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

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.

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

Future Natures coordinator Amber Huff is interviewed on the ‘Frontiers of Commoning’ podcast by David Bollier.

Call: STRANGE BROTH – Making and remaking commons in Scotland and beyond

Future Natures

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

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

Future Natures

Watch Tobias Haller’s talk on the impacts of large infrastructure projects on local people.

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

Zine: ‘Strange Natures’

Future 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

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

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

A short story by Michael Reeks, responding to the theme of Strange 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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trespass, Commons and the Right to Roam

Anoushka Zoob Carter

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

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.