‘The commons’ refers to shared resources – beyond the state and the market – that enable us to survive and thrive.
We are offering two 1-day commons design courses in early 2024, at the Haven Land Community in Easton, Bristol:
Saturday January 20th 2024, 10am to 4.30pm - FULLY BOOKED
Saturday March 23rd 2024, 10am to 4.30pm - FULLY BOOKED
Both courses cover the same content, and are an introduction to commons design and governance.
Build and protect community wealth
Learn tools for sustainable community asset management
Design healthy, relational governance models
The course is paid on a self-certified sliding scale:
£75 full contribution
£55 basic costs
£35 subsidised cost
Full bursaries available - no one turned away for lack of funds
23rd March now fully booked
This course is for anyone who is working together with others in your community, whether you are running a community centre, sharing tools, or providing care, food distribution or other activities.
We invite you to bring your experience and knowledge of community support networks. The tutor will bring a course structure that explores your experience in the context of tried and tested frameworks for successful community collaboration.
The framework we will use is ‘commons’ – meaning the parts of the economy which aren’t delivered by the state or market, and which are beyond the household scale – everything we do together informally within our communities, for the benefit of each other. Commoning activities are typically organised by groups of people who share some form of interdependence – whether because they live near each other, are in a religious community together, or share access to a resource.
You are all teachers in this school as well as students. We’ll all learn together and hopefully build lasting, mutually supportive relationships with each other through the process.
Commons course at the Haven Community in May 2023
“I moved from confusion towards knowing something at a primal level of what commons means to me and a hunger for commons to return in full glory for everyone.”
About the tutor
Emilia is passionate about the importance of commons. She believes that we can’t meet all of our needs within the household, and that the state and market don’t provide everything we need. They also don’t give most of us the opportunity to express all that we have to offer to the world, to each other, and to the non-human world. Tutor bio
Directions
I am also available to run bespoke commons governance training within your organisation.
Working with a group who share a project or organisation allows for a rich discussion that uses commons design principles to explore what is and isn’t working in your system. I have worked in this way with the Haven Land Community and the Food Data Collaboration.
Affiliations
We are proud to be part of The Bristol Commons, an emerging movement for Sustainable Community Prosperity, currently being brought together by Coexist.
The Bristol School of Commoning is affiliated with Shift Bristol, a permaculture inspired educational organisation providing innovative and immersive training in building sustainability and resilience.
