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.

Comic: Future Natures

Future Natures

Climate uncertainty and the arts

Future Natures

Jo Walton discusses how art, games and other creativity can help to open up alternative futures.

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

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

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

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’.

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

Covas de Barroso is facing the threat of an open-cast lithium mine, with just 10 days to respond to a public consultation.

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.

Film ‘Finite’ documents community resistance against mines

Nathan Oxley

Seeding the commons in Argentina

Anoushka Zoob Carter

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

Elise Wach explores the proposals from various social movements for changing how England’s rural spaces are governed.

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.

Commoning in refugee camps: In conversation with Yafa el Masri

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

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…

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

Hopping over the fence

Nathan Oxley

Radical Epistemologies and Future Natures – video recordings

Future Natures

Cultivating the garden of your mind

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Podcast episode with Ron Finley about enclosure in cities and the struggle to build an urban food commons against food poverty.

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

Treating food as commons, not commodities

Anoushka Zoob Carter

Course: Pathways to Sustainability

Nathan Oxley

Free online course that introduces critical ideas about sustainability, including access to and use of ‘nature’ and ‘natural resources’.

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

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.

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