B\u00a3 wanted to create a mutual support system tying residents to local businesses and encouraging business to source locally.<\/p>\n

The local borough government, Lambeth Council, was supportive of the B\u00a3 from the beginning. It recognized the local currency as a way to develop the community, build local economic resilience, and draw positive attention to the area. According to B\u00a3 Communications Manager, Marta Owczarek, “The council’s support has greatly helped the B\u00a3 start and develop \u2014\u00a0it would have been very difficult to do what we did without that support. In particular, it acted as a guarantee that the scheme was trustworthy, so local business owners and residents alike felt secure in exchanging their money into and accepting the brand-new local currency.”<\/p>\n

Within the first six months of the launch of the B\u00a3, Lambeth conducted research that estimated the media coverage of the currency generated by the B\u00a3 volunteers was worth half a million pounds to the area.<\/p>\n

Since 2012, the B\u00a3 has “been a live part of the Co-operative Council, working alongside the policy team,”\u00a0according to Owczarek. As a result, the B\u00a3 has been able to play an active role in supporting the community while receiving council support. The B\u00a3 helped set up community spaces like the Impact Hub in the Town Hall.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This currency is designed to benefit the local community This article was\u00a0adapted\u00a0from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.” Download your free pdf\u00a0copy today. The Brixton district in South London’s Lambeth borough has been a bastion of progressive thought and culture for decades. After the financial crisis of 2008, local businesses were struggling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[21610,951,21608,9952,7501,11563,21609,10736],"class_list":["post-37626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-brixton","tag-currency","tag-leila-collins","tag-local-community","tag-local-currency","tag-shareable","tag-sharing-cities","tag-transition-town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37627,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37626\/revisions\/37627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}