We’re looking back at a busy year – and realised that we need to celebrate a historic moment for the Solidarity Economy Organisers Network (SE-ON)!
The Solidarity Economy Organisers Network, or SE-ON, is a project launched in 2021 with the aim of bringing together organisations working at the grassroots of the solidarity economy in the countries of Britain. It’s a network of groups led by people with different lived experiences of marginalisation, who are organising on a solidarity economy basis for survival reasons in their own communities. SE-ON aims to weave relationships between groups and movements across classed and racialised lines, and build an ecologically sustainable, resilient, and socially just economic system based on unity in diversity.
SE-ON is currently made up of five member groups, including Migrants Organise for Rights and Empowerment (MORE), Unity Sisters, Granville Community Kitchen, the NotAlone Empowerment Centre (NEC), and Solidarity Economy Association (SEA).
In August 2026, all five SE-ON member groups participated in the New Organising Conference (NOC) 2026 and for the first time ever co-presented a collaborative workshop. Our session focused on ‘Supporting our Communities Against the Far-right’. This session fit perfectly into NOC 2026 theme of ‘roots and branches’, specifically in relation to far right activity, and looking at how workplace and community organising can work collectively against the Right.
We took a moment of silence at the start of the session to remember Jason Arday and people in our communities who have suffered from racist violence. We then workshopped scenarios from both pre-prepared examples and invited participants to share stories of situations they have faced. The aim was to work out what our roles can be in transforming narratives; how to hold conversations and listen as actively as possible. We quickly understood how important relationships are, how our different experiences and positionalities can open and close opportunities, and how much stronger we are when we fight together.
20 engaged interested thoughtful people took part in SE-ON’s workshop (which took place simultaneously with many others!) and feedback was excellent. We are looking forward to many more collaborations in the future.
We closed the session with a joyful collective noise-making as we imagined a world where racism is no longer the battle.
