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
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.
Comic: Little Elle in Slumberland
Future Natures
Podcast: Fungi and radical futures
Future Natures
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
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
What happened to the global land grab?
Future Natures
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
Strange Natures: Singing bullfrogs of Sanjay Van
Future Natures
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
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
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
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
Comic: Map, Territory, Story
Amber Huff
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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