The Commons

The Commons

Explore stories, ideas and experiences on enclosures, commoning and ecologies. Use the filters to browse by theme and type of content.

Comics

Future Natures

Comic: Future Natures

Future Natures

Introductory comic from Future Natures about modern crises and the radical potential of commoning.

Podcast: Unearthing environmentalism and techno-capitalist vampires

Future Natures

A conversation with Patrick Bresnihan about histories of environmental movements, and the material impacts of digital technology.

Podcast: Using storytelling approaches to explore commoning

Future Natures

Call: STRANGE BROTH

Future Natures

Comic: Little Elle in Slumberland

Future Natures

Podcast: Fungi and radical futures

Future Natures

In this episode of the Future Natures podcast, we talk to Maymana Arefin, the founder of Fungi Futures, a project learning with fungi to map radical alternative futures.

Land grabs and carbon offsetting: new research

Future Natures

A study by GRAIN reveals the extent of land deals linked to major carbon offsetting projects worldwide.

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.

Podcast: Urban heat justice

Future Natures

How do ‘Mega-Infrastructure Projects’ lead to disenchantment?

Future Natures

Podcast: Shepherding schools and reviving rural futures

Future Natures

Podcast episode about the Inland project in northern Spain, which combines commons-based approaches to pastoralism, agroecology, culture and art.

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.

Zine: ‘Strange Natures’

Future Natures

A zine of art and essays on the theme of ‘Strange Natures’.

Podcast: Land, democracy, identity

Future Natures

Podcast episode with US-based author Antonia Malchik about walking, ownership, nature, urban spaces and politics.

What is land for?

Future Natures

Histories of enclosure and profit shape what can be grown on the land, as Scotland’s history illustrates.

What happened to the global land grab?

Future Natures

Strange Natures: Black Water Crossing

Future Natures

Strange Natures: The pale glade

Future Natures

Photo story: Xolobeni – A Commoning Success Story

Hali Healy

Photo story about the struggle by people in Xolobeni to protect and develop their commons against extractive interests.

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.

Strange Natures: BRICKS

Future Natures

A short experimental film by Ceri Nicholls about the strangeness of human-centred worlds, isolation and nature.

Strange Natures: The Value of a Voice

Future Natures

A short story from the deep ocean by Sara Stoudt.

Strange Natures: Volatile ecologies and shifting islands

Future Natures

Photo story by Sampurna Das about the shifting river islands of eastern India.

Strange Natures: Zine – ‘Strange Realism’

Future Natures

A zine by Francis Gene-Rowe about poetry, the self, time, stories and nature.

Strange Natures: The haunted floodplains of San Felipe

Future Natures

A series of artworks by Jorge Losoya visualise how a community is haunted by past and future floods.

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.

Strange Natures: Scarification

Future Natures

MINERIA: An animation about mining, energy and justice

Future Natures

Climate change is leading to changing demand for minerals for renewable energy storage, with impacts for people and land in Latin America.

Strange Natures: Compost

Future Natures

A short series of drawings by Marion Bessol in response to the theme of ‘Strange Natures’.

Strange Natures: Podcast – Folk horror and English commons

Future Natures

Andy Thatcher discusses how he uses film to appreciate English commons, and the uses of folk horror, the ‘weird’ and the ‘eerie’ in exploring contested histories.

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.

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.

Strange Natures: Common Place

Future Natures

Strange Natures: Clouties – a ghost story

Future Natures

Short film by Andy Thatcher set in Grovely Wood, a registered common and former Norman hunting forest in southern England.

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.

Podcast: Mining and Resistance in Covas do Barroso

Future Natures

Future Natures podcast episode about resistance to lithium mining in Portugal.

Comic: Map, Territory, Story

Amber Huff

Climate uncertainty and the arts

Future Natures

Comic: People Power – Smart Local Energy Systems

Future Natures

A comic about how to involve people in energy systems at a local level, inspired by commons-based approaches.

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.

Online archive: East London Big Flame

Nathan Oxley

Explore an online archive of documents from political activism in London in the 1970s and 1980s.

Recommended podcast: Changing Currents

Nathan Oxley

This podcast from Arts Catalyst brings together artists, growers, community groups and researchers working on different initiatives in South Yorkshire.

To think, feel and see otherwise: a report and a mini-zine from POLLEN23

Nathan Oxley

Some reflections and a mini-zine from the conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) in June 2023.

Photo story: Views of Mpox in Nigeria

Future Natures

Comic: Mpox in Nigeria – lessons from diverse experiences

Future Natures

My body as food, my food as neighbour

Future Natures

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.

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?

A Portuguese village on the front line of the ‘energy transition’

Future Natures

Comic: Seeing Conflict at the Margins

Jeremy Lind

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.

Podcast: Seeding the commons in Argentina

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Podcast episode with Almendra Cremaschi of Bioleft, a seed commoning initiative based in Argentina.

Unsettling enclosures

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Anoushka Zoob Carter asks what the unsettling of enclosures looks like on the land in three different contexts.

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.

How could land in England be reformed for the commons?

Future Natures

Podcast: Food that’s not for sale

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Video: Crisis, development & ecologies of the new commons

Future Natures

Watch a discussion about commoning and responses to crisis, drawing on examples from Argentina and the UK.

Podcast: Commoning in a Palestinian refugee camp

Anoushka Zoob Carter

In this audio interview, Future Natures sits down with Yafa El Masri to discuss commoning and the commons in refugee camps.

Geothermal meets pastoral livelihoods in Kenya

Jeremy Lind

Masters in Commons Administration: new taster course in 2023

Future Natures

Encountering the commons in The Pluriverse of Eco-social Justice

Anoushka Zoob Carter

How to make a mini-zine

Nathan Oxley

This handy guide provides a quick and easy way to make your own mini-zine.

Call for aid: Cooperation Jackson and the city’s urgent water crisis

Future Natures

As their city confronts a severe water crisis due to infrastructural collapse, Cooperation Jackson has issued an urgent fundraising appeal for their autonomous relief effort.

Hopping over the fence

Nathan Oxley

How mass trespassers in England are venturing on to fenced-off lands to reconnect with lost commons.

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.

Cultivating the garden of your mind

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Bioleft: open seeds

Future Natures

Bioleft is a community that builds an open seed exchange and breeding network.

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.

Treating food as commons, not commodities

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Course: Pathways to Sustainability

Nathan Oxley

Seeing Pastoralism

Nathan Oxley

An online exhibition about pastoralists and their relationship to commons, as they face many different uncertainties.

On the Promise of the Commons

Anoushka Zoob Carter

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.

Comic: Weird Ecologies

Future Natures

‘Sedentist’ bias and the pastoral commons

Future Natures

Pastoralists are often marginalised from common land and resources, even by policies that claim to help them. Policies are based on a bias towards fixed, formalised land ownership.