.png)
Owned by Oxford (OBO) emerged as a collaborative initiative to empower marginalised communities in Oxford. Founded by a coalition of grassroots community organisations, infrastructure organisations, and Oxford City Council. They are working towards “a fair, democratic and sustainable economy in Oxford, an economy owned and controlled by its community, and that puts people, planet and wellbeing before profit". OBO seeks to unlock the potential of marginalised communities, demonstrating what’s possible when lived experiences lead the way. Owned by Oxford aims to:
They are doing this through supporting grassroots organisations facing barriers in accessing funding due to complex application processes and biases favoring established institutions and piloting participatory approach to grantmaking which creates stronger and more equitable relationships between grassroots organisations and anchor institutions.
In 2023 OBO produced a report highlight examples of good practice in community wealth building Oxford- you find it here: https://ownedbyoxford.org.uk/2023/05/16/owned-by-oxford-report/
The following stories are perspectives from three members of OBO: Nicole, Jabu, and Anaïs.
My journey toward community empowerment began in 2013 with a vision for a new enterprise Transition Lighthouse. By 2018, I had started laying the groundwork, formally registering it as an initiative in 2020. The inspiration came from sitting in Muslim Sisters’ Circle spaces, where I witnessed women struggling with challenges at home, school, and in healthcare, often without adequate support from existing agencies. It was clear that a gap needed to be filled.
My Caribbean heritage and personal experiences have always been at the heart of my approach. Transition Lighthouse became a space to connect women with services addressing mental health, physical health, and social integration. We partnered with organisations like the Terrence Higgins Trust for sexual health services, Oxford Well-being Co-op for therapeutic support, offering subsidized fees for low or no-income service users who due to cultural norms may not have accessed (yoga, EFT,CFT nor NLP) practices.
My work also extended to tackling deeper social issues. Collaborating with statutory bodies on research into female genital mutilation (FGM) highlighted systemic gaps and misunderstandings. With others we set up spaces like Women of the World (WOW) inBlackbird Leys and Barton, which offer education, health resources, and opportunities for social integration.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought an urgent need for action. Domestic violence surged, and the need for resources around general health increased dramatically. We set up informal support networks and the Caribbean Living-Room to help women through these challenges. By 2022–23, I had also worked with Refugee Resource, focusing on supporting displaced individuals to integrate into the local community.
In 2021, I met Anna Thorne, who encouraged me to join OBO. We set up a Women of the World empowerment space in Barton. The initiative addressed barriers to education, volunteering, and employment for marginalised women. I believe that lived experience is essential to grass roots community work.
As a parent, my advocacy for justice started with what I witnessed in the schooling system. In the 1990s, when my son was in nursery, I’d often pick him up and receive reports of “aggressive behaviour.” It was demoralising, and I soon realised that this wasn’t unique to him. Other parents of children from African or Caribbean heritage I spoke to were hearing the same things about their children, especially their sons. I saw a pattern and understood that this was part of a larger problem—black boys were being unfairly labeled and excluded from early on.
As a single parent, I didn’t feel like I had much power. I tried to raise concerns about my son’s learning development issues and the bullying he faced, but the system wasn’t set up to listen. This carried over into secondary school, where he experienced school exclusions and even contact with the police. The “school-to-prison pipeline” wasn’t just an abstract concept—I saw it happening in my own family. My son, like so many others, felt criminalised simply for existing.
I couldn’t stay silent. Many of us inherited an acceptance of authority from our colonial pasts. Drawing on my Zulu cultural heritage, I founded Mothers for Justice. It started as a way to connect with other parents facing similar struggles, but it grew into a platform to challenge systemic injustices. When the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, I spoke at the gathering in South Parks, calling out discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system.
Over time, my activism expanded. Joining the Labour Party and becoming a local councilor gave me new opportunities to push for change. However, forming Mothers for Justice during the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult—we relied heavily on zoom, and the lack of in-person meeting spaces made organising a challenge. Funding was another hurdle. Many grants favored established organisations with long histories, leaving grassroots groups like ours with new ideas to struggle. Partnering with OBO was a breakthrough; they simplified the funding process, allowing us to access resources more easily.
Now, I focus on issues like knife crime, advocating from the perspective of the young people who carry them. I dream of a future with no school exclusions, where systemic barriers no longer limit our children.
Growing up, I lived with my mum and my sister, who is disabled. Through my mum, a single parent with caring responsibilities, I witnessed how hard it was to navigate a restrictive benefits system and the instability of renting. We had to move twice because landlords decided to sell, and finding housing was difficult as many refused tenants on benefits. These experiences taught me early on how little control many people have over their lives.
When I moved to Oxford, I was struck by the extreme inequalities – particularly the high levels of homelessness and a housing market where rents were excessively high for often poor-quality housing.
After some time in Oxford, I joined a housing co-operative – an organisation where residents live communally and collectively own and manage the property. This model completely changed how I thought about housing. With no landlord extracting profit, all our rent goes back into the organisation to pay off the mortgage, cover repairs, and keep rents affordable. Moving into a co-op has given me a sense of security and control, and has reinforced my belief in collective ownership as a powerful tool for addressing inequality.
My journey into community work in Oxford began with volunteering at OxGrow Community Garden. We learned to grow our own food and become more self-sufficient in the face of a changing climate. Through this, I became aware of the Community Action Groups (CAG) Oxfordshire network and the incredible network of other community groups they supported across the county, all working to address climate and social justice issues.
In time, I started working for the CAG Oxfordshire team and was inspired by the practical, on-the-ground actions these groups were taking. However, we were grappling with the issue that most of our support and resources were directed to predominantly white and middle-class communities.
After CAG co-founded the Owned by Oxford partnership, I had the opportunity to connect with a number of inspiring community organisers within Owned by Oxford who were from racialised and marginalised communities. These community leaders were addressing health and wealth inequalities in their communities, by supporting people to set up community businesses, improving access to affordable food, running health and wellbeing initiatives and more. I was drawn to the opportunity to explore how CAG, as a relatively well-resourced organisation with institutional connections, could help leverage funding, build capacity, and raise the visibility of these grassroots organisations.
Owned by Oxford has also given me a means to draw upon my experience with co-operatives and community forms of ownership, and apply these to creating a more democratic economy that works for the many, not the few. As a partnership, we are testing out how to bring wealth, land, and other economic resources into collective ownership and management - by supporting the setup of community- and worker-owned businesses, working with communities who want to take ownership of spaces, and trialling participatory models of managing funding.
In essence, our work is about building community wealth and creating a non-extractive economy where resources stay within the community to benefit everyone. For me, this approach is about giving ourselves the tools to become more self-reliant, so we’re not completely at the mercy of global political and economic forces that we have little control over. It’s about challenging systems that perpetuate inequality and building an economy that’s fairer and more sustainable for us all.
The collective experiences of Nicole, Jabu, and Anaïs underscore several systemic challenges and lead to the following calls to action:
Participatory governance
Starting from the principle of “nothing about us, without us” we need better mechanisms for participatory governance. This should facilitate meaningful participation of community groups in funding and governance decisions, in particular communities which are economically or socially marginalised.
Funding inequitiesWe need to simplify processes and create ‘funnels’ for grant funding to get to the grassroots groups through organisations that understand the needs and the linguistic, cultural and other barriers first hand.
Finance and investment
We need a social investment fund to support enterprises and spaces for marginalised communities. Alice Hemming from Cooperative Futures has produced a feasibility study for Oxfordshire following examples of others in the country. This needs follow up action.
Intersectional Barriers to accessing support
Some groups face multiple barriers to accessing business support . This can be legal (e.g migration) financial (access to banking) knowledge about governance, linguistic, digital, political and cultural. We need anchor institutions to get better at this and provide more tailored support for community organisers wanting to develop new enterprises.
Advocacy and PartnershipsPartnerships between institutions like the police, courts, and probation services with community groups can help create early interventions, reduce reoffending and promote community safety.
Owned By Oxford is a collaboration between different organisations and community groups: African Families in the UK, Aspire, Cooperative Futures, Community Action Groups Oxfordshire, DC, Mothers for Justice, MakeSpace, Oxford Community Action, Oxford City Council, Syrian Sisters, Transition Lighthouse.
This case study is part of the 'Community wealth building: big conversations' project. These case studies are in the voice of the people who gave them. They seek to honestly present their successes, as well as the challenges of trying to build a more just, sustainable economy and community. We encourage conversation - so if you want to get in touch and talk more to any of the groups, please do.
.png){kind=small}