The Next-Generation Cities Institute (NGCI) is a transdisciplinary research centre dedicated to sustainable urban development.
In January 2022, Value Collective became a project of the NGCI with funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Housing Supply Challenge.
Design
Research
Writing
Facilitation
January – December 2022 (1 year, full-time)
Tiohtià:ke/Montreal
Recognizing that many important social undertakings cannot or should not be achieved through market-based approaches, Value Collective serves as a place where this type of work can take shape and demonstrate a new economic vision.
Project Origins Value Collective [Pilot] picks up where Realized through Value Collective leaves off. Following a successful week of events at a repurposed convent, Value Collective was brought on by a research institute and awarded incubation funding through an innovation challenge.
The Value Collective Development Crew (VCDC)–consisting mainly of Maya Jain, Thomas Heinrich, Gabriel Townsend Darriau and myself–spent the duration of the pilot building our network, prototyping projects and strategies, and promoting expanded notions of economy through research, outreach and education.
Living lab While round 1 funded our exploratory pilot, we had just six months to develop a robust proposal for round 2. Our final proposal involved establishing a living lab for new economic knowledge and practice.
Produced for our round 2 application, this visual shows the foundations of our proposed living lab.
In August, our team learned that our proposal was not selected for round 2. Past this point, Value Collective moved away from the institutional language of a living lab with programs, and instead assumed a more informal character as a network of value-driven workers, each operating autonomously and engaging in mutual aid.
The portfolio of projects developed by VCDC in the pilot is outlined below.
“Value-driven work” is work that is intrinsically-motivated, and difficult to monetize. As VC Residents, value-driven workers share access to a collection of resources known as the VC Commons. Resources include tangible assets such as space and equipment, as well as intangible assets like community and legitimacy.
Facilitation VCDC helps VC Residents realize their value-driven work by arranging access to space, connecting people in the VC network, and occasionally offering other ad-hoc forms of support.
In one example, VC Resident Comm-Un – a citizen empowerment initiative for people experiencing homelessness – hosts the workshop "It Takes a Village: Tools for building an inclusive and vibrant community in solidarity with Montreal's unhoused".
The event was held in the Noviciat, Value Collective's coworking space at CdH. VCDC also worked with Comm-Un to help develop, run and promote the workshop.
Mapping To discover what residents might need to realize their value-driven work, VCDC engaged them in mapping exercises.
We then looked for areas of overlap in order to facilitate connections between them. The goal was to encourage residents to help each other out, so as to avoid a customer-service provider dynamic between residents and VCDC.
The more philosophical, long-term strategy of VC Residencies was to demonstrate how a definancialized economy could look and feel by creating a context for people to work according to their intrinsic motivations.
Value Collective argues that this is what is lost when basic needs such as housing are financialized: the freedom to spend one's time in ways unstructured by market values and dictates.
Our first foray into this interdisciplinary field of design and economics involved the production of speculative prototypes to stimulate discussion and draw the interest of potential collaborators.
Time Bank The VC Time Bank was an analog time bank installed in the Noviciat at CdH. Throughout spring 2022, anyone could join by creating a profile and placing it in the accompanying directory. A classifieds board allowed people to post and answer requests.
VCDC also engaged visitors to our space with a timebanking game, sparking reflections on economics with members of the public.
Currency The co-value was a speculative currency to count time spent on ‘collectively-valued endeavours.’ This currency would be defined, earned and traded by people residing in definancialized housing stock (such as housing cooperatives, social housing or land trusts) in place of traditional rent payment.
Shared in a proposal document, the co-value was used to provoke discussion.
Incorporating both source-based and participatory research, VCDC aspires to ground the design of Value Collective in formal knowledge and lived experience.
Participatory Research in June, VCDC organized the workshop “Thinking Outside the Market” to determine how VC Residencies might be structured to best serve people’s needs.
Participants reflected on the types of work that bring them purpose but no money, and the resources they need to better make them happen.
The resulting content formed the basis for a document to help guide the development of VC Residencies and contribute to emerging discourse around alter-economies.
After several years of research and reflections on the connection between financial systems, urbanism, motivational psychology and design, VCDC began responding to requests to publish essays, present at public events, give workshops and collaborate.
Student Outreach We collaborated with university students on a number of occasions: giving educational workshops, inviting them to work with us on research and design mandates, and helping to facilitate their value-driven pursuits.
Workshop series Maya presents the etymology of economics at “Redefining: Economy,” a workshop to engage the public in brainstorming different approaches to economics that converge with their lived experience.
To support our basic functioning, VCDC also developed alter-economic models responsive to our unique operating conditions.
VCI Value Collective Income, or VCI, was a pay formula to help VCDC make the most of our budget in concert with intrinsic motivations.
Members were prompted to input their personal budget for variable 1 and values between 1-10 for variables 2-4. Salaries were calculated weekly, enabling members to work less some weeks, and more others. The final number is calculated relative to those of fellow teammates and the budget ceiling for that month.
Spatial access For the first few months of our stay in the Noviciat at CdH, Value Collective negotiated an alter-economic rent arrangement based on in-kind contributions. Eventually, the organization managing the space introduced a financial rent model, which VCDC helped to develop.
Our efforts resulted in the inclusion of a membership model to accommodate loose collectives with more sporadic spatial usage needs, and the “super occupant”, who could pay reduced rent in exchange for maintaining the space.
Wet'suwet'en land defender and VC Resident Marlene Hale hosts an event in the Noviciat (with tech support from Thomas).
Reflection Value Collective's open-ended framing has allowed it to keep evolving, and serve a variety of people all working towards personally-meaningful ends in diverse ways. For this reason, it remains one of my most rewarding undertakings to date. More than its alter-economic models, or even the value reinstated to efforts that elude commodification, I believe the relationships built between value-driven workers is this project’s greatest accomplishment.
Although the cascading effects of privatization and financialization impose strict limitations over much of our daily lives, we must keep looking for ways to free our time for pursuits that bring us hope, pleasure and meaning. Invariably, those activities involve expressions of care for the people and places that make up our respective lifeworlds. It is our alienation from this basic impulse that is late capitalism's most grievous offense.
