The Story of October Books.... The New Team
A Chapter in the October Books Story
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” – Henry Ford
In early 2016 the team at October Books started to talk about plans for the future. Ian Lamming, who had been working at the co-op since inception, wanted to retire. Vanui, who had been doing the book-keeping, wanted to leave to have a baby (we realise now that she did this because she didn’t think October Books could support maternity pay). Laure, the other member of the team also wanted to leave to move to the US with her partner.
Things weren’t great financially for the shop at this stage and despite introducing new product lines of food and cards in the previous years, outgoings were generally more than income and there was money owed to the landlord. The shop was still supported by the local community and many had provided financial support to help the business through various cash flows crises. The premises were also in need of repair and upgrade, with no heating, broken windows and shutter and a general down at heel appearance. I know I got tired of telling people ‘no we aren’t a charity shop’. There was also 40 years worth of stuff collected and stored at the rented premises.
The co-op decided to advertise for a new team to run the business and four people were invited to form a new team from a range of candidates who applied. Clare Diaper, Joey Jones, Jess Haynes and Jaquie Daniels were all offered part-time roles with October Books and Ian generously offered to stay on for another year to handover his 40 years’ worth of information and knowledge.
Changes to shop layout were made incrementally and some ancient computers were replaced with newer (upcycled) models. Regular workers meetings and Committee meetings were held to help share knowledge and a limited events programme was started in order to encourage more connection with regular supporters and to invite new connections with the community.
Over the spring and summer of 2017 we started collaborating with Nathan Brown on new rules for the society, based on a multi stakeholder cooperative mode and a member engagement strategy. In tandem to this work with Nathan, Clare was also using her community development skills to re-engage with the local community. A World Café style event was run in March 2017 asking our supporters what they wanted October Books to be, what was the radical bookshop of the 21st century? The words that formed the ideas gathered at this event were fed into a word cloud and the result was the below, no manipulation of the data was required. ‘A local community space with books’ really felt like the reflected collective wisdom of our community.
And so began another chapter.
[Image Description: Writing- ‘The New Team, October Books’
Three photos:
1) A clipping from Daily Echo: ‘Your chance to run a bookshop’ with photo of Ian Lamming included 2016.
2) Photo of the new team. From LtR Jess Haynes, Clare Diaper, Joey Jones and Jaquie Daniels 2016.
3) A word cloud formed by discussion from supporters at event in 2017]
