This is the first in a series of posts defining our intentions with Ty Rebecca through a series of words and phrases that may or may not be familiar to you.

I’ve decided to start with mutual aid because it’s probably the foundation to my ambitions for this building. As I mentioned in the last post, I began this journey by slicing up the building into three units. The financial reason for this was that the rates on the space were prohibitive (approximately £6,100 per year), which is probably why the building was empty for so long. The ideological reason was to provide space to promote the concept of mutual aid in the town. I made sure I had both parts of this equation committed to the building before I started bidding.

Mutual aid is built on the twin concepts of volunteering and collaboration within a community to meet its needs. It can be based around physical resources such as food, clothing or medicine, but can also involve services such as education, pastoral care or social activities.

It differs from charity in that – in the main – these resources and services are not conditional on participants meeting a specific threshold or grant requirement. For example, a ‘food bank’ will usually require a referral from an organisation that is empowered to decide who qualifies for support. A community fridge has no such restrictions; the food is there to be shared.

I would imagine that for the majority of human existence, mutual aid was the standard way of doing things. The word was only needed once society had been reordered around capitalism. The term itself was popularised in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) by anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. In this collection of essays, Kropotkin suggests that perhaps the most decisive factor in Darwinian evolution is not competition, but cooperation. From animals to early humans, our social order was built on mutual aid.

“At a time when men were dwelling in caves, or under occasionally protruding rocks, in company with mammals now extinct, and hardly succeeded in making the roughest sorts of flint hatchets, they already knew the advantages of life in societies.”

In the 21st Century, we can see things being reordered once again, where a small cadre of people – usually men – are hyper-focused on acquiring all the wealth and power in the world, while the rest of society are forced to compete for what’s left. Mutual aid, in this instance, is a reaction to this trend and, as such, it is important way beyond the resources it can share.

The most important element in any mutual aid project is the notion that ‘you are not alone‘, that someone cares about your well-being beyond your monetary value.

Mutual aid is a method by which we can create a community that sees the value in all its members and works to demonstrate that our biggest strengths emerge through the things that unite us. We’re better together.