The Tranquille Initiative
The Tranquille property in Kamloops, BC has been identified as a good one for Sideworks to achieve its goal of building a community that is at once ecologically, economically and socially feasible. Our aim is to create a resilient, self-reliant, viable community complete with a localized economy built around a network of small, diverse, independent, local businesses and family farms.
Our vision began with the belief that a new economic landscape and way of life could be created that might be more in line with the emerging economic and social realities of our time. We believe ordinary people can take control of their own destiny and design and put in place an economic system designed to serve the community and the planet. We believe that we can solve our common problems collectively in an egalitarian, participatory and democratic fashion. Sideworks began the Tranquille Initiative not by asking what would be good for the economy, we started by asking what would be good for people, what do the people need to flourish? We believe that people deserve to own their own work and that people need the dignity of a self-directed life. We believe people need power, power to say what they think, power to make choices that are in line with their values and aspirations and the power to determine what success is in their own terms. The objective of the Sideworks vision is not necessarily to make you a whole lot richer with way more stuff, the vision is geared to the possibility of living a fuller, larger life with more time with your family and friends to explore life’s possibilities.
The Sideworks vision is built on the overarching organizing principal of cooperation and the guiding design principals of resilience and conservation.
Cooperation begins with the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the social glue we feel community can be built around and it is the organizing principal best suited to deliver to a worker his basic humanitarian need for autonomy and fairness. Cooperation is a basic sense of mutual aid and has not only been central to farming culture, it’s the backbone of it. Co-ops come in all shapes and sizes and cover all aspects of business. All models share some common principals; democratic member control, a one member one vote policy, each member has a say in how the enterprise will work and what it will do with the profits. Globally there is into the hundreds of thousands of cooperatives. A recent study by the U.N. claims more than half of the world’s population has their livelihood secured by cooperative enterprise.
Resilience is a public good we’ll all share. Resilience is about boosting our ability to take care of ourselves in tough times. It’s about trying to be self-sufficient enough to provide for most of our essential needs. It’s about being dependable and durable. It’s about self-reliant folks hunkering down, digging in, rooting themselves in place with work at businesses embedded in the community. It happens with a smaller scale, a barter system, a local currency, the principal of cooperation and most importantly, a slower pace, taking the time to reflect on what we’re doing and where we’re going.
Conservation is a less is more ethos. It’s about not using things you can’t replace like the soils for instance at Tranquille. A small footprint out there could conserve all of the agricultural land. Much of the embedded energy in the old buildings could be conserved. Organic farming will conserve the energy in fertilizer and chemicals. Living where you work conserves transportation costs. A local job free of a commute and traffic should serve to conserve that most precious of all non-renewable resource, your time.
Our vision began with the belief that a new economic landscape and way of life could be created that might be more in line with the emerging economic and social realities of our time. We believe ordinary people can take control of their own destiny and design and put in place an economic system designed to serve the community and the planet. We believe that we can solve our common problems collectively in an egalitarian, participatory and democratic fashion. Sideworks began the Tranquille Initiative not by asking what would be good for the economy, we started by asking what would be good for people, what do the people need to flourish? We believe that people deserve to own their own work and that people need the dignity of a self-directed life. We believe people need power, power to say what they think, power to make choices that are in line with their values and aspirations and the power to determine what success is in their own terms. The objective of the Sideworks vision is not necessarily to make you a whole lot richer with way more stuff, the vision is geared to the possibility of living a fuller, larger life with more time with your family and friends to explore life’s possibilities.
The Sideworks vision is built on the overarching organizing principal of cooperation and the guiding design principals of resilience and conservation.
Cooperation begins with the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the social glue we feel community can be built around and it is the organizing principal best suited to deliver to a worker his basic humanitarian need for autonomy and fairness. Cooperation is a basic sense of mutual aid and has not only been central to farming culture, it’s the backbone of it. Co-ops come in all shapes and sizes and cover all aspects of business. All models share some common principals; democratic member control, a one member one vote policy, each member has a say in how the enterprise will work and what it will do with the profits. Globally there is into the hundreds of thousands of cooperatives. A recent study by the U.N. claims more than half of the world’s population has their livelihood secured by cooperative enterprise.
Resilience is a public good we’ll all share. Resilience is about boosting our ability to take care of ourselves in tough times. It’s about trying to be self-sufficient enough to provide for most of our essential needs. It’s about being dependable and durable. It’s about self-reliant folks hunkering down, digging in, rooting themselves in place with work at businesses embedded in the community. It happens with a smaller scale, a barter system, a local currency, the principal of cooperation and most importantly, a slower pace, taking the time to reflect on what we’re doing and where we’re going.
Conservation is a less is more ethos. It’s about not using things you can’t replace like the soils for instance at Tranquille. A small footprint out there could conserve all of the agricultural land. Much of the embedded energy in the old buildings could be conserved. Organic farming will conserve the energy in fertilizer and chemicals. Living where you work conserves transportation costs. A local job free of a commute and traffic should serve to conserve that most precious of all non-renewable resource, your time.
