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Going It Together

The Going It Together project ran from November 2002 to March 2004, as part of the West Midlands Social Economy Partnership's 'Regenerating Communities through the Social Economy' scheme, funded by the Single Regeneration Budget Round Six.

The aims of the project were:

• to find ways of identifying effective development frameworks for democratic employee owned social and marketing enterprises (co‑operatives)
• from the identification of best practice, to further identify which different approaches and methodologies are currently being developed by co‑operative development bodies (CDBs) who are involved with worker and marketing co‑operatives, as well as
• investigating the characteristics of different types of cooperatives who benefit from the different support methodologies used by CDBs, and
• demonstrating where possible the match between type of developmental framework and type of co‑operative - in other words, finding the best match between possible support structures and client profile.

It was hoped that, by undertaking research in this area, advice could then be offered to new CDBs and co‑operatives about how best to access and use appropriate support.

A number of partners came together for the project. Each partner had a specific role within the project. In addition to Co‑operatives^UK, whose role was the national dissemination and awareness raising of the project outcomes, the partners and their roles within the project were:

• Coventry and Warwickshire Co‑operative Development Agency (CWCDA). This is a social economy business support and cooperative development organisation, working with co‑operatives in the Coventry and Warwickshire sub-regions. This body had project management responsibility.
• Co‑operation Black Country (cbc). This centre of excellence in social economy development was involved in gathering case study material for rural voluntary sector development towards social enterprise delivery.
• Herefordshire Partnership (HP), which had responsibility for the co-ordination of rural Herefordshire activity.
• Aegis Associates Ltd (AAL) was responsible for research coordination, collation of data and final report compilation.

On this page you will find copies of documents produced by the project, and links to related websites.

Please note that at the moment (September 2004) this page is still under construction and is therefore incomplete.

Reports (to download, click on the title)