Beyond the Rules began as a bit of an open question. The hunch was: our normative ways of governing and organising - designed to extract value for profit - aren’t well suited to create ‘public good’ (or ‘systemic value’). At times, they actively uphold some of the oppressive and degenerative challenges that we face.
Under this premise, in 2020 Lankelly Chase convened Dark Matter Labs, Black Thrive, York MCN, and the Democratic Society to learn and enquire together about this. We were all trying out and learning from other ways of organising and governing for ‘public good’, and - among many others - hitting many challenges and learning a lot along the way. A programme of learning, work and a community of people has emerged from these seeds.
Lankelly Chase
Democratic Society
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York MCN
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Dark Matter Labs
Black Thrive
We share a desire to organise and govern better within our work for ‘public good’, and collectively seek to learn and experiment in how we might do this.
Over summer 2020 to early 2022, we explored this in detail from various angles.
It wasn’t always easy - we collaborated almost entirely online, in challenging times during the COVID-19 lockdowns. We experienced some of the dynamics and questions that many collaborations and partnerships do when coming together for a shared endeavour: What do imbalances of capacity and resource impact whose voice is heard? How do we even start to dig into this question when everything is linked and the landscape is so broad? How does power and responsibility manifest in the group (and is it balanced)? Are our visions and assumptions shared?
Some of our work was about change within in existing system - supporting and learning with Black Thrive and York MCN to navigate systemic shifts they were artfully stewarding in their contexts, and practicing learning within our organisational contexts.
Some was about exploring fields of enquiry that we were actively practicing within our respective settings: how can we structure pay systemically? How do grantmaking practice need to evolve? how can we identify power imbalances? How can we take decisions together?
We started by sharing each of our framings of the challenge, which has led to a community of 300+ people also interested - often experimenting - in this area to sign up for further collaboration.
<aside> 💡 Read the framing blogs: Dark Matter Labs Lankelly Chase Democratic Society York MCN
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We held events, discussed together, ran workshops, researched, interviewed, designed and synthesised. Many of the results you will see on this portal. For more detail of our work in this phase, see below:
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Screenshot from the Reimagining Pay event 2021
<aside> <img src="/icons/link_blue.svg" alt="/icons/link_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Summary of Beyond the Rules: Phase 1, by Dark Matter Labs
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By 2022 we evaluated further our next steps. Some of us enjoyed this exploration but had pressing commitments elsewhere; some of us had a thirst to continue; others were excited to newly take part.
2022 thus saw the start of a few new phases of work.
Dark Matter Labs began looking more deeply into some of the contractual and practical methods and resources for alternative governance, particularly employment contracts, partnership agreements and many-to-many governance settings (resources and insights from which you will see on the main portal). This included hosting peer groups into these areas and working with lawyers and legal designer Angela Tang to produce these resources.
<aside> <img src="/icons/thought-dialogue_blue.svg" alt="/icons/thought-dialogue_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Open House Poll: most important areas to work on
In our first Open House, we asked people what would be the most important and useful area for us to work in for Beyond the Rules, and your top two areas were practical alternatives (such as contracts) and connecting what already exists.
In 2022 we put a particular emphasis on contracts, deep diving into employment contracts and funding contracts. After hosting peer groups, holding workshops and exploring deep detail with lawyers, the employment contract and funding agreement portals were launched in early 2023 with hundreds taking part.
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Photo from the Employment Contract peer group 2022
In 2023 we are more focused on convening, connecting, moving resources, and imagining together. We share in this portal the fruits from this work as it continues.