Bohemian Cooperatives Launch Building Community Wealth Strategy 2026-2029
The Bohemian Cooperatives have launched their three-year strategy to build community wealth.
The strategy, enabled by Community Foundation Ireland, supported by Dublin City Council, and endorsed by Uachtarán na hÉireann Catherine Connolly and Iar-Uachtarán na hÉireann Mary Robinson, aims to create a democratic and community-owned economy in Dublin that delivers climate justice by economic design through tackling climate change and inequality together by ensuring the transition to a greener economy delivers visible and meaningful benefits to people’s lives.
The mechanism which The Bohemian Cooperatives aim to do this is through community wealth building. Community wealth building leverages the procurement spend of large anchor institutions, like universities and hospitals, to redirect spending back into their local communities, with enhanced benefits when worker-owned cooperatives that distribute wealth more fairly amongst their worker-owners are supported. Its modern development has been shaped by examples such as Mondragón in the Basque Country, where worker cooperatives have shown that democratic ownership can succeed at scale, Preston in England, where public procurement was redirected to retain more wealth in the local economy, and Cleveland in the United States, where worker-owned enterprises were developed to create jobs and build community assets in disinvested neighbourhoods.
The launch of this strategy stems from the delivery of the Spark project which laid the groundwork for this strategy’s development. TU Dublin Sustainability were a key partner in the Spark project through membership in the Spark Steering Committee, and through providing an Action Researcher, Leo McConnell, to support the project’s delivery and evaluation.
You can find the Building Community Wealth Strategy 2026-2029 here: https://bohemians.coop/home/