Inspired by David Bollier’s work on Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons (2014), the ArtEZ Fashion Masters and Fashion Professorship initiated a Reading Group on ‘Practices of Commoning’ - a study group to read, feel, share thoughts, and develop deeper insights on ‘the commons’.
At the Fashion Colloquium in Arnhem in June 2018, David Bollier was one of the keynote speakers and offered the framework of the commons to think through and put into practice alternative/parallel social and economic systems to move beyond the ‘hyper-capital-driven marketplace that now prevails’.
In monthly encounters, participants of the MA Fashion Design, MA Fashion Strategy, and contributors of Fashion Professorship of the ArtEZ Graduate School form a learning community to explore, study and initiate practices of commoning.
We believe that it would be very valuable to read in common with like-minded people, and always have an open invitation for people to participate in the readings. We will invite international researchers and practitioners to engage in this theme as well, and become part of our community, while initiating research and practices related to ‘the commons’ in their own local communities as well.
We are planning to host and organize a gathering of everyone involved in Arnhem in June 2019.
Readings:
We will start with the book Think Like a Commoner (2014) by David Bollier.
Other suggestions:
- David Bollier and Silke Helfrich (eds), Practices of Commoning;
- John Thackara, How to Thive in the Next Economy;
- Elinor Ostrom, The Future of the Commons;
- Adrian Parr, Birth of a New Earth;
- Sylvia Federici;
- Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics;
- E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful;
- Some governance documents from intentional communities, worker cooperatives from people who have already structured a practice of commoning;
- . . .
