WHAT IS OUR COALFIELD COMMON WEALTH?
Rebuilding power, not just place
Coalfield Common Wealth is the things we own or create together that make a decent life possible - and the shared power to decide how they are used.
It’s about more than restoring buildings, improving places or strengthening community connections. It’s about rebuilding the institutions, assets, relationships, ownership and collective power that allow communities to thrive.
Before our communities became defined by statistics of deprivation, they were places that built extraordinary collective wealth and power. The Assembly begins with that inheritance – not to romanticise the past, but because it demonstrates something important: when communities possess strong institutions, shared assets and democratic power, they are capable of shaping their own future.
At the Assembly we’ll explore six interconnected elements:
BELONGING - OUR LIVING CULTURE
We inherit, create and remake our Coalfield culture.
The music, art, memory, stories and shared identity that make people feel part of a place - and give communities the confidence and imagination to shape its future.
SUPPORT - MUTUAL AID
We look after each other and look out for each other.
Meeting needs collectively through reciprocity, shared provision, practical solidarity and relationships built on participation rather than dependency.
SECURITY - COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP
The things we own together can’t be taken away.
Owning and controlling the buildings, land, enterprises and resources that allow community life to endure and give communities a lasting stake in their future.
PROSPERITY - A SOLIDARITY ECONOMY
We create our own jobs and keep wealth in our communities.
Creating and retaining jobs, skills and wealth through co-operation, community business, social enterprise and local economic institutions that put people before profit.
AGENCY - TAKE BACK CONTROL
We share the power to decide what happens.
Building democratic power so communities can shape decisions, resources and the future of the places where they live.
A FUTURE - LOOK AFTER THIS PLACE
This is our children’s inheritance.
Caring for our land, environment, public spaces and communities - and taking responsibility for what we pass on to future generations.
These things aren’t separate. Together they create the foundations of a strong community: a Common Wealth held and shaped collectively by the people who live and work there.
The Redhills approach is deliberately about more than repairing the effects of decline. It places ownership, economic power and collective agency at the heart of renewal.
What makes a decent life possible?
Good work. Places we own and value. Support when we need it. A healthy environment. Culture and belonging. And the power to shape what happens in our communities.
For generations, communities across the Durham Coalfield built many of these things for themselves. Working people did not simply build an industry. They built welfare halls and institutes, co-operatives, healthcare, education, parks and sports grounds, trade unions, culture and democratic institutions. They pooled resources, owned assets together and created institutions that gave ordinary people genuine influence over the places where they lived.
At the heart of that system was Redhills. In the Pitman's Parliament, representatives from mining communities across the Coalfield came together to make decisions, pool resources and exercise collective power. They called what they built their Commonwealth.
Over the past forty years, much of that Common Wealth has been systematically and deliberately dismantled. Industries were shut down. Wealth was, and continues to be, extracted. Democratic power was leached from our communities and concentrated elsewhere. Institutions that generations had built were weakened, abolished, sold, transferred or allowed to fail.
Photography: Sally Ann Norman
Photography: Sally Ann Norman
But the story doesn't end there.
Across our communities, people are already building again: taking ownership of buildings and land, creating community businesses, organising mutual support, making culture, developing new forms of local enterprise and finding ways for communities to exercise greater control over their future.
The Redhills Assembly is about bringing that work together and asking a bold question:
How can our communities once again build the collective wealth and power to shape their own futures?
Over two days, people and organisations from across the North East will come together at Redhills to learn from our history, share what's working now, explore ideas from elsewhere and develop practical ways of rebuilding our Coalfield Common Wealth.
This isn't a conventional conference. It's a working Assembly built around participation, discussion, creativity and action.
What did our communities build? What was taken away? What survived? What are we rebuilding now? And how do we turn individual examples into lasting collective power?