Announcing the Birth of the School of Commoning! Open to All and Co-Learning Together

[Mark Jagdev]

Dear P2P members and interested parties...

 

George Por, Anna Betz, myself and others have co-founded the School of Commoning as an online and offline forum for commons education based in London. We have established ourselves as a Community Interest Company under UK law. Our motto... Education for Commons Culture & Social Renewal. So what does that look like in our aims, vision, purpose, principles and what we can offer? Lets briefly explore together these essential characteristics of our fledgling school...

 

Aims

We are aiming commons education to people, organizations, and communities, who can enhance their well-being by jointly cultivating and managing their common pool of resources, need to learn/discover/develop effective distinctions, tools and methods for doing so. The Commons is a rapidly growing social, cultural, and economic life form; supporting its development requires the development of new capabilities and perspectives, individual and collective.

The educational offers of the School of Commons provide a framework for understanding both historical and contemporary Commons issues. More importantly, they provide both practical and conceptual knowledge, tools and methods that commoners can use for building and protecting their commons.

Vision
We acknowledge and respect the inherent indivisibility of humanity as a whole. Thinking, sensing and acting from the vantage point of that inherent unity, we align with the emergence of a better future for all.

We envision a world, where domination is replaced by partnering and commoning as the mainstream way of organising work, learning, and social life. There, grounded in the consciousness of inherent unity, organisations are responsive to the whole, including their members, stakeholders, the noosphere, the biosphere, and future generations.

It is a world in which the full development of everyone is the goal of the whole. People work in democratic workplaces free of fear and exploitation, in all public, private, and commons enterprises. Work as creative self-expression is not the privilege of the few, anymore. All social institutions are designed and function to increase aliveness, joy, and prosperity for all.

Economy, politics, culture, and community life revolve around cultivating a diverse variety of commons institutions. A flourishing market plays an important but not the central role. The locus of freedom, innovation, and creativity shifted from it to the Commons.

 

Purpose

The purpose of the School of Commoning, as a Community Interest Company, is to carry on activities that benefit society, namely, to enhance individual and collective competences in the protection, governance, and cultivation of commons.

We help people, organisations, and social systems become more competent and co-intelligent in improving the quality of life for all, by developing better practices for strengthening and governing the Commons as an autonomous partner to the private and public sectors.

We do that by developing and delivering educational, media, networking, and "serious game" projects that promote the Commons, and inspire others to do the same.

 

Principles

1. Commoning

Our originating principle, by which all others are infused, is commoning. The verb “to common” refers to the ensemble of social practices used by commoners in the course of managing shared resources and reclaiming the commons. Commoning is always built upon a “network of social relationships that arise from the implicit expectations that we will take care of each other and on a shared understanding that some things belong to all of us and must be used in a sustainable and equitable way - which is the essence of the commons itself.” (Julia Ristau, co-director of On the Commons)

When commoning becomes a conscious choice as an expression of the inherent connectedness of humanity as a whole, it will be possible to meet all our challenges responsibly, creatively and meaningfully, by acting from the whole “we” rather than the "I/me" or an exclusive "we/my group".

We work with our members, associates, clients, and other stakeholders in full commitment to their realizing their highest potential.

The following principles are inspired by the first:

2. We organise ourselves in ways that foster relationships, participation, creativity, learning and development.

3. We welcome and appreciate creative friction coming from the beyond-ego expression of our diverse talents, experiences, and learning paths.

4. We continually enhance the collective intelligence of the Company and its ecosystem, and seek collective wisdom to guide it.

5. We foster collaboration and co-evolution with all commons, movements of transition to a sustainable world, and other potential allies.

Honoring those principles, we contribute to human and social evolution towards greater complexity, connectivity, and integration at higher levels of harmony and well-being.

 

Products/Offerings

Series of Meetings with Remarkable Commoners 

The following products are under development:

The Commoning Game
Introduction to Commons Building and Governance (workshop)
Towards a Commons of Well-being and Health Commons (workshop)
Creating Educational Commons (workshop)
The Political Economy of Commons (workshop)

 

Whats Next?

Check our soon coming website for ongoing conversations emerging out of our co-learning, but in the meantime you can read and co-create at the P2P Foundation wiki page here: http://p2pfoundation.net/School_of_Commoning and our Facebook Page (see below).

 

In addition to the announcements made on my ning profile here, referring to events, blog posts and other matters concerning the School, If you find our work with the School of Commoning worth supporting, please help us in spreading the word about it, by:

- blogging or tweeting about it
- letting your friends know of the URLs of our page  on Facebook and Twitter

 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/School-of-Commoning/131824216892007

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/CommoningSchool

Website: Under Construction (check back for announcements of its birth too)

 

We look forward to commoning with all of you and co-creating a more sustainable, just and thrivable world! In summing up that commoning is the act of co-creation or care-taking and governance of common goods, in mutually supportive relationships. I would like to leave with a question: where do you see the opportunities for commoning existing in your life already? What is needed to recognize and/or create and strengthen commons in your life?..

[Sepp Hasslberger]

Great initiative!

 

It is good to see that the commons is on the upswing. Your work on this is important.