Federation includes individuals and organisations who were part of a Co-op Foundation/Luminate programme and others who were based at the The Federation co-working space in Manchester. 

The Federation co-working and events space was home to many organisations, groups and initiatives as part of the digital and social innovation ecosystem in Greater Manchester. When The Federation closed in 2021, the Co-op Foundation’s Federation Programme, supported by Luminate, continued to work and engage with several of these groups in a new phase of its work to achieve civic empowerment through co-operation that challenged inequity and strengthened digital & data rights. The programme was delivered in a partnership between Co-op Foundation, Noisy Cricket and Paper Frogs before it closed in summer 2023.

Later that year, a number of former Federation organisations came together as a group to set up a mechanism for collective working.