Colourful murals cover the walls of the stairwell in Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative, while potted plants brighten the windowsills. A cardboard arrow on the wall reads: “Flat 1 – This way for friendship, fun, feline, food and love. Come on down!”

The building contains 24 flats, offering beds to 106 students from educational institutions across Edinburgh. Leased from a housing association, it is run entirely by members of the co-op – known as ESHC. With no private owners putting profits ahead of residents, things have a distinctly defiant air: the students are in charge. And they pay just 70 per cent of the market average.

“The best thing about living here is that we’ve all got each other’s back,” says resident Kate O’Neill. “If someone says they’re feeling a bit lonely, they’ll instantly receive invites to dinner.”

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Simon Fern has lived here for two years: “Our rent is kept low, in part, because of an ideological belief in affordable homes for all, but also because residents are expected to provide labour and time too.”

Accordingly, the selection process is based upon two questions: why do you want to live here? And: what can you contribute? Rather than key-card entrances, many flats operate an open-door policy: shoes are left in doorways to keep them ajar. It looks the antithesis of bland, purpose-built student accommodation.

Student housing co-ops are relatively new to the UK but have existed in the US since 1872. Inspired by their success and by his own negative experiences of renting, Mike Shaw (pictured above) co-founded ESHC in 2014. “We wanted to create somewhere where people have more direct control, to be able to shape the space where they live, and learn how to organise democratically. And, in doing so, to become politicised into believing that alternative models do work – in ways that can meet people’s basic needs.”

ESHC is having a ripple effect, with tenants graduating from university and the co-op, and going on to form new co-ops across the city. In general, student housing co-ops are proving to be incubators for co-op entrepreneurs.

The likes of food and bike co-ops can be found in universities across the UK, while new student housing co-ops organising in Glasgow, Nottingham and Norwich join those already established in Birmingham and Sheffield, as well as Edinburgh.

We wanted to create somewhere where people could shape the space where they live, and learn how to organise democratically

Helping these groups to learn from each other is the Students For Cooperation network. Birmingham member Christopher Jarrold wanted to support a “justified” cost of living and to unite with students across the UK to help tackle the renting affordability crisis and the “authoritative nature of landlords”.

The frequently exploitative relationship between landlords and tenants reared its head when ESHC tried to get some pay-per-use washing machines removed. The company that installed the machines couldn’t understand why anyone would want to lose the opportunity to extract more money from residents.

Shouting over the din of the building work that is currently transforming this flat’s basement into a communal event space, Shaw grins: “We just chopped them and got rid of them ourselves.”

Images: Rhiannon J Davies

Read more: Uber and out – here come the co-ops

CO-OPS SPECIAL

This series is guest edited by Vivian Woodell, founder of The Phone Co-op and head of The Phone Co-op Foundation for Co-operative Innovation

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1. “When asked for my interests, I said I liked sleep and food. So I ended up doing a project on dreaming and one on healthy eating”

2. “If I feel my concentration dip, I’m allowed to leave for half an hour to dance, which is a big passion of mine. When I am re-energised, I go back to work”

3. “I know my strengths and values now, and I know how to use them”

4. “We do a lot of movement. The teaching is more interesting and easier for the brain”

5. “I like that we are encouraged to research and present differently, for example by interviewing a chef or giving a cooking workshop”

Read our feature on ‘positive education’ here. We ask, could models like this enhance not just wellbeing but academic performance too?

Main image: Arian Zwegers

The post 5 things you might not expect schoolchildren to say (but these ones do) appeared first on Positive News.

As students head off to university this autumn many will be able to dig up some campus-grown potatoes or pick an apple on the way to their halls of residence thanks to a recent rise in edible campus initiatives across the UK.

More than 20 such growing projects now exist around the country, see students growing fruit and vegetables on site with some keeping chickens or beehives. Enterprising undergraduates at universities from Exeter to Newcastle have set up the student equivalent of farmers’ markets and veg box schemes with some even producing their own beer, honey or jam.

This may not sound like typical student behaviour, which stereotypically involves cheap cider and beans on toast, but the organisers of the projects stress that there is, in fact, a large and growing number of engaged young people desperate to do something practical. They want to make a positive difference – both in their immediate environment and to the world – and they are doing this through food.

One of the first institutions in the UK to start looking into the idea was the University of Brighton. Inspired by the first ever edible campus at McGill University in Canada, architect and research initiatives leader Andre Viljoen and his colleague Katrin Bohn wanted to create something similar. But, he says, 10 years ago people were generally nonplussed by the idea.

“Growing vegetables and keeping chickens may not sound like typical student behaviour, which stereotypically involves cheap cider and beans on toast.”

“Round about 2005 there was very little interest in these things” he says. “When you mentioned anything about urban agriculture it was assumed you meant allotments and that it was a kind of nice, romantic idea.”

Over the last decade Viljoen says interest has grown exponentially. In 2008 the University of Brighton created one of the first edible campuses in the UK which is still running today. “There’s a lot of momentum and it’s built up significantly in the last 10 years – it’s coming from many different fronts” he says.

The National Union of Students (NUS) has been trying to harness this momentum after surveys revealed that more than 80% of students wanted their institutions to be more sustainable. In response to the growing demand, grants from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) were provided to 25 student unions to develop sustainability projects with many opting for edible campuses.

A greater awareness of food issues seems to be one of the main driving forces behind this trend.

Viljoen says both positive and negative media stories have generated interest: “People like Jamie Oliver and Monty Don, who did a television programme all about urban agriculture in Cuba, have had quite a lot of impact.”

In recent years the horse meat scandal, news of growing food insecurity and reliance on food banks have also led people to question where their food comes from. “That’s where you can see how negative news has a positive outcome because people respond to it,” says Viljoen.

One students’ union to receive funding for a sustainable food project was the University of Roehampton, which now boasts a thriving edible campus called Growhampton. Here, students grow their own vegetables, look after a flock of chickens, hold a weekly market and have an up-cycled cafe made out of old shipping containers. This summer they successfully crowd-funded £20,000 to expand.

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Teresa Sheppard, Growhampton development manager, agrees that student interest is at an all-time high: “The project was so well received it now feels like something that was missing that students and staff were really ready for,” she says.

Sheppard says campaigns for healthy eating in schools over the last decade may be part of the reason why. “When those students leave school they’re naturally more interested in these projects when they come to university,” she says.

In the longer term Sheppard can see the University of Roehampton changing its catering policy in response to the growing desire for sustainable food.

“We do feel this is very much the beginning,” she says. “Eventually it would be great if students had the knowledge and skills and felt empowered and passionate to influence general catering here.”

The Growhampton cafe at the University of Roehampton © Growhampton

One of the most recent universities to get involved is the University of Edinburgh. Due to its location in Scotland they weren’t eligible for funding from the HEFCE but David Somervell, sustainability adviser at the university, says this didn’t matter. “They don’t want any funding. They just want to go away and do it themselves. This is very grass roots.”

The project has already influenced the general catering policy of the university with the administration now looking into sourcing local food and creating seasonal menus.

Piers Telemacque, NUS vice president for society and citizenship, is excited about where all this could lead: “From the first few harvests at the beginning of the project, we’ve seen veg box schemes and co-ops emerge, as well as full-blown businesses and campus cafes. We can’t wait to see how this continues to develop in the years to come – putting students at the heart of the UK food revolution.”

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A new social enterprise allows students studying away from home to swap bedrooms in order to cut down accommodation costs.

Unihomeswap, started in Brighton by parents Hermione Pask and Becci Cary, gives those with empty nests the chance to offer their spare bedrooms to other students, while their child is away from home.

The founders say the idea came to them following a conversation about the high cost of university.

“We hope that we’re going to really help people,” says Pask. “It’s not just financial, it’s cultural as well,” she adds, “but the overall aim is to help families that are struggling to afford the cost of sending their child to university.”

It costs students and families £25 to register on the Unihomeswap website for a year. The founders say that any profit made from the venture will go to charity.

To help potential students cope with the costs of university, the pair have also begun giving talks about budgeting and personal finance.

“It’s much better to inform students about money while they’re still at college,” says Pask. “Then they’re so much better prepared to look for ways to save.”

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I was sat at my desk, furiously scribbling away, preparing for a test. It had been a long time since I’d done anything like this, and things had changed. I hadn’t gotten drunk at a fresher’s week party or learned to boil an egg, as I was not really, in the traditional sense, a student again. Nor did I have to pay a single penny in tuition fees, and I was able to replay lectures over and over as I wished.

I had discovered Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – online courses, open to all and therefore “massive” because of the large-scale participation. They’re usually free, and while they don’t carry any credit, you get a certificate of completion.

Typically, lectures are delivered by video and uploaded once a week. There are quizzes given after the videos to test understanding and certificates are only issued to those who pass all of these quizzes. Sometimes there’s also an option to do an assignment that can be reviewed by your peers.

In January I joined 91,000 others in the resolution to educate myself more in 2013. There’s a massive variety of subjects to choose from on the MOOC provider, Coursera, but thanks to a recent yoga retreat I chose Introduction to Philosophy, which happened to be the first British MOOC, offered by the University of Edinburgh.

“Nobody really knows exactly what the future of online education is, but certainly it’s a popular opinion that it’s going to be a really, really big part of the future of higher education”

Given that gaining a qualification is not currently possible from completing a MOOC, I was interested to find out why the other students on my course had signed up. There were students from India, Nigeria, Australia, Poland, Haiti, Brazil, the US and Britain, and even one from Antarctica! Motivations ranged from “purely out of curiosity” and “because I never want to stop learning,” to “fill holes in my knowledge” and “to help me with my university studies,” as well as “to boost my CV.”

Despite the fact that only 10% of the thousands that sign up actually complete the courses, momentum is growing and many are hailing this as the future of education.

The trend has now fully reached British shores, with 11 top UK universities teaming up with The Open University to form Futurelearn, which will soon be offering free online courses worldwide. This news comes after an explosion of available courses last year, where the New York Times dubbed 2012 “the year of the MOOC.” Along with Coursera, there are several other US-based companies boasting thousands of students and the phenomenon is now taking Australia by storm too.

Initial courses focused on computer science topics, but now there’s a massive variety, including Climate Literacy from the University of British Columbia or the tantalizingly named Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets from Brown University.

My course tutor, Dr Dave Ward, says that nobody really knows exactly what the future of online education is, “but certainly it’s a popular opinion that it’s going to be a really, really big part of the future of higher education. So we just thought it was a good idea to get involved early, to try and find out how hard it was to do and what sort of tools were available to us.”

He adds: “Overall I’m really happy with how it’s gone and I think a lot of people have got a lot out of the course.”

Like many others who signed up, I found myself slipping behind. Luckily, the course remained live online for an extra month after it ended, giving me the chance to catch up, even though I barely scratched the surface of the forums, which, with over 8,000 active users, initially seemed overwhelming. However, I found a group for complete beginners and lurked there when I couldn’t find time to watch lectures, and connections soon spilled over onto social networks.

It’s the social communities and crowdsourcing that are the key to a MOOC’s success. As Dr Ward says: “I wasn’t really sure how successful the discussion forums would be, but I was really impressed with the level and tone on there – I think they ended up being our best resource.

“We always knew it could potentially be a really good thing, but I think how the users and contributors performed, it was the most positive thing about the whole course.”

MOOCS have made high quality courses available to anyone with an internet connection, regardless of their location or financial status. So the big question is, what does this mean for traditional universities? Some have compared the rise of the MOOC to the impact of digitisation on the music industry.

Martin Bean, vice chancellor of The Open University sees it differently: “I don’t like trying to predict the future as there are too many variables, too many ‘unknown unknowns’. What I do know is that the internet has started to disrupt higher education and that disruption isn’t going to go away. Change has come, and we as a university and as a sector have to embrace it.”

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