Our Principals and Values
Anti-Capitalism
We recognise and name our current political and economic system, capitalism, as the root cause of the multiple crises and innumerable forms of exploitation and domination that inflict unnecessary misery across our planet. In our work we prioritise wellbeing and sustainability above personal gain and collaboration above competition. All profits from this venture will be reinvested into the project or into the local community.
democracy
Recognising that all our labour is of equal value, we are committed to a policy of pay parity and to giving all workers an equal voice. We believe hierarchy is unproductive and and are therefore organised as a worker’s co-operative, making use of democratic processes to make decisions together.
diy
We aim to promote an ethos of self-sufficiency and do what we can with our own labour, using low-tech and open-source methods and appropriate technology. We believe building something together from scratch is an empowering and transformational act.
anti-oppression
The struggle for food justice is intertwined with all other struggles for liberation, and we will always consider and actively work to deconstruct white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, ableism, and the patriarchy in everything that we do. Our growth will be informed by the needs and voices of people in our community. We will work to make our spaces, meetings, and events accessible to all.
circular economy
Recognising that the infinitely increasing material demands of our ‘growth at all costs’ economic model is destructive and unsustainable, we are committed to building a project as part of a circular economy - reusing, repurposing, and ensuring that our ecological impact is positive whenever possible.
food sovereignty
As part of the global movement for food sovereignty and in opposition to corporate control of food production we believe in building a food system that centres “ecologically sound and sustainable methods” and “puts those who produce, process and consume healthy and local food at the heart of our agriculture and food systems, instead of the demands of market and transnational companies”.
Our Mission and Aims
We are using the transformative power of mushrooms to build a more democratic, empowering and just food system that contributes to community resilience and happiness by:
Spreading awareness about the importance of mushrooms and mycology in our ecosystems, in turn promoting alternative understandings of our relationship with natural systems rooted in principles of agroecology and food sovereignty;
Sharing mycological knowledge and mushroom cultivation skills, using mushroom cultivation as a platform for the development of life and career skills for our community;
Improving nutrition locally and reducing the impact of our food system by providing a supply of local, fresh and low impact protein grown using innovative circular and regenerative techniques;
Creating an inclusive and accessible community space where people to learn, grow, heal and organise; a community to draw resilience from in order to mitigate the toxic social and economic effects of austerity and systematic political exclusion.
We are a workers’ cooperative which means our project is run democratically and directly by our staff who all have an equal say and pay parity. We believe organisations should be run by workers, not bosses and managers. If you’re interested to know more about workers’ coops and how to start one, have a look at Co-Op UK’s resources.
We are a non-profit with an asset lock This means all the revenue we generate is reinvested into the project, be that through infrastructure upgrades, basic materials or staff wages. We will never have shareholders who can extract value from our project.
Our asset lock effectively means we do not own any of the infrastructure we have built, it belongs to the project. If the project were to fold all of our assets and infrastructure will be donated to a like minded community project.