Timeline

Something that gently began to take root in 2017 has today bloomed into a thriving ecosystem of solidarity economy leaders.

Have a wander through our timeline to see how this work evolved over the years.

2017-2018

The beginnings

Before co-founding Decolonising Economics, both Nonhlanhla and Guppi were separately writing, speaking and facilitating towards alternatives to racial capitalism.

READ: Guppi wrote A Race for the New Economy for Stir to Action.
WATCH: Nonhlanhla chaired a panel on debt and austerity at the Mobilising New Economic Futures conference, by the New School Economics (NSE) Society of Goldsmiths University.

When they finally came together in 2018 it was to develop a training that was featured in the New Economy Programme for Stir To Action. They went on to run ‘Our Power’ workshops over the following two years.

2018-2021

Decolonising Futures

Decolonising Economics became the official name for the work Nonhlanhla and Guppi were doing together.

While running the initial Stir to Action ‘Our Power’ workshops, our two co-founders were starting to think about how to build relationships with global majority economic organisers and collectively influence the mainstream new economy movement.

They were asking questions like: ‘What is our work?’, ‘Who do we work with?’ and ‘How can we build power together?’ and ‘How can we change the flow of resources in service of a Just Transition?’

For our first independent event we supported the Akuno family from Cooperation Jackson in the US to come to the UK for a joint event with the Afrikan Cooperative Union. This set the foundation for how we would curate and facilitate gatherings, workshops, retreats and more.

It was only at the beginning of 2020 that we were granted a small bit of seed funding to explore what Decolonising Economics could become if they were to invest time in developing the strategy. A new website was born, and we started getting clearer on what work we needed to focus on.

This era culminated in our first series in June 2021: Decolonising Futures.

2022-2024

Nourishing Economics

Trusting our process worked! Having deepened our analysis of racial capitalism, as well as our relationships with other global majority solidarity economy leaders in the UK, we moved from an exploratory phase into a new era of practice, community, education and action.

We published our first report, Tax as a Tool for Racial Justice. We also ran several political education series, including Community Resourcing (March 2023) and Economics of Queerness (Oct 2023).

During this time we crowdfunded £15,000, which enabled the seeds of Nourishing Economics to be collectively sown.

Just-under 40 global majority solidarity economy leaders in the UK came together for retreats, workshops, hang outs, community dinners and collaborations. We met in nature to connect, heal and dream about a future in which the economy was based on the practices of care and liberation. From this time came the Nourishing Economics website. And we were able to use the crowdfunded money as an ‘access pot’ for the community.

The shining culmination of this era was our flagship event, the Solidarity Economy Showcase. The rain gods tried their best to dampen our spirits, but the spirit of celebration and solidarity was unbreakable!

2025-2027

Experiments in the Solidarity Economy

Having actively nourished an ecosystem of solidarity economy leaders, we moved into a phase of experimentation.

We had collected the resources, tools and practitioners that enabled us to step back as ‘leaders’, and, instead, play the role of facilitating those experiments without driving them.

The experimentation led us gently to the question of whether Decolonising Economics needed to exist as a formal entity. And this enquiry eventually led to us officially closing in 2026.

For us, this was not an ending, but a phase in a regenerative process. Having sown seeds together, it was time for DE to dissolve back into the ground and enable what emerges next.