'Worker's co-ops responding to the meta-crisis'

Name: 'Worker's co-ops responding to the meta-crisis'
Start: 2025-09-25T08:00:00+10:00
Location: Black Spark, St Georges Road, Northcote.

Schedule

Thu, 25 Sep, 2025 at 08:00 am

UTC+10:00

Location

Black Spark, St Georges Road, Northcote. | Northcote, VI

This public forum will investigate how the creation of worker owned businesses can be an innovative and effective response to the complex and pressing issues facing humanity in every corner of the earth.
The meta-crisis (also known as the poly-crisis) is a perspective that tries to comprehend and explain how the multiplicity of crises such as climate change, species extinction, habitat destruction, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) threat, nuclear proliferation, unending wars, disease, wealth polarization and poverty can all be happening and interacting at the same time.
In the last two SBE discussions at Black Spark we have examined how the far right have been responding to these vexing circumstances through both right accelerationism and what Naomi Klein cals 'end-times fascism'. This time we want to examine a response from the radical left...
Dr Amanda Cahill (founder and CEO of the Next Economy) will explain why we need to build resilience and diversity into the economy. This is particularly pertinent in the context of climate change, coupled with a profound political stagnation from the political class unable to respond to the challenge.
Charlie Phillips is co-founder of the Earthworker Smart Energy Coop (ESEC) and will outline why community wealth building and economic democracy in the workplace are central principals of the worker cooperatives, and fundamental to his involvement in the movement.
Colm McNaughton is founder of Singing Blackbird Enterprises (SBE) and will begin by examining the differences between a polycrisis and the metacrisis. Through this framing he will then outline some of the foundational practices for a creating a new Earthworker scaling-up project.
All welcome. $5 entry.
A home-cooked Palestinian meal will be available from Wissam Shaweesh at $15 a plate.