Elastic Money

Elastic Money was an artist-led project by Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck of The Alternative School of Economics using creative activity to explore the language around debt in partnership with Venus Charity in Bootle.

Through artist and librarian-led sessions at the library, we collaboratively redefined words and explored the phrases we use when talking about money, debt and the economy, using the process to open up conversations, demystify and reclaim language.

In each workshop, we explored words or terms and mapped out our own relatable definitions to create playful visuals. This forms part of a publication: A Lexicon of Debt, which we distributed locally to share our collective knowledge as experts through experience. 

Through the process, we thought about living well despite life’s challenges, removing the shame around talking about money and building a network of solidarity, agency and support for the collective issues our community faces together.

This work ran alongside ‘Money Matters’ – practical money management and debt advice, delivered by Venus’ team of experts, taking place every Wednesday.

This work was funded by The European Challenge: a programme which brings together libraries and communities across Europe to develop and test new models for how libraries can respond to urgent matters facing communities.

Building on conversations started in 2022 from Rule of Threes and Venus’ partnership project Moon in Venus we invited Amy and Ruth back to work with community members, librarians and partners from Venus Charity to explore how libraries can better respond to the cost of living crisis and financial pressures facing working-class communities. 

The book is now available at all six Sefton Libraries and is available to buy from Alternative School of Economics here.