The UK's current wave of community currencies sprang from the anti-globalisation Transition Network movement in 2006, inspiring the 2007 launch of the Totnes Pound in the market town in Devon in England. Now, however, various currencies are tackling these issues in different ways worldwide.Įach community currency reflects a desire to handle community-based transactions in a different way. But community currencies have yet to really infiltrate the mainstream – sometimes stymied by a naïve attitude to running costs, or failure to provide digital forms that chime more with modern ways of spending. Other benefits can include providing a method for people without access to paid employment to earn 'money' through charitable or other community work, as well as providing a medium for a specific town or region to express its individual identity in a way national currencies do not. There are thousands of community currencies in the world and the concept has been around for decades, and in the past couple of years, they’re becoming more popular as more have become digital.Ĭommunity currencies are seen by proponents as an innovative tool to help local trade flourish against the trend to globalisation. This can either encompass a whole town, or in the case of a currency like the Brixton Pound, just one London neighbourhood, and can be bought at a rate equivalent to the national British pound. What’s a community currency? It’s a special, local currency that can only be used within a certain locale at shops or other businesses that have signed up to accept it as an alternative to the official, national currency, with the goal of encouraging spending in the local economy. Her store is one of around 500 businesses in the city that accept the Bristol Pound, Britain's largest community currency. It just made sense,” says Stacey Fordham, standing amid artisan cooking oils, natural wellbeing products and dispensers for pasta, grains and pulses at her zero-waste shop, Zero Green in Bristol, England. “Bristol Pounds stand for so many things that we do.
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