Publications
Comics
Future Natures
We explore issues, stories and ideas through a series of comics. All our comics are published under a Creative Commons licence, to encourage wider reading and sharing.
Publications
Comic: Future Natures
Future Natures
Introductory comic from Future Natures about modern crises and the radical potential of commoning.
From the Network
Call: STRANGE BROTH – Making and remaking commons in Scotland and beyond
Future Natures
Call for participation: the ‘Strange Broth’ gathering in April 2025, hosted by GalGael, will be an opportunity to gather and make, learn, play and share stories for commons and commoning.
Publications
Comic: Little Elle in Slumberland
Future Natures
A comic about capitalist value production, and the many other values that persist and resist despite of it.
Stories
Podcast: Fungi and radical futures
Future Natures
From the Network
Land grabs and carbon offsetting: new research
Future Natures
Ideas
Talks on Weird Ecology and the Commons
Future Natures
Watch video of two talks by Amber Huff: on weird ecologies, and on commons, enclosure and value struggle.
Stories
Podcast: Urban heat justice
Future Natures
Podcast episode with Panagiota Kotsila about the effects of urban heat on migrants in cities.
Learning
How do ‘Mega-Infrastructure Projects’ lead to disenchantment?
Future Natures
Publications
Podcast: Shepherding schools and reviving rural futures
Future Natures
From the Network
Food systems are broken. Could treating land as commons help?
Future Natures
Widespread separation from the land combined with deep inequalities may give rise to novel forms of land governance, but with contradictions and contestations.
Publications
Zine: ‘Strange Natures’
Future Natures
Publications
Podcast: Land, democracy, identity
Future Natures
Podcast episode with US-based author Antonia Malchik about walking, ownership, nature, urban spaces and politics.
Ideas
What is land for?
Future Natures
Histories of enclosure and profit shape what can be grown on the land, as Scotland’s history illustrates.
From the Network
What happened to the global land grab?
Future Natures
Ian Scoones discusses the aftermath and legacies of the ‘global land grab’ ahead of a major international conference on the topic.
Stories
Strange Natures: Black Water Crossing
Future Natures
An excerpt from a comic that explores a fantastical journey to a strange island in the Andaman sea.
Stories
Strange Natures: The pale glade
Future Natures
In this mythical tale by Callum Aitken, a storyteller undergoes a transformative experience.
Stories
Photo story: Xolobeni – A Commoning Success Story
Hali Healy
Stories
Strange Natures: Singing bullfrogs of Sanjay Van
Future Natures
A story about a strange encounter with singing frogs in a South Delhi forest, and the possibility of communication between species.
Stories
Strange Natures: BRICKS
Future Natures
A short experimental film by Ceri Nicholls about the strangeness of human-centred worlds, isolation and nature.
From the Network
Strange Natures: The Value of a Voice
Future Natures
A short story from the deep ocean by Sara Stoudt.
From the Network
Strange Natures: Volatile ecologies and shifting islands
Future Natures
Photo story by Sampurna Das about the shifting river islands of eastern India.
From the Network
Strange Natures: Zine – ‘Strange Realism’
Future Natures
A zine by Francis Gene-Rowe about poetry, the self, time, stories and nature.
From the Network
Strange Natures: The haunted floodplains of San Felipe
Future Natures
Stories
Weird seas of the climate crisis – birds as eerie revelation
Future Natures
Closely observing strange patterns in bird behaviour, Andrew Whitehouse finds hints of the unsettled climate.
Stories
Strange Natures: Scarification
Future Natures
A short story by Michael Reeks, responding to the theme of Strange Natures.
From the Network
MINERIA: An animation about mining, energy and justice
Future Natures
Stories
Strange Natures: Compost
Future Natures
Stories
Strange Natures: Podcast – Folk horror and English commons
Future Natures
Stories
Strange Natures: Podcast – Forgotten places and the field of memory
Future Natures
A podcast episode with researcher Cansu Sönmez about the impacts of large infrastructure projects and how people respond to them.
From the Network
Strange Natures: PLOT – A film by JT Roane
Future Natures
An experimental film by JT Roane reflecting on the past and present of historic rural Black landscapes.
From the Network
Strange Natures: Common Place
Future Natures
From the Network
Strange Natures: Clouties – a ghost story
Future Natures
Ideas
Season: Strange Natures
Future Natures
A season of creative contributions that engage with ‘the strange’ to open up new ways of seeing and telling stories about crises, ecologies and natures.
Stories
Podcast: Mining and Resistance in Covas do Barroso
Future Natures
Future Natures podcast episode about resistance to lithium mining in Portugal.
Publications
Comic: Map, Territory, Story
Amber Huff
The second comic from Future Natures explores the abuses of maps and the myth of the so-called ‘tragedy’ of the commons.
From the Network
Climate uncertainty and the arts
Future Natures
Jo Walton discusses how art, games and other creativity can help to open up alternative futures.
From the Network
Comic: People Power – Smart Local Energy Systems
Future Natures
Stories
More than a pub: the story of The Bevy
Future Natures
How a pub in Brighton became a centre of social life, learning and mutual support for a community.
Learning
Online archive: East London Big Flame
Nathan Oxley
Explore an online archive of documents from political activism in London in the 1970s and 1980s.
Stories
Recommended podcast: Changing Currents
Nathan Oxley
Ideas
To think, feel and see otherwise: a report and a mini-zine from POLLEN23
Nathan Oxley
Publications
Photo story: Views of Mpox in Nigeria
Future Natures
Based on research in Nigeria, this story explores how mpox is felt and understood by different people – including those with symptoms, the wider community and healthcare workers.
Publications
Comic: Mpox in Nigeria – lessons from diverse experiences
Future Natures
Comic that explores the varied experience of mpox in Nigeria, with suggested lessons for healthcare elsewhere in the world.
Ideas
My body as food, my food as neighbour
Future Natures
Starting from the ecologies and relationships involved in foraging, Elaina Weber discusses how you might see your food as community, and yourself as ‘future food’.
Stories
Mapping community gardens in the UK
Nathan Oxley
The organisation Sustain provides a map of community gardens around the UK, and organises a weekend of action where gardens invite people in to take part.
Ideas
Naming, unnaming and commons
Nathan Oxley
Names can be used to hurt and heal. What can ‘unnaming’ do for people’s relationships to the other creatures around them?
Stories
A Portuguese village on the front line of the ‘energy transition’
Future Natures
Covas de Barroso is facing the threat of an open-cast lithium mine, with just 10 days to respond to a public consultation.
From the Network
Comic: Seeing Conflict at the Margins
Jeremy Lind
A comic explores views of resource conflicts from the perspectives of rural people in Kenya and Madagascar, shared with the help of participatory video methods.
Stories
Film ‘Finite’ documents community resistance against mines
Nathan Oxley
A powerful documentary about people coming together to take action against new mining developments in Germany and the UK.
Stories
Podcast: Seeding the commons in Argentina
Anoushka Zoob Carter
Podcast episode with Almendra Cremaschi of Bioleft, a seed commoning initiative based in Argentina.
Ideas
Unsettling enclosures
Anoushka Zoob Carter
Ideas
Video: JT Roane on ‘Dark Agoras’ in Philadelphia
Future Natures
Full video of JT Roane’s talk about Black urban placemaking in twentieth-century Philadelphia.
Ideas
How could land in England be reformed for the commons?
Future Natures
Elise Wach explores the proposals from various social movements for changing how England’s rural spaces are governed.
Learning
Podcast: Food that’s not for sale
Anoushka Zoob Carter
A conversation with Sam Bliss on the practices that can decommodify food and ‘re-common’ the food system.
Ideas
Video: Crisis, development & ecologies of the new commons
Future Natures
Learning
Podcast: Commoning in a Palestinian refugee camp
Anoushka Zoob Carter
From the Network
Geothermal meets pastoral livelihoods in Kenya
Jeremy Lind
Learning
Masters in Commons Administration: new taster course in 2023
Future Natures
Details of a three-day taster course on the commons, to be held in January 2023 in North-West England.
Stories
Encountering the commons in The Pluriverse of Eco-social Justice
Anoushka Zoob Carter
The history of enclosure in Portugal can be found in the art world and forest worlds. Connecting the two are ongoing struggles to recommon these spaces…
Toolbox
How to make a mini-zine
Nathan Oxley
Stories
Call for aid: Cooperation Jackson and the city’s urgent water crisis
Future Natures
Ideas
Hopping over the fence
Nathan Oxley
How mass trespassers in England are venturing on to fenced-off lands to reconnect with lost commons.
Ideas
Radical Epistemologies and Future Natures – video recordings
Future Natures
Explore an open access online workshop entitled ‘Radical Epistemologies and Future Natures’, including video talks and a discussion forum.
Ideas
Cultivating the garden of your mind
Anoushka Zoob Carter
From the Network
Bioleft: open seeds
Future Natures
Ideas
Trespass, Commons and the Right to Roam
Anoushka Zoob Carter
In this podcast episode, Nick Hayes challenges the inequalities of land ownership and property rights and discusses the Right to Roam movement in the UK.
Ideas
Treating food as commons, not commodities
Anoushka Zoob Carter
Jose Luis Vivero Pol explores new ways of democratising the governance of food systems and how (re)commoning food in society requires challenging dominant norms that value food as a commodity.
Learning
Course: Pathways to Sustainability
Nathan Oxley
Stories
Seeing Pastoralism
Nathan Oxley
Ideas
On the Promise of the Commons
Anoushka Zoob Carter
In this podcast episode, Vandana Shiva tells the story of historical struggle against colonialism and neoliberal capitalism that involves the commodification of seeds. She explains how re-commoning of seeds is a defence of a shared ecological and human diversity.
Stories
Comic: The Killing Famine
Future Natures
Comic about colonisation, mining and conservation in Madagascar, drawing on the history of enclosures of common grazing lands and forests.
Stories
Comic: Weird Ecologies
Future Natures
Ideas
‘Sedentist’ bias and the pastoral commons
Future Natures