When we started our sharing stall in 1992, two green councillors on the Wirral Green forum saw it and produced a leaflet that described how to run a give and take sharing day, and that went around the country. As well as working at the Connah's Quay weekly market, we attended national fairs and festivals, and anywhere we could, as well as corresponding with others in the USA, Canada and other places. And the idea, when seen, got copied on the Isle of Man, The Isle of Wight. Next, through the 1990s, we heard it had started in Brighton. Next we heard it was happening in France. Then we heard Holland and then Germany. And so it spread.

But, as I have said before, it is like tasting a cherry or cake. It has to be done to be experienced. How rich it is. How people share. At first it was a gamble but it just works. Community sharing works. All the fears you have about it don't appear. One would expect, for instance, that everything on the stall would go and the stall might be left empty, but no, the stall always gains more than was put on it originally, and yet everyone has taken things they want, and are so happy with such a good idea. It is more than a stall: it is a very happy space, a community space and a catalyst for more community skills and knowledge sharing in a locality to happen.

Recently I received a set of legal rules to look over for a new organization to form a group called Free Wrexham, which is proposed to be a networking group for gift economy projects in the Wrexham area. When it’s done they will set up an account for the Gift Economy projects in Wrexham to hold the money donations that come in from a community skills and knowledge sharing and community goods sharing free stall running every day now in the Peoples Market in the town and run by anyone who wishes to. It was set up last November 2012 and is running 6 days a week, originally set up by a coalition of Give and Take, Wrexham Bring and Take, and the Yum Yum project.

This stall has been on Heart Radio and BBC radio. The stall is on the BBC website here, the the Indymedia website here, with the Chester stall here.

There is no worry about the money that comes in as donations if it gets taken because it is not the money that is important, but the sharing that is happening. Paradoxically no one takes the money! Or very rarely. Our group give and take has now accrued £12000 for others for free community space.

As well as that, one of our members Vic has said he will gift his riverside dwelling and garden into it as free sharing space to be held free forever, we just need to get the legal structure done for that. It can be seen at http://www.wigglywobblyway.weebly.com.

As well, some of the Wrexham people wish to create a big town community space: the Yum Yum project for gift economy arts, cafe, library, skills sharing, goods sharing, workshops, food sharing and anything else, like brewery, that the people wish to create and give to and take from for free.

Although Vic and I, and my children, and many others through the years have been doing gift economy for 20 years — at markets, fairs and festivals, and within our local Lets scheme, and developing two Gift Economy farm forest garden permaculture land projects — it is only in the last five years that it has grown and is growing. Through these years, from the first, I have always wondered where are the women in this? Well they are here now: they are the committed majority in Wrexham, which is so good. This is just in our area. I feel sure models be copied and will grow in all areas.

Genevieve Vaughan, in For-Giving, has written the book on the gift economy. It is the book of it, the spirit of it, the why and wherefore of it. And I think that it is with a rise of the power of women, and the rise of gift economy projects, which is happening now. Patriarchy is a construct, which we live under. Taken away from the mother, males are divorced from the learning of nurture, to learn competition and fighting. What does gang, competitive, fearful patriarchy not want to happen? The rise of women and the rise of sharing. Simple community sharing — sharing governance.