SPACE4 is now full swing into its new events programme. We hosted two in-person discussion events; one on worker pay and the other on technology and accessibility. In these events, we invite three speakers to discuss and debate a contemporary issue. They each speak for 15 minutes with 5 minutes of questions after and a bit of a discussion at the end.
On Wednesday 22nd February we spoke about ‘Worker-Owners, Wage Ratios & Equal Pay: How Should We All Get Paid?’. We were joined by:
- Abigail Handley from Outlandish’s Building OUT team who run workshops and provide team support to build openness, understanding and trust for purpose-driven teams
- Siôn Whellens from Calverts, a design and print cooperative that was established in 1977
- And Dan Howard who is Head of Good Work at Share Action, an organisation that works with investors to harness their power for social and environmental change
Abi spoke about Outlandish’s 3:1 pay ratio and how we use Sociocracy to decide pay in our worker cooperative. Siôn talked us through the history, thinking, and impact behind Calvert’s equal pay policy, and Dan burst our cooperative bubble by talking about the sad state of worker pay in the corporate sector. He described a Sainsbury’s shareholder meeting in which they voted against minimum wage for workers and approved a £300 million wage for the director. The discussion was lively. Believe it or not we spoke about shareholder meetings as much as we did about Marxism. Siôn recommended the Fundamental principles of communist production and distribution. And I was excited to learn that there is such a thing as ‘AGM Activism’ – if anyone wants to embarrass the board of a ethically dubious company, Dan invites you to get in touch with him.
On Tuesday 28th February we spoke about ‘Technology & Accessibility: Where We Are and Where We’re Going’. We were joined by:
- Elizabeth Takyi, who has lived experience of dyslexia, dyspraxia and Irlen Syndrome and ran a charitable organisation to support people with Dyslexia, A2i Dyslexia, for over 6 years;
- Maria Young a web accessibility specialist from Agile Collective, a coop that designs, builds and supports websites for purpose-driven organisations;
- And Szczepan Orlowski a software engineer from Animorph, another coop, that “create next generation software to enhance human potential”
Elizabeth talked us through the challenges and obstacles of living with dyslexia, dyspraxia and Irlen Syndrome and how technology has really supported her career. We learnt that 1 in 8 people have dyslexia, how educational systems can be extremely debilitating, and how important technological innovation can be. Her talk definitely reminded me that while I am often lamenting the harms technology has brought to society, I actually forget and take for granted how many benefits it has brought.
Maria and Szczepan are both part of Outlandish’s Co-Tech network and we were very happy to have them representing tech cooperatives in the UK. Maria dedicated her presentation to screen readers and talked us through how they work and why they’re important. She even gave a live demo which really gave insight into the experience of visually impaired users on the internet. Szczepan gave us a taste of what Extended Reality (Augmented Reality + Virtual Reality) might offer, in terms of ‘bridging’ our senses; translating sound into sight, or sound into feeling.
There was lots of networking and good vibes at all the events. We try to organise two of these events per month so keep up to speed with our events and join us in March!