We hope the film Re-imagine the Future provoked your interest in exploring its themes more deeply. The quest to build attractive, functional alternatives to the world ordained by neoliberal economics is, in fact, growing. A kaleidoscope of innovations around the world is showing that the market and state are not the only players. A burgeoning Commons Sector is emerging and starting to flourish.

This webpage is a portal into the growing world of system-change activism, experimentation, legal and policy innovation, academic research and political analysis. Consider these links an invitation to enter into this world yourself. After all, the answers are not going to come from somewhere else; they have to start with us, personally and locally, and expand outward. We need to re-imagine the future.

Index

• What is the Commons?
• Key Commons Websites
• Activists/Thinkers Concerned about System Change
• Notable Movements
• 25 Significant Commons Projects
• Books and Essays
• Films & Videos

What is the Commons?

• The Commons, Short and Sweet
• Introductory resources

Key Commons Websites

• Bollier.org
• Commons Strategies Group
• Commons Transition
• The Commoner (UK)
• Digital Library of the Commons
• International Association for the Study of Commons
• International Journal of the Commons
• Law for the Commons wiki
• Maps in the Spirit of the Commons
• On the Commons
• P2P Foundation
• Remix the Commons
• Shareable
• Sustainable Economies Law Center

Activists/Thinkers Concerned about System Change

• Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment
• Schumacher Center for a New Economy
• Next System Project
• Democracy Collaborative
• New Economy Coalition
• Great Transition Initiative
• P2P Foundation
• The Corner House (UK)
• Stir magazine (UK)

Notable Movements

(an incomplete list)

• Co-operatives
• Transition Towns, US / Transition Network
• Social and Solidarity Economy (in French)
• Degrowth
• Peer Production
• La Via Campesina
• Indigenous Peoples / First Peoples Worldwide
• Care Work
• Climate Change / Climate Action Network
• Community Empowerment: Democracy Collaborative / Institute for Local Self-Reliance / Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund / Movement Generation

25 Significant Commons Projects

• Alaska Permanent Fund and other stakeholder trusts
• Berkshares and alternative currencies
• Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons
• The city as a commons
• Cecosesola (Colombia)
• Community land trusts
• Creative Commons licenses
• Enspiral: social enterprise with shared vision and values
• Farm Hack: open source farm equipment
• Free software
• Guifi.net (Spain): community wifi
• HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theater community
• Customary land commons in Africa
• multistakeholder co-operatives
• Museums as commons
• Open access scholarly journals
• Open design and open hardware
• Open Educational Resources
• Potato Park (Peru)
• System of Rice Intensification, open source agronomy for rice
• Timebanking

….and countless other examples. See Patterns of Commoning and the Digital Library on the Commons.

Books and Essays

• Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons
• David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Commons
• — “Commons as a Paradigm for Social Transformation” (Next System Project, April 2016).
• — and Silke Helfrich, editors, The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Levellers Press, 2012).
• Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei, The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community (Berrett-Koehler, 2015).
• Commons Strategies Group, “State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship” (June 2016).
• Giacomo D’Alisa et al., Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2014).
• Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia, 2004).
• Lewis Hyde, Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership (Farrar Straus, 2011).
• —- , The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage, 1983/2007)
• Peter Linebaugh: The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberty and Commons for All (University of California Press, 2008).
• Mary Mellor, Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice (Pluto Press, 2016).
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Douglas Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity (Portfolio, 2016)
• Derek Wall, The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom: Commons, Contestation and Craft

Films & Videos

• The Promise of the Commons (2013). 50 minutes. Focuses on natural resources commons in the global South, with special attention to land grabbing and land rights in India, Nepal, Mexico. 20-minute version.
• The Commons (2103). A left-libertarian-anarchist perspective on the commons that explains the logic of capitalism and the potential of the commons to meet needs beyond the state and market. 36 minutes. Script for video narration.
• Peter Linebaugh: Who Owns the Commons? on The Laura Flanders Show. An interview with historian and author Peter Linebaugh on the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of that legal document and the struggle behind it today. 2015. 18 minutes.
• Better Not More: Principles and Practices Towards the next Economy. This video provides an overview of activist movements to decomodify nature, re-imagine the character of work, liberate knowledge and democratize wealth. 5 minutes. Produced by Kontent Film and Edge Funders Alliance.
• Podcast, “The Deeper Magic of the Commons.” Host James Lindenschmidt interviews a range of commons scholars and activists. 2016.

Lead image by Nullfy; additional images by Michel Desbiens, Jaap Joris and Michael Dunne.

This post was originally published in Bollier.org. You can find complementary material at Anna Grear’s site.

The post Re-imagine the Future: A List of Resources for Commoning appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This was the question posed recently by David Bollier, a policy strategist, activist, and a leading voice in the commons movement.

In an effort to find the answer, Bollier and his colleague Anna Grear, a law professor at Cardiff University, connected with a number of people about the “positive, practical steps that anyone can take in dealing with the terrible challenges of our time.”

One result of their efforts is the short film, Re-imagine the Future (below), which features conversations with international law professors, human rights advocates and activists who participated in the Operationalising Green Governance workshop outside of Paris earlier this year.

The film serves to inspire, inform and remind us that “new ways of thinking, acting and being are urgently needed.” It points to commoning, and the need to involve the planet in all of our decisions, as a central piece of the solution.

As Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University says in Re-imagine the Future, “[T]he unregulated way the world economy has been operating has contributed to global inequality of a dangerous sort…creating a lack of confidence in the fairness of the way in which politics are organized.”

Falk adds that people need new ways of interacting with governments and institutions if we’re to “evolve the new kind of planetary politics that are needed to meet the challenges of our age.”

Cross-posted from Shareable.

Photo: Joey Kyber (CC-0). Follow @CatJohnson on Twitter

The post A Commons Approach to the Challenges of Our Time appeared first on P2P Foundation.

But what if people could manage to imagine changes that matter within their own lives, and then to grow and federate them? My colleague Anna Grear, a law professor at Cardiff University, and I wanted to focus on some of the positive, practical steps that anyone can take in dealing with the terrible challenges of our time.

Professor Lorraine Code

One result is a six-minute video that we are releasing today. The video is based on a series of interviews with participants in a June workshop called “Operationalising Green Governance.”  Held at a lovely retreat center north of Paris, a handful of participants – international law professors, human rights advocates, activists – were interviewed on camera by Ibby Stockdale, Director of a British film production company, Five Foot Four.  Ibby brilliantly distilled hours of interview footage and crafted a succinct, beautifully produced message.

The short film, “Re-imagine the Future,” is now posted online and can be watched here.

In six minutes, it’s difficult to cover too much ground – so in the closing frames of the film, we provide links to two dedicated webpages – Anna’s  and mine — to provide resources, organizations, essays, books, etc. for those interested in exploring the film’s themes more deeply.

We hope you like the film – and would welcome whatever pass-along visibility you can give it.

The post Re-Imagine The Future appeared first on P2P Foundation.