“Bristol Pounds stand for so many things that we do. It just made sense,” says Stacey Fordham, standing amid artisan cooking oils, natural wellbeing products and dispensers for pasta, grains and pulses at her zero-waste shop, Zero Green in Bristol, England.
Her store is one of around 500 businesses in the city that accept the Bristol Pound, Britain's largest community currency.
£What’s a community currency?
It’s a special, local currency that can only be used within a certain locale at shops or other businesses that have signed up to accept it as an alternative to the official, national currency, with the goal of encouraging spending in the local economy. This can either encompass a whole town, or in the case of a currency like the Brixton Pound, just one London neighbourhood, and can be bought at a rate equivalent to the national British pound. There are thousands of community currencies in the world and the concept has been around for decades, and in the past couple of years, they’re becoming more popular as more have become digital.
Local culture, local needs
It’s not just about local economics, however; community currencies can play an important role in celebrating local culture. In Brixton, south London, for example, around 150 outlets take colourful Brixton Pound notes bearing diverse icons with ties to the community. David Bowie emblazons the Ten Brixton Pounds in his Aladdin Sane persona, basketball star Luol Deng (who grew up in Brixton) gazes from the Five, while the Twenty honours World War Two secret agent Violette Szabo.
Commissioned artwork full of local references has also been a feature of the Bristol Pound since its 2012 launch; its current One Pound note, for example, bears local Bristol artist Radley Cook's illustration of fierce 2011 protests against a supermarket chain opening in one bohemian neighbourhood. In the medieval English town of Lewes in Sussex, 60 miles (96km) south of London, community currency notes celebrate historical events like the 750th Anniversary of the Battle of Lewes, but also the opening of the Depot art-house cinema, plus a 2013 music festival appearance by British rock band Mumford & Sons.
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