Event: Commons and Commoning - ideas and practices for a connected world

[Lucie Stephens]

 Saturday 16 March 2013

The SOCIAL SCULPTURE RESEARCH UNIT at Oxford Brookes University

invites you to participate in a one day programme with international commons activist and author, Silke Helfrich to facilitate and share new thinking and practices on the commons, commoning and commons creation in all areas of our lives: our communities, organisations, networks, disciplines.

‘We are poised between an old world that no longer works and a new one struggling to be born. Surrounded by centralized hierarchies on the one hand and predatory markets on the other, people around the world are searching for alternatives. The Commons is one of them. And the commons gain momentum. Everywhere.’ 

VENUE: Buckley Building, Oxford Brookes University, Ground Floor G.11

ALL WELCOME: £5+ CONTRIBUTION TO COSTS will be gladly received. Contact [e-mail] to register. 

"There is no commons without commoning" (Peter Linebaugh)  …commoning is as old as mankind and as modern as the internet.

 

PROGRAMME  
10.00: Introductory presentation by Silke Helfrich
Notions of commons, commoning and commons creating peer production. Including core-terms like ‘enclosure’, ‘tragedy of the commons’ and a commons based framing of property related issues.

11.15: Break
11.45 – 12.30: General discussion

12.30 – 13.30: Lunch break
13.30 – 15.45: The principles of commoning and the design principles of the Commons Short introduction to Elinor Ostrom’s work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom

Examples from the region  -  4 participants present commons projects as examples to explore the design principles of the Commons (according to Ostrom et al.) and the patterns of communing

16.15 – 17.00: Introduction to ‘Commons Creating Peer Production’ short presentation/videos of concrete projects

17.00 – 18.00: Closing remarks and exchange: What does it mean to reproduce the commons?  What are the essentials?

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ABOUT Silke Helfrich (Jena, Germany) cofounder of Commons Strategies Group with David Bollier(USA) + Michel Bauwens(Thailand).

Silke Helfrich studied romance languages and pedagogy at the Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig. Since the mid 1990s she has been involved in the field of development politics, including 1999 - 2007 as head of the regional office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Mexico City - focusing on globalisation, gender and human rights. Since 2007 she has been working as an independent author and activist, with a variety of international and domestic partners. Helfrich is the editor and coauthor of several books on the Commons, among them: Who Owns the World? The Rediscovery of the Commons, Munich 2009 , editor of Elinor Ostrom: Was mehr wird, wenn wir teilen, Munich 2011; and most recently with Heinrich-Böll-Foundation: Commons. Für eine neue Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat, Bielefeld 2012 (together with David Bollier: The Wealth of the Commons beyond Market and State, Amherst/MA, 2012). http://www.wealthofthecommons.org/