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This is the 2nd part of my conversation with Tom Llewellyn of Shareable, an organization that collaborates with others to imagine, resource, network, and scale cooperative projects.
- We hear about Shareable’s How-To Guides, which cover a vast range of topics from how to reduce food waste to starting mutual aid funds, and Tom explains how sharing initiatives are starting to be included in city and local government policies.
- And Tom offers his top tips for how we can get started with sharing and other initiatives, to improve our resilience and build stronger communities.
If you didn’t catch the first episode, head back to that if you’d like to hear why Shareable has pivoted from storytelling to focus on supporting groups to replicate successful sharing solutions, what Tom sees as the key challenges around sharing, and the importance of storytelling – including the misleading narratives used by most of the media, and how these undermine our resilience.
Podcast host Catherine Weetman helps businesses use circular, regenerative and fair solutions to do better, with less.
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Read on for more on our guest and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.
Guest bio
Tom Llewellyn is the Executive Director of Shareable, an organization that collaborates with organizers and allies to imagine, resource, network, and scale cooperative projects. He helps communities develop Libraries of Things (LoTs)—low-cost, environmentally friendly social infrastructure that enables people to meet their material needs.
Tom’s current work includes expanding these sharing initiatives into housing developments, universities, and post-disaster recovery areas. He also serves as executive producer and host of the award-winning documentary film and podcast series The Response, producer of the Cities@Tufts Podcast, and communications lead for the Rural Power Coalition.
A dynamic speaker, Tom has presented at more than 200 events across five continents. He is the co-editor and author of several influential publications, including Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons (2018), The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters (2019), and Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the Age of COVID-19 (2020).
He has co-founded several community- and sharing-based initiatives, including: A PLACE for Sustainable Living, Asheville Tool Library, REAL Cooperative (Regenerative Education, Action & Leadership), and the worker collective Critter Cafe.
Tom currently lives in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, in Amah Mutsun Tribal Band territory, with his wife, Ellie, where they’re rejuvenating an old Boy Scout Camp into a community hub.
Shareable collaborates with organizers and allies to imagine, resource, network, and scale cooperative projects. We envision a just, connected, and joyful world where sharing is daily practice and communities flourish.
Shareable’s organizing work is currently focused on:
Sharing Hubs & Infrastructure – We’re working to establish sharing hubs like Libraries of Things in every community. Whether it is a simple how-to guide; our comprehensive Library of Things Toolkit; incubating the Tool Library Alliance; or partnerships to scale Libraries of Things in universities and affordable housing, we’re developing useful tools so every community can create infrastructure for sharing.
Mutual Aid – We’re working to build capacity and to network mutual aid projects across the US and around the world. Whether it is our popular how-to guides; sharing stories on our podcast The Response; our ongoing Mutual Aid 101 learning series and toolkit; or partnerships to build capacity for mutual aid disaster resilience, we’re developing resources and networks to build communities of care.
Co-op Sector – We’re working to support and strengthen democratic, community-controlled cooperative businesses and organizations. Whether it is educational partnerships like the Social Co-op Academy; piloting food assistance co-ops; fighting to modernize and democratize local electric co-op utilities, the second largest co-op sector in the US; or restructuring our own organization as a worker self-directed nonprofit, we’re shifting the narrative toward cooperative governance.
Shareable continues to publish articles, podcasts, and how-to guides that amplify the people and ideas shaping a world where sharing is a daily practice and communities flourish.
If you’re new to the circular economy, you might like the ‘getting started’ playlist. There’s also an interactive podcast index, making it easy to find episodes on each of the key circular economy strategies or for a specific market sector. And to dig deeper, please check out Catherine’s award-winning A Circular Economy Handbook, published by Kogan Page.
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