Event: STRANGE BROTH
Future Natures
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
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.
Comic: Future Natures
Future Natures
Introductory comic from Future Natures about modern crises and the radical potential of commoning.
Myanmar’s home gardens
Future Natures
Nuria Lopez Vazquez writes about collective resources and interdependent care in home gardens in Myanmar.
Using maps to defend land in Xolobeni
Future Natures
A new series of maps shows the values and visions for land in Xolobeni, South Africa, in contrast to top-down ‘development’ plans.
Podcast: Unearthing environmentalism and techno-capitalist vampires
Future Natures
Podcast: Using storytelling approaches to explore commoning
Future Natures
Future Natures coordinator Amber Huff is interviewed on the ‘Frontiers of Commoning’ podcast by David Bollier.
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.
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
Talks on Weird Ecology and the Commons
Future Natures
Podcast: Urban heat justice
Future Natures
Podcast episode with Panagiota Kotsila about the effects of urban heat on migrants in cities.
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
Podcast: Land, democracy, identity
Future Natures
What is land for?
Future Natures
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.
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.
Strange Natures: The pale glade
Future Natures
In this mythical tale by Callum Aitken, a storyteller undergoes a transformative experience.
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
Strange Natures: The Value of a Voice
Future Natures
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
Weird seas of the climate crisis – birds as eerie revelation
Future Natures
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
Common Place, a film by Andy Thatcher, is a hauntological exploration of access and climate crisis at a common in Devon. Common Place was filmed as part of a series of explorations around the Pebblebed Heaths National Nature Reserve in East Devon. Andy writes: I spent the month around the solstice 2023 filming in the […]
Strange Natures: Clouties – a ghost story
Future Natures
Season: Strange Natures
Future 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
The second comic from Future Natures explores the abuses of maps and the myth of the so-called ‘tragedy’ of the commons.
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
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
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
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
Unsettling enclosures
Anoushka Zoob Carter
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.
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.
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
Geothermal meets pastoral livelihoods in Kenya
Jeremy Lind
The expansion of geothermal power in Kenya has impacted the Maasai and other residents, creating new divisions and tensions.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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