Upstream - Documentary #2: Welcome to Frome Pt. 1 - This Is What The New Economy Looks Like

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

In this first episode of our 3-part series, "Welcome to Frome", we explore how the small Somerset town of Frome started a revolution that has completely changed the nature of politics and economics. In this episode, you'll meet the head of this radical new movement, and visit some of the new economics initiatives that have emerged in Frome. What is a "Share Shop?" How about a community fridge? What happens when a town council creates a position designed to address climate change? Listen to find out and to enjoy some great music along the way. But the story of Frome, like most things in life, is not as simple as it may appear. This town has a long and at times dark history, and when parts of that history are uncovered, old wounds are revealed which tell a different story, a story of division. We'll touch on this history here before we dive much deeper into it in Episode 2. Featuring: Peter Macfadyen - Founder of Flatpack Democracy, Frome town councilor, former Mayor Helen Johnstone - A manager at Share Shop Anna Francis - Frome's Resilience Officer Esther Deeks - Community Fridge Co-organizer Bob Ashford - Chair of Trustees, Fair Frome Music by: Molly Murphy (a million creatures) Annabelle Macfadyen Frome Street Bandits This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Imagine that you're standing at the bank of a river when you notice someone float by who's drowning. You immediately jump in to save them, but as soon as you pull them to safety, you notice another person who's also drowning. Pretty soon, the river is full of drowning people floating towards you. You yell for help, and you get other people to jump in with you to save them. But at some point, when the drowning people keep coming,

one of you has got to say, you know, I'm going to go upstream to find out why all these people are falling in in the first place. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A radio documentary series that is part of the Economics for Transition project.

I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. Join us as we journey upstream to the heart of our economic system and discover cutting-edge stories of game-changing solutions based on connection resilience and prosperity for all please join it on the chorus.

There's a town in the west that I love the best. I came, I got smitten, and here I will rest. My strangers are welcome, there's always room for people who call for this dear place called Froome. Hold it, Froome! Hold it, Froome! So happy to be here in wonderful Froome. Hold it, Froome! Hold it, Froome! When you're in it, but you're never alone. Walk the old cobbled streets

Where the memories remain Of the weird spinners Whose fine goth was framed The workers who built this fine town With their hands So now in our eyes She resplendently stands Home in Broome

Home in Broome So happy to be here in wonderful Froome Home and Froome, Home and Froome And you're in this for some you never know What? You haven't heard of Froome? Well, that's okay. One doesn't naturally think of the sleepy western countryside of England as a place fermenting with bold new visions and radical politics. But things aren't always as they seem. In this three-part series, we'll meet some of the

folks who call Froome home and explore how they are shaping a new economic and political vision in a world marked by divisions and scarred by the cruel and cold hand of the market. Can I have a Funky Monkey and English pale ale, please? Of course. This is where it all began, here in the Griffin, on Milk Street. This is where it all began, here in the Griffin, on Milk Street. It's not a very flashy place. An old brick building that has been serving beer since 1746, a stained glass griffin, a wood-burning stove, and a line of beer taps all spewing out ale brewed next door at the Milk Street Brewery. Who would have thought that a political movement that has been

likened to the Spanish Podemos Party, or Greece's Syriza, would arise from this place, bubbling and fermenting into existence? It's called Flat Pack Democracy, a play on the term given to IKEA furniture designed for self-assembly. DIY democracy. As the story goes, a group of frustrated Froome residents were having a pint at their local pub, grumbling about politics. An undertaker, a schoolteacher, a gardener. An old story, perhaps, but this one ends very differently. A few years later, and they have completely taken over. Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. But after running as independents on a platform rejecting party politics, these political misfits won 10 out of 17 town council seats and the mayorship in their first election. And the second time around, they won them all.

All 17 seats. A complete revolution. They're known as the Independents of Froome, and their goal is to take back politics by bringing power back down to the local level. This means rejecting everything that Westminster, the equivalent to the White House, stands for. No more blind affiliation to parties, no more partisan politics, no more inaction in the face of climate change, no more bureaucracy, no more pump, no more business as usual. And so what exactly are they advocating for to replace the old, the old stale politics they so overwhelmingly triumphed against in those elections? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about in this episode of Upstream.

In part one of our three-part series about Froome, we're going to learn about some of the revolutionary new initiatives that have taken place here since the birth of this independence movement. But the story of Froome, like most things in life, is not as simple as it appears. This town has a long and at times dark history. And when parts of that history are uncovered, old wounds are revealed, which tell a different story,

a story of division, which we'll explore in episode two. And in the third and final episode of this series, we'll look at what the future of Froome could be. Where could the revolution go from here? What would it take to transition to a political and economic system that puts people and planet over profit? Join us as we journey upstream. Home in Froome, home in Froome.

So happy to be here in wonderful Froome. Home in Froome, Home in Froome When you're in its bosom you're never alone Home in Froome, Home in Froome So happy to be here in wonderful Froome Home in Froome, Home in Froome I'll make room, I'll make room, I'll make room When your name is heard, you'll never find a room I think the real problem is that there's not enough power at a grassroots level. This is Peter McFadyen, recent mayor of Froome and co-creator of Flat Pack Democracy.

He's one of the original disgruntled Froome residents who met in the Griffin that fateful evening six years ago. I'm probably horribly naive, but I can't believe that humankind will allow itself to be dominated by the politicians who currently dominate it. I can't really believe that we will all shuffle off the edge with some of the people who've managed to get themselves into these leadership positions and with the sort of totally capitalist growth approach that is so clearly going to push us off the edge. So I suppose I will continue to believe that people will at some point realise that those things don't work and do something about it.

So how did you come to be the mayor of Froome? How did I come to get into politics? Yes. By mistake. I came to get into politics by, I was i came to get into politics by i was involved in the transition town movement in froom and part of the deal with that was that someone formed a relationship with the town council i went to the town council and said so what's your green environmental policy and they said we've got a park and i said yeah no no talk to me about climate

change and corridors of biodiversity and all that kind of thing. And they said, Peter, we've got a park. That's it. So I was moaning about that in the pub with a group of other people who came at this from different angles, really. But we realised that we had a very unexciting council that could do a lot more. And there was masses of potential that they weren't taking. And in particular, that they spent all their time arguing along party political lines so they were allied to whichever westminster or you know national group and that was the sort of stance they took so they never did anything most councils don't have elections at all there aren't enough people to stand more 60 don't have elections in two levels not just our level but the next level up as well so there's a very

small pool of people in Froome who were standing uh tiny so and the quality was I shouldn't really say this but you know some of the people the quality of people was not good there was one guy who went to sleep all the time I chaired a meeting with him with another hat on which he came as the council representative and this guy went to sleep very early in the meeting and I sort of stopped and said so what am I meant to do? He's gone to sleep. He always goes to sleep. Yeah, but he's our council representative.

You know, that's just what he does. Now, he may not have been well. I'm not knocking him. But it's kind of like, how, you know, how dysfunctional is that? And there were others who weren't much better, to be honest. So it was a very low cadre of quality within a lot of the councils. And that's true all across the country. And so we thought it would be fun to really just up the stakes in an election,

which was horribly soon, about three months ahead. So with very little preparation, we thought, let's just have some fun and see if we can just get on the streets and make things happen. With no expectation or intention of getting elected at that point. And I suppose I got drawn into it. And so at the moment when people put their hands up saying, you know, would you like to be a candidate? I stuck my nap too. And then the rest is history, as they say. So in that first election, 10 out of 17 of us got elected and I was one of them. And then the mayoral bit is you kind of take it in turns. But as I say, I wasn't going

to do it. Except that I've become aware by the time we needed to sort of up our whole image a bit or to really give things a bit of a boost in the last year before an election. And I realised that I would be good at doing that. So I went for it and enjoyed being the mayor. So one of the most interesting and powerful aspects of current politics in Froome is that no one in office is affiliated with a political party. And this is very much intentional. It's about running as an independent, abandoning the labels of Labour or Tory,

Democrat or Republican. And this can actually make a lot of sense, especially when you look at many of the problems brought about by strict party allegiances, perhaps best exemplified by the gridlock in the US government in the past few years. People tend to follow the ideology of the party. So to use the Tories as an example,

again, at the moment, they're into austerity, not spending money, not borrowing. So we had probably the best example is the cheese and grain large building in the middle of the town, which needed money spending on it. We put together a package which involved borrowing and spending, completely revamping the building, turning it into a really exciting venue. It's totally now self-funded instead of paying a subsidy every year. So actually, it's really conservative self-funded instead of paying a subsidy every year so actually it's really conservative thinking in many ways but because it's at a time of austerity you can't borrow and spend they voted against it you know and in one famous case one of them said I don't

understand this but I'm voting against it on principle politics is largely about confrontation the way that it's set up isn't it it? And the opposition oppose. That's why they have that name. So of course they have to oppose it, which is insane in, given that most of the issues we're dealing with, we agree about 99% of things actually, but because they do this division thing and it excludes everyone else, although politicians often get in and say, right, now I represent everybody. Of course, I'm a Tory or I'm Labour. You know, I got in with Labour votes, but now I'm going to represent everybody. They don't. They represent their own people. So there are those really big problems that exist, I think, which we just don't need at this level. So if there are no parties, no pre-packaged ideologies or allegiances, How did the independence of Frum

earn people's trust and get things done? We didn't have a manifesto. So of course, we couldn't say we will do this, this and this. All we could say is we will behave in a different way once elected, which meant a lot more participation and engagement and properly listening. So again, we were sort of promising to behave in a way. So there's a degree of trust in there, of course. But the alternative is that people say, here is my manifesto. Now, at a local level, they don't even bother to do that. So they say, kind of guess what our manifesto might be.

But anyway, even at a national level, they say, here's our manifesto, here's our set of promises. And then they proceed to break them, invariably. Things come in that weren't in there. even at a national level they say here's our manifesto here's our set of promises and then they proceed to break them invariably things come in that weren't in there sometimes it's not their fault something like you know shall we bomb syria wasn't in the manifesto because that wasn't a choice when they were writing the manifesto you know so things happen but they usually don't stick to them and they invent other things that weren't in there so it's a completely fraudulent system I think but we still or the population generally feel safer with that somehow they feel safer with this fiction of a manifesto and a sort of ideology which you kind of basically know what it is than risking going for someone who says this is how I work. Except in Froome, where we were able to sell

that. So we realised right at the beginning that we needed to put together an agreement about how we would work. So we created a way of working, which is essentially about behaving as one would normally in families and in groups and in, you know, the way that people behave, not in this concocted way that people feel they have to once they're elected into these positions. So the key things in that are about not holding grudges, about listening. There's a number of points really about listening and being prepared to change. And one of the things that we've encouraged is admitting mistakes and learning from them and making U-turns. Again, there's a whole political no-no of, you know, showing strength by never changing your mind

and doing the U-turn, which is such a nonsense when you find some other information. I mean, in normal life, all the time we're doing that. So that's what they're essentially about. They're about being able to listen and change your mind and accept that other people have more expertise in certain areas. Because that's the other very odd thing, that people once elected suddenly become experts. The only expertise you've shown is in getting elected. And of course, there are things that each of us knows about. So I may know about corridors of biodiversity. Doesn't mean I know anything at all about economic development. So we've tried really hard to then recognize that and bring in the wider community to inform us where we don't know. So the heart of the independence movement

in Froome is really oriented towards empowering the local community to shape its own future. It's about listening to people and understanding what their real needs are. Last year, we put in place a set of panels. So in the 2015 election, we stood in every seat and won all 17 of them. And immediately after that, we got rid of all the committees and put in place these panels. And the idea of those, there was a borrowed idea from Podemos, the Spanish politicians that you brought together large numbers or significant numbers of people around a given issue and they met quite tightly in other words quite clear terms of reference around that issue and then that moved

straight into strategy and funding and and got done so you were broadening the real engagement with people. I think it's bringing people into politics, in a sense, without realising it. I don't mean to sound Machiavellian, but probably even if you went and said to them now, are you involved with Froome's politics? No, I don't have anything to do with politics. So I think it's a way of expanding

the definition of politics, really, to me. People are massively involved in discussing the things that matter to them. When you look at Facebook sites around Froome, there are all sorts of discussions popping up of people being cross about this or wanting this. There's masses of community engagement, which to me is politics. And so our role is to tap into that, really, because it's already happening. We don't need to invent it. And then to facilitate those people to get what they want and to enhance what they want, because they are creating the well-being and the engines that drive, you know, the important bits of our society. And where have you found are the limits to

your ability to create change? The most obvious one is that we don't have power over planning. So Froome is due to gain another 7,500 people over the next few years. So multiply the size of Froome by 25%. So that will very significantly change the town. And we've got no say over how and where that happens. Even if we accepted that that comes from central government, if you like, it seems crackers that we as the people who live here have almost no control over where housing should be built, the nature of that housing. So there are decisions being made

and inflicted upon us, which this population will have to live with for years. Bringing power back down to the local level. This is Martin Kirk, founder of The Rules. This is one of the central axes of change that we need to be thinking about right now, the centralization versus decentralization. And I think what we're seeing and what lots of people are increasingly becoming aware of is that over the last 30 years, you've seen a massive centralization of wealth, power, of systems, as corporations have become bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and you have global supply chains, everything

being done at that global level, which basically means that you've got a very small number of people in the center pulling a lot of levers, irrespective and being very insensitive to local conditions and the idea of local autonomy. And so I think that's the first thing we've got to think about, is how do we take back control and bring it back down to local community level as much as possible. We're at Share in Froome, which is a library of things rather than a shop. So it's about sharing. It's about people in the community donating the things that they feel they're not using enough and we share them out with the community and we hope that they look

after them and bring them back in good shape and then they're there for someone else to borrow. Tell us about the story of it. The idea was originally from someone who works at the town council as their energy waste resilience officer Anna Francis who knew about the vacant property and had an idea for doing this and it had been done in Berlin I think in a few places like that so she then got various groups involved to come together and build it including a group called adventure which is young people who are on a scheme that lasts um i think six weeks sometimes and they during that scheme they learn about how to set up projects so they could be social enterprises or just community

projects but they learn all sorts of things like doing a bit of research, planning and business thinking and marketing. So they did, a group of eight of these young people took on the project of Cher and from a starting point in April, they had it running in mid-May. Everything was built, they got the community involved in building it and coming up with ideas for the things that should go in it and then people just started dropping off stuff and it's been up and running ever since. Here's a quote from the ShareShop website. Our thinking is that too much money nowadays is spent on stuff. Things are used for a short

space of time and then spend most of their lifetime shut away in a shed, kitchen, or garage. and then spend most of their lifetime shut away in a shed, kitchen, or garage. Our aim is to get people spending less, wasting less, and connecting more. And by doing this, help people to save money, reduce carbon and waste, and cultivate a happier and more resilient community. Great, can you give us a tour? Okay, well we'll start over here. it's all a little bit random here we've got some instruments to start off with like our ukulele um then we've got quite a lot of camping gear including tents um wellington boots uh pumps for getting your airbeds blown up. This is perfect for the festival season.

Some more oddball items like our unicycle, golf clubs and some garden shears. And then I guess we've got the sewing machines. We've got I think six or seven sewing machines now. Because some of these things are things that just don't break. They go on forever. But we've got lots of these, like the multi-stitched Toyota here. Doesn't that make a lovely sound? Yeah. And then all the power tools you could possibly want.

Sanders, routers, planers planers drills and jigsaws and one thing to point out to you here is the sign that we have a lot of people have picked up on this the average electric drill is used for 13 minutes in its entire lifetime is what it says and that gives you an idea of how people feel they have to buy stuff just for one use. When in fact, they could come in and borrow one. And then we've got a little space just in one corner by the window where we can have workshops and where people can come in and talk to us

and talk to us about skill sharing. Because we're not a shop that has to send people through and make money out of people. Every transaction doesn't have to be about money. It can be a little bit more than that. So, and then right behind us, behind you, there's a board on the wall. Will you explain what the board is?

Yes, a lot of people like the idea of sharing skills as well. I think there's a feeling that that will help us be much more resilient in years to come if we know how to do things for ourselves and that really we can share them in the community and that's a better way of doing things than always paying for skills. Yeah, so it's a wall and it's split down the middle and one says skills offered and the other says skills needed and the invitation is for people to write on little slips of paper what they're needing in

terms of skills or what they're willing to offer and then they put their name and contact on the back yeah that's right um if we have a look at some of them so someone here needs basic sewing machine skills and they put an email and a phone number on the back. Then we've got someone wants a handyman to fix a shelf unit. Let me look at some of those offered. Someone is offering Japanese acupuncture treatments. And again, on the back, you've got their website, their Gmail, and a mobile number. So it's that kind of thing.

So there's something called the sharing economy, which, depending on where you're looking at it or where you're reading about it, has different things thrown in. Sometimes it includes things like ShareShop and TimeBanks and things like that. But also it can include things like Airbnb and Uber. And, you know, those kind of, they're so-called car sharing services or TaskRabbit, which is a skill, you know, skill hire service. So I'm wondering, have you thought about those kind of things around what is sharing and what's not do you have any opinion or view on that I think we are very different from things like Airbnb and Uber because I think they are still based on an economic model

it's more just about a kind of peer-to-peer economy rather than sharing being part of it so the share shop is different because we do want people to get involved in aspects of it like looking after the stuff or maybe volunteering with us maybe helping us to provide these services because we can't we're not charging the sums of money that would make us properly economic. What we're doing at the moment is the charges are helping us to get towards self-sufficiency, but we still need the support of grant funding. And I don't know if that will ever change because what the service we're doing,

what we're doing that's good for the world, is not just the lending, it's the sharing of resources, it's stopping stuff being made in the first place and it's stopping stuff going into landfill. And those things don't have an economic benefit that we can get very simply. It has to come through things like grant funding at the moment for us to be paid for what we're doing in that way. So I think this, as a sharing economy,

it's a little different from those that are more economic. In the standard economy, there isn't a way in which people that do things that are environmentally good for everyone, for everyone in this town, whether they're borrowing stuff or not, we are doing something by not putting stuff in landfill. But how do we get rewarded for that? And that's the tricky bit.

This is kind of the difference between an exchange economy, like you mentioned, exchanging money for service or skills or things, versus a sharing economy where things are shared without a sense of something needs to get be given back so do you have that sense and do people when they come here have that sense being part of this larger paradigm shift at all some of them do i think and some of them don't i think some of them see it as a higher service and some of them will bring back the equipment without bothering to clean it and that kind of thing and then there are others who when something

breaks while they're using it will try and fix it and will bring it back with a little extra strimmer wire for example if it's a strimmer they'll do something to kind of help and they sort of get the sharing aspect of it but I think that it's just such an unusual idea. People aren't used to working in these ways that it will take a while for everyone to come on board with that and to sort of understand that it's about looking after the stuff as well as borrowing it for a cheap price. What do you think that's about that people aren't used to it?

What is that? If we go to the root of the problem or the root of the issue, what is that about? It's the way that the economy is, where you expect to go into a shop and buy something and you have certain demands for what that thing does. And if you go to a place where you hire it, you think that you are paying for the person to do all the care and attention

for whatever it is you're hiring. And this is slightly different. We don't charge the sort of prices where we can do that easily. We're trying to keep this so that it's accessible to everyone. But people are used to not playing a part in their purchase. They pay and they think the money gets them what they need and gets them the whole bundle and that they don't have to put anything into it. We asked Helen what it was about Froome that she thought made an idea like the share shop actually come to life.

Froome has always had a kind of can-do attitude so that people have always been setting up events and things have been going on from way before I moved here. There's just a spirit amongst people that says, oh, yeah, if we fancy doing that, we'll give it a go. It's been massively helped by having the independent town council. And as things develop, as more happens, it draws more people in, and sometimes it's that sort of fresh influx of people and new ideas and new energy that keeps new projects popping up. And you just celebrated the one-year anniversary?

Wonderful. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Froome's Share Shop questions a fundamental guiding principle of our current economic system, that of competition. Competition for resources, competition to drive prices down, competition for status, which makes it hard for sharing to have a place. And as we continue to see libraries shrink and individual consumption rise, projects like the ShareShop can actually be seen as potent political statements

which can help introduce new, badly needed concepts into our societal lexicon. Now that we've got the independence for Froome running the council, they're really, really keen to be much more proactive and to seize this opportunity to connect to the community and make it a stronger, more resilient place to live. This is Anna Francis, Froom's Resilience Officer. Resilience is about trying to make the community stronger against the shocks of climate change, so flooding and food prices

and all the pollution that comes with carbon emissions and other emissions and resource depletion. But it's also about connecting the community and making it stronger and more able to support itself. And also, most of these things have benefits for both socially and economically, so it makes the economy stronger too. At the moment, we're looking at plans to enable Froome to move towards becoming a fossil fuel-free community.

So it's looking at ensuring that there'll be no emissions from cars because there'll be electric or hydrogen and you know a whole network of clean of clean cars so that will mean there'll be less children with asthma there'll be less respiratory diseases in the uk 40 to 50 000 people die every year because of respiratory diseases related to air pollution so it's just looking at those social benefits as well. So this is about enabling the community to have less polluted streets, safer places and a stronger economy as well, because it's about buying locally and supporting locally rather than necessarily importing in lots of things that we don't necessarily need. In my previous role, we looked at the multiplier effects and we found that one1 spent on our local veg box generated £6 for the local economy, compared to £1.20 if you spent on Tesco's, because all the profits go obviously to their international shareholders.

Whereas if you're buying stuff from a local shop, that's getting recirculated in the economy, that's creating jobs, that's really supporting and strengthening our community. The Froome Town Council set up Anna's role to help Froome transition to being a one planet community based on the one planet living philosophy. These villages are beginning to pop up all over the world, from the Sonoma Mountain Village in California to the Westwick Eco Village in Australia. Here's Anna. The good thing about one planet living is that it's an easy concept to understand. So often when you talk about sustainability, it's quite abstract and it's all about carbon and how much is a ton of carbon and what does it mean? You know, it's quite, yeah, quite abstract. One planet living, it just aims to sort of simplify it. So it looks at the ecological footprint of a community and then works out how many planets worth of resources you would need to sustain that lifestyle so in the UK we would need three planets worth of resources to sustain us I think in America it's more like six or seven and that involves looking at not just at energy but also at transport and food which is a huge impact

and shared services and the good thing about the actual framework is it doesn't just look at those tangible impacts it also looks at social impacts. So it's got culture and heritage, equity and fair trade and well-being and also biodiversity and nature as part of it. We spoke with Anna about the larger significance of her role. I don't even think there's any other town councils as far as I know that have a sustainability officer. So it's quite a unique proposition. But, you know, I think everywhere should if they can, because actually this can create a lot of social and economic benefit. You know, if you want to have a successful town, we're then producing things that we actually need for our future? Or do you just want to develop in a more traditional way and produce lots of pollution, waste lots of resources, have badly insulated homes?

So, you know, the idea is that if we can become a green hub, then we can inspire other places to do similar things. And it's already happening at the share shop, for example. We've had over 60 different groups in the UK and internationally getting contact trying to share our model and we're doing the same thing with the community fridge this is not about froom becoming some sort of strange green island it's about replicating and spreading and sharing these ideas so that we can all benefit from it and become stronger and more resilient not just becoming a green expensive enclave. So what are you up to? I'm just going around the artisan market collecting food that's going to be thrown in the bin and putting it in the community fridge.

This is Lauren, a volunteer with Froome's Community Fridge. We ran into her at the Independent Market, which is a huge street market of all independent stalls that takes over the town centre on the first Sunday of every month. How are people responding? Pretty well? Yeah, quite well. I think a lot of people don't have any waste, which is really good. They just take stuff home and eat it. And some people, like there was a woman with a whole tray of,

what were they? Carts but she couldn't give them to us because they've been out in the sun all day we did eat one and we're okay but but yeah you're okay so far so far yeah yeah but yeah we've got what have we got bread some cakes some loads of carrots and potatoes and a salad. And some cider. And some cider. Are you allowed to put cider in the fridge? I don't know. I'm not going to get that far.

A few weeks earlier, we met up with Esther, one of the people who originally helped set up the community fridge. So the community fridge is in what used to be an old toilet block, which was renovated a couple of years ago, and it's got colorful stripes on it. Yep, she said toilet block. But don't worry, it's been redesigned, repainted, and obviously cleaned since then. It actually looks pretty nice. Here's Esther. So it was an adventure froom project that was back last year, so October 2015, and we did a food waste project.

So how the Adventure Froome process works is it's a school for community enterprise. It's a group of around 8 to 10 under 35 year olds, and they'll have a theme, I guess. So our theme was food waste so the first while of it was coming up with different ideas of what what can we do with food waste how can it be useful so during that process we did pop-up feasts and various different markets things like that and one of the things that came up after some research into it was the fridges. There's some in Spain and in Germany as well. So the idea of it being the continuation of the project to set one up. So over Christmas, I put in a proposal to Froome Town Council, which was accepted. And so it's a collaboration with Froome Town Council and Adventure Froome.

On this particular day, there was no food in the fridge, which is actually a good thing. It means it's being used. There's a visitor's log where people record the items they put in or take out of the fridge. It's a good way for the volunteers to track usage and make sure everything's running smoothly. usage and make sure everything's running smoothly. We have the visitors book in there. What are some of the comments? Do you have any favorites? What have we got here? We have salad bowls that have been taken by Francis earlier on today.

There's lots of donuts and various sweet and savory Greggs items. A lot of people saying thank you. A lot of people saying thank you. That's nice. Yeah, we have a lot of that. So one thing that I would think of is that a community fridge would require a lot of trust. Definitely. I think that part of what works for it is that it's a small town, and it is a small town with lots of people that are very vigilant about things like this

and very aware of projects like the share shop, and they really want these things to succeed. projects like the share shop, and they really want these things to succeed. What we love about the community fridge is that, like a lot of new economics initiatives that we've been exploring in Froome, it's just so obvious. How many times can you remember cringing at the sight of perfectly good food being thrown into the trash? In 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported that 40% of all food in the United States ends up in a landfill. And in the UK, according to the organization Love Food, Hate Waste, 7 million tons of food are thrown away every year. Community fridges can help reduce this waste by providing a place for people and businesses to drop off food that would otherwise be thrown away. Another great thing about the concept of a

community fridge is that it's reintroducing the idea of a commons, a resource which is accessible to all members of a community and which is not owned privately but held in common. In the world where everything seems to be increasingly privatized, subjected to profit-making, and put in the realm of the market, it's refreshing to see examples of communities coming together to build trust and cooperation in this kind of way. Whilst there's a lot of good stuff going on, there's also, I think there's a growing divide in the town, which kind of is reflected across the country as well. But I think particularly so in Froome

because it has now got a reputation kind of nationally of a good, vibrant, exciting place to live, which is attracting more and more people to come here. And every time there's a story in The Guardian, my heart kind of sinks almost now because I just think that equates to another couple of hundred people moving here, you know, which is, I say, good in some respects, but it's just not really sustainable at the moment.

This is Bob Ashford, the chair of Fair Froome, an organisation working with local people from all backgrounds to promote greater equality. I'm not saying don't come here. No, I mean, I say quite clearly I came here. I think the town probably needs to be mindful of talking up its success and the impact that has. Yeah, there's all these different things popping up of the new economy,

like the share shop and the community fridge and different things. But I think what you're saying is to celebrate those initiatives, but also look at who maybe isn't being impacted by them or what is the bigger picture, the bigger story. There's very much a feeling, and I have been, because I've talked to people and I've meet people in part of the work we do. And there is a feeling around it, particularly people out on the estates. One quick note, housing estates in the UK are like government subsidized housing projects in the US. You know, this is a kind of, it's a

sort of town center thing and it's an elitist thing and it's it's not for them you know they don't feel a part of it you know so there's all actually say there's all these marvellous initiatives but people don't feel it's it's of interest to them you know and so I think there needs to be a much stronger kind of interest and emphasis on on what we can do for you know working class working people in the town and people that don't necessarily live in the centre of Froome and, as I say, live out on Stonebridge and other estates. We asked Bob to tell us about the organisation Fair Froome.

Fair Froome was established just over two years ago now, two and a half years ago, I guess. Fair Froome was established just over two years ago now, two and a half years ago I guess. And it was through the support of the town council that Fair Froome came into existence. And our kind of mantra is real people, real projects, real difference. So on a local level we provide really kind of solid projects. Our projects are wholly designed to meet people's needs who are in acute need. So we have a food bank. That's one of the projects we do. We also run something called community dining events, which sounds a bit grand, but basically what we do is, and we've been doing that for a couple of years, is that we will organise lunches in a certain area of the

town. And we invite people from the local neighbourhood to come along to these community lunches and people help create it, cook it, eat it. And we have other advisors there if people need advice about electricity, et cetera, et cetera. So that provides a lunch, but more importantly, it also provides an opportunity for people in that local neighbourhood to actually get together to meet particularly if they're isolated you know it brings people together they get to see get to

meet their neighbours and again sort of builds a sense of providing something solid but also providing something along the kind of social cohesion reducing isolation so kind of real real projects you know to make a real difference and solid stuff but importantly we also campaign and it's something that i feel very strongly about and when i say campaign you know this isn't oxfam or it's not you know anything else we're small but what we what we do is we're very clear that we will raise a voice against anything both kind of locally but also nationally that we think will reduce inequality. We asked Bob if Fairfroom had ever run into any challenges by participating in political campaign work. You know some people will think you know

you shouldn't mix being a local charity and providing goods and services with campaigning and there are other organizations in the town that help people that don't campaign and some people you know might see the kind of what we're doing as being you know left-wing radical and and all that stuff you know so but that's okay and it's actually it's actually very good in some ways because it'd be easier if it wasn't but the very process of actually people challenging us on that, you know, actually then leads to a debate, which is great, actually. So it's a useful device.

So we provide goods and services, basic, solid goods and services, but we also shout, basically, and try to, you know, make a noise and just try to raise awareness. Because a lot of people, they drive into town and you wander around the town centre or you come to the independent market and you think, oh, this place looks great. Everyone's doing really well here.

And they're not. A lot of people are doing well, but an awful lot of people are not. And as I said, the massive difference between 30 years ago, when there was a lot more, I would argue, you know, social cohesion and happiness, if you want to call it that, that has changed dramatically. So with this success, this veneer of success, below that, there is, you know, still a strong group of people who are, as I said earlier, have their nose pressed against the window of success. Bob has been living in Froome long enough to see huge changes occur in the town. We asked him what Froome was like 30 years ago.

Froome then was a strong manufacturing town. It seems incredible to believe now, but there were fairly large industries here. There was the ironworks singers down the road there was a fuse factories plastics factories carpet factories the whole town was basically it was it was a it was a somerset marking town but a manufacturing town and printing as well printing was a big thing in infroom and the surrounding area so there's a lot of work a lot of industry and those jobs are fairly well paid because they were unionized jobs. So people actually got a decent living from them.

There was a strong sense of community. People went to work in factories and industries and they stayed all their life and they worked there all their life. And sometimes their parents would work there and their grandparents would work there. And there was a kind of social fabric around work too. So there were social clubs, workers' clubs, et cetera, that people belonged to, and there were organisations and clubs in the town that people belonged to.

So there was a really strong sense of community and a very thriving community too when we first came here. So it was very much a kind of working town. And then it all went wrong. And I'm bound to say, you know, I'm going to be political. Along came Margaret Thatcher, our prime minister, and then came the demise of manufacturing industry, not just in Froome, but sort of nationally as well.

And from going from being this kind of very equal, actually, town. So the divide, you know, when we came here, obviously there were some wealthy people, but most people were kind of working people in employment strong sense of community and you know it's that famous phrase all in it together so there was a strong sense of kind of well-being happiness and everything else that was around them and i you know i might be rose-tinted glasses but this is kind of our how i remember it and then in the, I guess, the sort of late 80s, towards the end of the late 80s, we then had the mass closure of manufacturing across,

you know, the country and Froome. And that was absolutely desperate. And I remember it well. And Froome then had over 20% unemployment at one stage, which is just, you know, mind-boggling to think of now. So one in five working people actually out of work and the carpet factory closed the iron foundry started to lay people off used factory closed so all these you know things started to happen and it was desperate you know it really was because I say the kind of it wasn't just about work it was also about social cohesion

and the kind of fabric of a town so all all these givens about, you know, you go to work somewhere, you stay there, you spend your life there, you go to the social club, you go on outings and holidays with people and you join the skittles clubs and dance clubs and the fun. All that kind of just imploded, really. People found themselves out of work with 20% unemployment. And the impact on the town centre was also, you know, pretty stark then because nobody had any money.

So Catherine Hill up there, which once, you know, when we arrived, actually was a bustling shopping area with the baker, the ironmonger, the clothes shops, et cetera, et cetera. You know, they were all shops and they were open, and as was the town centre. And then in this period you know Catherine Hill virtually kind of closed down boarded up shut it up town centre lots of shops empty because nobody had any money but what they did have then even then were welfare benefits so

if you've been employed you could then sign on and people had redundancy money because they've been unionized etc so people if they if they were lucky enough to find themselves out of work you know were able to claim benefits grants etc etc and there was still a strong a strong amount of social housing in those days so you didn't find yourself homeless you know you didn't find yourself absolutely without food you didn't find yourself without any money whatsoever there was still people could still survive and people did survive and even though it was kind of fairly desperate in terms of you know the impacts in terms of jobs social cohesion was still strong because there were there was still

that sense of you know this is Froome okay it's happened to us but we're all in the same position here so that kind of continued for some for some time actually and then gradually as kind of nationally the economy picked up and the economy picked up here too you know things started to change but what's changed is that i mean massive changes really but the kind of changes now are that that manufacturing base is gone you know those kind of jobs have gone that manufacturing base is gone you know those kind of jobs have gone the sort of jobs that there are in Froome now I mean people working here you know my understanding from what I can see and hear and talking to people is that people either commute as I did London, Bath, Bristol to jobs there or they're self-employed you know a lot of artists etc have moved to the town social

entrepreneurs but they don't really employ people they're kind of they tend to be you know self-contained they do their own thing and the kind of social fabrics change and I think the kind of the whole society has changed really particularly in the last five years that's the sort of huge change I've seen really you know we now have more and more people I mean lots of people moving here which is I moved here you know I moved here 30 years ago but now the kind of the the extent and the number of people that are moving here is it's quite worrying actually because what's happening is that you know whilst those people bring, which is great, creativity, new life, new energy, etc.,

what's happening is, on a social cohesion level, is that I strongly believe that the divide between those that have and those that haven't is growing wider and wider. Take it away, the Froome Street Bandits! Woo! Join us next time for episode two of this series, where we'll go much deeper into an exploration of divides, hearing more from Froome residents, as well as from some of the leading global voices on inequality and social divisions. It's no longer a matter simply of material standards.

Having time for friends, family, community, which is the most important thing, and one of the really powerful ways we can improve social connectedness is through lowering income differences because they are divisive. I'm sure we shall be able to survive in very different ways because we are a very, very adaptable species. But at the moment, the logic is not being driven from within communities. It's actually being driven from without. It's not the needs of local communities which are driving change.

It's the needs of capital, the need to make a profit, the need to persuade us that we want all these things that we don't on the same boat. Ultimately, some of us have obviously been dealt a slightly better set of cards, but we're all struggling because of how this system is affecting all of us and so actually instead of being divided actually we've got much more in common than we think and actually if we work together and realize that we're all on the same side then we can have change Thank you to Annabelle McFadden, the Froome Street Bandits, and Molly Murphy of A Million Creatures for their music.

You've been listening to Upstream. For the next episode in this three-part series, please visit upstreampodcast.org slash Froome.