Timebanking Wales
Timebanking Wales, works with third sector community organisations in Wales, to reinvent mutualism with time currency. Timebanking is a social instrument designed to develop a more active dialogue between community organisations and ‘people in communities’ - the intention being to move the agenda from people being ‘passive beneficiaries of community services’ to ‘active citizens for change’.
Welsh timebanks work a little differently to the traditional timebank model in that they are ‘hosted’ within public and community agencies. Community members are then invited to actively engage and take ownership of public services rather than being passive recipients. The ‘host’ agency acts as the central bank and acknowledges members for their time with credits. These credits can then be used for recreational services, to go on trips or attend local events.
This co-productive conversation changes the culture of the community landscape by re-engaging peoples talents in the context of participatory democracy, promotes mutual activity, encourages civil renewal and builds positive social capital.
Background to Timebanking Wales
In 2003 the University of Newport came together with Time Banks UK and Valleys Kids in a partnership to set up the Wales Institute for Community Currencies (WICC) and to develop a new application of timebanking. This institute became so successful, that 5 years later it has evolved into two new organisations devoted to disseminating this work. Timebanking Wales is now working across Wales delivering much larger scale timebanking programmes to the third sector and its sister organisation, our ‘sister’ organisation: Spice is doing the same with engagement of people in public services across the UK.
