25 and 26 April 2025
GalGael, Glasgow, Scotland
An event to gather and make, learn, play and share stories for commons and commoning
Tickets now available – read on for details
Jump to Recipe of sessions & activities
The world is on fire. Illegal ‘wars’ rumble on. Powerful institutions fail us – even as they seek ever greater control over social life, knowledge, production and nature.
Many feel increasingly abandoned, disaffected and disenchanted in the world.
In such a time, where do we look to sustain our collective energies and imaginations? Commons offer ways of thinking collectively about what we can create when we work together in our communities and movements. Commons aren’t just a ‘thing’ or a resource – they are the ways we govern ourselves and produce social wealth. The politics through which we resist dispossession, domination and enclosure. The pluriverse of values that bind us to each other and the more-than-human world.
Practices of commoning invite us to think about what supports our common existence, but which has been or is being threatened with destruction, erasure, or enclosure by the state and capital.
Stirring up stories…
As folk stories like that of the stone soup* depict, alone we may be hungry and afraid of the unknown. Yet we all have something to bring – to build a fire to chase away the shadows and make a broth to fill the emptiness.
Together we can find enough to fulfill ourselves and each other – sharing with our families and communities. Traditions and practices across Scotland are testament to this – from the tenements of Glasgow to the shielings of the Outer Hebrides. In these ways we build up the strength we need to make liveable futures in a wider world that’s gone… weird.
We invite you to join us to make a dynamic and radical gathering – a convergence for the ‘commoners’ of Scotland, both practicing and aspiring. Together we’ll make a ‘strange broth’, stir up old stories and cook up new ones, form bonds, kindle new collaborations and find ways to take care of each other and our collective futures. Over the course of two days we’ll learn, work, eat, make, play and imagine together.
Sessions and activities
We’re combining a dash of theory, a sprinkle of history with discussion, practical know-how and at least a pinch of the imagination needed for recommoning all that has been enclosed through an era of hyper-individualism, market extension and exploitation. We’ll do this through making, play, reimagining and re-storying the world around us and what we conceive of as possible.
Each day is served with plenty of time for gabbing – the gravy or the sauce of all gatherings – and will close with collective sense making and discussion.
With this in mind we’re encouraging folks to stay with us for as much of the gathering as possible. Rather than cherry pick and go. We understand that won’t be possible for everyone. This is to attempt to create conditions for the practices and knowledges we make between us through the course of shared experiences and discussions – through reflecting on the overarching themes together and exploring what further potentials lie in our efforts when we lean into practices of commoning and reclaiming our world from enclosure and extraction – online and off.
With this in mind, if this gathering relates to the work of your group or collective – we’re particularly keen to have you join us; reflecting the original intention that this seeds and cross-pollinates practices across Scotland.
Otherwise, if your interests or work are in this territory or related somehow – please come along.
Join the gathering
You will need a ticket to join. More information on timing and venue, and options for accessibility & other forms of support are on the ticket booking website – click the button below.
Tickets £5
Travel bursaries available (particularly for groups and folk traveling from rural areas)
Food included
Let us know if you need help finding accommodation
Background
(Click to show/hide) Read about the aspirations for ‘Strange Broth’ and how it is organised.
How do we nurture ways of living and getting along together that sustain our bodies, enrich our lives and help us build a better world? What sorts of stories and folk memories help us make sense of the challenges we face? How do we grow kinships and networks within our communities – both social and ecological – so that they might flourish in and beyond times of rupture, uncertainty and change?
We all carry the answers – or the seeds of answers – to many of these questions in ourselves and our collectives, our ways of organizing and making sense of our experiences, in our shared histories of knowledge-making, place-making and struggle in commons.
The ‘Strange Broth’ gathering is a collaboration between GalGael and Future Natures with commoners near and far.
Our aspirations for the two days are:
- To share knowledge and practical know-how to understand how these principles are being put into practice today
- To celebrate in ways that our commons are rooted in place and experience, whilst also seeding the ground for growing solidarities across different places, radical lineages and histories of struggle
- To explore the history and diversity of the Scottish commons, the principles that have helped sustain them and the challenges they have faced
- To ask how ‘commoning’ help us reframe and situate our work and develop methods, tactics and counternarratives for unlearning and undoing enclosure
- To bring our learning together in a collective assembly
This will be a space that we build together – rather than a thing to passively consume.
To cultivate a dynamic and multidimensional experience and create space for reimagining our relationships, surroundings and commons, the gathering is organized into four streams of activity:
- MAKE – e.g. cooking and eating together, making space, art, skill shares, collective making
- LEARN – e.g. teach ins, critical histories, embodied exploration, methods
- PLAY – e.g. role play, LARP, tarot, radical games
- STORY – e.g. story-telling, listening and sharing, world-building, re-storying our worlds
*ABOUT STONE SOUP: The title of the gathering takes its name from a traditional tale. There are many versions of a story of ‘stone soup’ from places near and far. One such version comes from Govan on the outskirts of Glasgow when hard lives were organised around the tenement ‘closes’. They carried tales from the lands they’d been displaced from – the Highlands, the Islands, the Lowlands or across the Irish Sea. But their version of ‘stone soup’ concerned their new lives in a Glasgow rapidly swelling through industry and trade. A family at the bottom of the ‘close’ would send a large, empty pot up the stairwell. One family offered an onion, another a few old carrots, another some potatoes, and perhaps another salt. The pot was soon filled with enough ingredients for a hearty soup to be shared by everyone. The tale reminds us that while alone we might not have much, together we can more ably meet our collective needs. Much like practices of commoning.