Culture and the Commons: Focal Point on Eurozine →

ECF is thrilled to start a new partnership with Eurozine as part of our Connected Action for the Commons programme. Drawing on our common affinities, we launch a new focal point: Culture and the Commons, exploring the prospects for a commons where cultural and social activists meet with a broader public to create new ways of living together. We will share each new article throughout our social media channels (links in the footer), on our eZine (you can subscribe here) and on this website.  

We start the series with the editorial "Creating the Commons, together":

Across Europe, citizens and communities are engaging in new forms of cultural cooperation while developing alternative and participatory democratic practices. This specific act of "commoning" as a collective venture of co-development and co-government of everything held in common is dramatically changing the way we look at our societies. At the same time, the emergence of "the Commons" as an alternative value system is challenging the duopoly of state and market. This new paradigm is based on a belief in societies with greater equality, sustainability and solidarity.

Culture and the commons is a cooperation between Eurozine and European Cultural Foundation's (ECF) Connected Action for the Commons, a network and action research programme coordinated by the ECF together with cultural organisations in Croatia, France, Poland, Moldova, Spain and Sweden.

More from the Eurozine Culture and the Commons Focal point:

Featured
Eurozine Focal Point: Fragmentation and solidarity in Europe

Could alternative interlocal forms of mobilisation around the commons revive solidarities and keep the prospect of a common Europe alive in an age of austerity? Read more about the new focal point, created in partnership with the ECF and Eurozine.

When commoning strategies travel by Jayne Ifekwunigwe
When commoning strategies travel by Jayne Ifekwunigwe

Commoning strategies are often improvised even in the liminal spaces that emerge in the cracks of Fortress Europe, says urban anthropologist Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe. In a text based on her September 2015 talk at the ECF's annual Idea Camp, Ifekwunigwe calls for a new commons that embraces both the mobile and the settled.

A rough guide to the commons by Charlie Tims
A rough guide to the commons by Charlie Tims

There are a raft of major challenges that complicate the creation of the commons today. The researcher and writer Charlie Tims considers some of the most pressing of these challenges – in combination with landmark efforts to regain control over domestic and international modes of governance, as well as to reclaim resources, public space and housing. The following text is based on his September 2015 talk at the ECF's annual Idea Camp.

Culture WITH people, not just FOR people! by Agnieszka Wiśniewska
Culture WITH people, not just FOR people! by Agnieszka Wiśniewska

Received notions of artistic and social practices belonging to separate spheres of society are fading away, writes Agnieszka Wiśniewska of Krytyka Polityczna (Poland). The commons is where cultural and social activists meet with the broader public and, together, create a genuinely participatory culture.

Culture and the Commons: Focal Point on Eurozine
Culture and the Commons: Focal Point on Eurozine

We are thrilled to start a new partnership with Eurozine as part of our Connected Action for the Commons programme. Drawing on our common affinities, we launch a new focal point exploring the prospects for a commons where cultural and social activists meet with a broader public to create new ways of living together.