HOW DO WE MAKE MONEY ALIVE?
“To have any chance at building a sustainable and inclusive future, we need to re-think and re-organise money”
Ester Barinaga Martin, ‘Remaking Money for a Sustainable Future’ 2024
It has become fashionable today to assign ‘life’ and ‘legal personhood’ to rivers, mountains and forests. If a river can be considered alive, what about money? If ‘rewilding’ and ‘regeneration’ can be applied to people, landscapes and businesses, why not also money?
For us, the first step was to separate money from ‘consumer’ and ‘product’. These are words we never use. As soon as you say ‘product’ you create a ‘consumer’. We want a different relationship with the people who taste the honey.
We made the honey itself into a ‘currency of care’ with explicit rules about how it must be exchanged: plant a flower to thank the bees. Share the honey with one you care for. In this way, connections form between people, plants and animals.
But of course we still need real money to support our families, pay rent and care for the bees. It might sound strange, but we found that the money in relationships and connections is more resilient and abundant than there is in trying to sell products.
We are fascinated by traditions in which money is associated with care for the community and for the future. There are lots of examples when you look for them (Think of a Wishing Well. See ‘What Money Can Learn From Water’ below).
In fact, in many cultures, Money and Honey were the same. What does it mean to share money with the ones we care for and to cultivate it, as we would a flower for the bees?
We try to find new ways to think about and work with money. We have tried to use creativity and collage to re-imagine money, contracts, receipts, invoices and prices more playfully, trying to capture the fluid nature of money and its ability to nourish and support our community.
We see our partnerships as a collective responsibility too. Businesses that join us, commit to working together to create environments were bees, flowers, people and money can thrive together. Contact us to learn more.
