The Co-operative Heritage Trust, custodian of the Rochdale Pioneers Museum and a registered charity which safeguards co-operative heritage, is delighted to announce today that funding has been secured to ensure that key records from the workers’ co-operative movement will be identified and saved.
A grant of £43,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, together with donations of more than £16,000 from current workers’ co-operatives and from co-operative organisations, gives the green light to proceed to an initiative which has been discussed and planned for several years.
The rapid upsurge of interest in the idea of working co-operatively in the 1970s, 80s and 90s led to a blossoming of a new wave of co-operative businesses. These workers’ co-operatives played a significant role in their local communities but also had national significance. They aimed to create jobs where people were important, with an emphasis on sharing work, ownership, profits, responsibilities and decisions. The legacy from those years remains an important one for the co-operative movement as a whole.
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