Reasons For Bakehouse
Bakehouse stands for progress, diversity, and a better future for Great Yarmouth and the people who live here. We're trying to build the world we want to live in.
Bakehouse is for solidarity, not charity.
Bakehouse is a not-for-profit organisation working against bigotry and division, and building solidarity and resilience in Great Yarmouth. We're interested in improving material conditions for those who live in the town, acting as a venue for mutual aid activities of all kinds – a ground from which to grow alternative structures for living and imagined futures beyond those offered to us by capitalist society and a disinterested, dishonest state.
The Bakehouse building is a third place in Great Yarmouth town centre. Here, we're running a pay-what-you-want café on Thursdays and Fridays, cooking a different menu every week using surplus supermarket food. We want to enable more people to eat well regardless of means, and we're aware that good food is a powerful unifying tool, capable of bringing together people of all different backgrounds and beliefs.
Bakehouse believes in building community power. This comes in many different forms. We choose to begin with the simple act of sharing food, and we see this as the basis on which to build a more connected, resilient community that is able to improve its own material conditions through mutual aid and self-organisation. Great Yarmouth is at the sharp end of many of the intersecting challenges that this new phase of history is presenting, and we believe that the only way to meet these challenges is through collective action.
We are unashamedly radical in our approach to building a better future. We choose collective action over confected division. We choose to take an expansive, forward-looking view of what is possible over the narrow, small-minded pessimism of exclusion and bigotry. We believe that a sustainable, modern, progressive Great Yarmouth is possible, building on the rich history of the town and the strength of its resourceful, creative, and resilient people. We believe that change comes from the bottom up, and that the only way to build the power that we envisage is through collective action.
Organised communities are strong communities.
The best is not too good for you.
Bakehouse chooses to adopt a mindset of abundance. We understand that there is more than enough to satisfy the needs of everyone, and that the failure to do so is a political choice. We are firmly rooted in the tradition of mutual aid, and we believe in the combination of theory and action as the basis for progress.
The community of Great Yarmouth deserves nothing but the best - as does everyone else. As the state retreats from its obligations, and as the social contract is renegotiated, Bakehouse works to build an equitable, progressive, and sustainable alternative. Everything for everyone!
