Topic 13: The Commons
Brief Encounter
A common purpose
Get into groups of six of your own choosing (maximum six people). How will you ensure that everyone is included and no one feels left out?
- You have five minutes to build the strongest wall you can together, using the resources provided.
- Now write a different word or phrase on each sticky note to describe your feelings and actions that did or did not help to build a wall together. Stick your notes on your wall.
- Next, go around and look at each other’s walls and notes.
- All together, discuss what is common about what each group has done or written.
- Finally, in your groups, look at the following line from the poem ‘Mending Wall‘ by the American poet Robert Frost, and decide whether to dismantle your wall or to strengthen it further. Be ready to discuss your reasons why with the rest of the group:
‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Opportunities for Embracing Uncertainty
In this activity students must work together on a common purpose of building the wall, and to think about what it is that they are doing and feeling about their collaboration towards this end. It helps to emphasise that the ‘commons’ are things that you do, not things that exist independently of people; anyone can be a commoner through doing things with others. There is a paradox in considering the sharing of the wall building as ‘commoning’ because this is normally associated with removing barriers to enable a shared space to open up. Another complexity is that creating things together can involve a mixture of feelings, and can reinforce or create new barriers, like walls. There is no one correct response to the line of poetry: the idea is for students to consider both what a wall might offer or exclude. This encourages deeper reflection, and to avoid a simple vision of commoning.
Opportunities for All Students
This activity can be done with all students, although the complexity of their wall building, and the depth of discussion will necessarily vary. Some might prefer not to write but only speak about their excitements and frustrations, for example, of the task.
Opportunities for Creativity
Students have to think creatively together about how to build their wall. There are various resources that you might provide, such as craft sticks, egg cartons, clay, small rocks, pieces of cardboard or poster board, paper tubes, paper cups. You could be minimalist and provide only string. Some students may value looking at the whole poem, Mending Wall, to deliberate the poet’s own position on building walls: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall
Opportunities for Linking to Climate Justice
Climate change is increasing global migration, and a common response is to put up walls to stop the movement of people. This might be because others are perceived as threatening security or challenging existing resources. Migrants might also be seen as challenging a perceived commonality of beliefs, values and interests. Therefore, this activity explores the benefits and challenges of sharing and being in common together and what building barriers might enable or limit. Some students may be able to make connections with populist messages on social media about the call to build walls to stop migration, to interrogate often overly simple messages. The activity begins to introduce the idea of walls protecting private property, particularly when drawing on the Robert Frost poem, and some students might at this early stage in the topic begin to raise questions themselves about the value of individual or collective property rights. This includes who gets to decide, based on who can afford to make, or influence, decisions on private and collective ownership.
Visual Encounter
Access to common land
How would you describe the scene in this old photograph? Ask yourselves and those around you: What? Where? Why? Who? When?
Now read more about the scene:
This is the story of the pivotal moment when walkers went onto open rural private land in the Peak District in the north of England, to demand that it become open to everyone to use in common. It paved the way for people in England and Wales to be able to use rural land for fun, leisure and sport, even when they do not own the land. [The photograph shows the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass protest event, 1932].
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- Imagine you are in the crowd… how might you be feeling?
- Imagine you owned the land… how might you be feeling?
In small groups, create a conversation between protestors and landowners, discussing why people should or should not have access to private rural land. In each group, choose who are to be the ‘protestors’ and the ‘landowners’. Also identify one person to be the ‘mediator’ who will encourage others to listen to each other and ensure everyone gets to put their point of view. Decide how you will make a note of the key points raised by the protestors and the landowners.
After your discussions, come together:
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- Share the key issues raised by protestors and landowners. What were the similarities and differences between your various groups?
- Were any of the groups able to come to a common position?
- If you did, what helped you to do so? If not, what got in the way?
- What might you do differently next time to help come to a common position?
Opportunities for Embracing Uncertainty
Looking at the photograph without knowing its context or history surfaces students’ assumptions, stereotypes, imaginations, and generates questions as much as answers. Students will pick up on different aspects of the scene that they wish to communicate to each other. By inviting students to imagine the perspective of either the protesters or the landowners, they have to consider difference. This includes the perspectives of those with whom they might not sympathise. Lastly, they have to think about the complexity and challenge of engaging with the tensions in different perspectives, which can be accomplished in multiple ways. An additional resource, of an advert about a skinhead, can be used to help break down too-easy stereotyping about who is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (and who is likely to be a ‘landowner’ and ‘protester’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU&t=1s.
Opportunities for All Students
Younger children could be invited to negotiate the sharing of a toy. Some students will be interested to know that these protests were the precursor to the formation of the National Parks, Right to Roam, and open access land today in England and Wales. A useful link for some to watch on the Kinder Scout protest can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmFZAwgYnfo&t=752s.
Students might be able to link the historic protest to contemporary examples, both local, national and international. For example, see the protests over common access to Dartmoor, in the south of England: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/15/something-beautiful-has-been-taken-away-campaigners-vow-to-fight-ban-on-dartmoor-camping.
Opportunities for Creativity
Thinking differently and going against the grain is inherently creative as it requires people to reimagine what is assumed to be normal and everyday. The roleplay encourages imagination, empathy and creative problem solving. The students might represent their roleplay visually, creating their own image, whether using body sculpture, photography or drawing, for example, inspired by the photograph.
Opportunities for Linking to Climate Justice
There are other examples of how protest have resulted in land being returned to the commons. An example of a female-led campaign is that of Octavia Hill, who helped to return Epping Forest to a commons: ‘unenclosed and unbuilt on as an open space for recreation and enjoyment of the people’ (Epping Forest Act 1879), and you see more on this here: Women’s History Month – Epping Forest Heritage Trust (efht.org.uk). Here is modern example of a successful protect in the USA to have the pavement verge protected as a ‘commons’ on which to grow plants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t-NbF77ceM&t=25s.
Another successful commons protest includes the Xolobeni community in South Africa against planned mining and for the defense of customary land rights and sustainable rural livelihoods, including common grazing of land by cattle: https://futurenatures.org/photo-story-xolobeni-a-commoning-success-story/. Here is another similar example in Portugal in which a common land association protests against mining interests: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67135047. Here is a list of lots of examples of international commoning projects that demonstrate the range of ways in which the commons can be configured, whether through open access to music, the exchange of people’s time and skills, or grassroots journalism: https://www.bollier.org/commons-resources/commons-projects
Deliberative Encounter
What is ‘common’?
1. What does the word ‘common’ mean to you? Here are some words to start you off: popular, shared, poor, universal, collective, middling, community, inferior, public, joint, usual, congruous.
In small groups, now come up with your own words and ideas.
Next, sort these in any way you choose. Tell others about why you have sorted them in the way you have.
2. One definition of ‘common’ is people sharing and doing things together for the benefit of everyone involved. In this definition, anyone can be a ‘commoner’ if they take part and are prepared to share. The ‘commons’ is the name given for the thing that people share, even when owned privately or publicly.
Here are some examples:
- Community gardens.
- The internet.
- Public library.
- Shared house.
- Sharing food.
- Tool sharing amongst neighbours.
- Public art, such as statues and monuments.
- Air and water.
- Shared histories.
Can you think of any others?
3. In pairs, discuss the following:
- How easy is it to share?
- Are there some things that are easier to share than others?
- What wouldn’t you share with anyone?
- What would you like to share with everyone?
4. Some areas of land are called ‘commons’, such as some woodlands, and some local and national parks, although these are sometimes not commons when they are governed by authorities or governments with some rules and regulations about their use.
The Amazon rainforest might also be considered a commons:
- Global commons: the forest benefits all people and other animals on the planet who breathe in the oxygen produced by the plants. The plants also store carbon, helping to reduce climate change.
- Local commons: the forest is the home to indigenous communities.
- Species commons: humans live alongside other plant and animal species in the forest.
The Amazon might also be thought of as a resource to make money for international companies and local residents. It can be used to produce:
- Wood for furniture, building houses and producing heat.
- Medicines made from plants.
- Mining for precious metals.
- Food for local people by hunting animals and gathering plants.
- Food that feeds people internationally that is produced by cutting trees to grow crops and graze animals.
Divide into the following groups:
- Indigenous people living in the forest.
- Local people living near the forest.
- People living on the other side of the world.
- A company mining lithium to make batteries for electric cars.
- A local government official that wants to be re-elected.
- An environmental scientist who knows a lot about the animals and plants in the Amazon.
- The jaguars living in the Amazon.
In your groups, discuss what you think of the Amazon. Is it a resource to be used? Something mysterious? Something to share? Something to look after?
Find a way to visually summarise what your group discusses, to share with the rest of the class.
Share with the whole class what your group thinks. Then together, discuss the following:
- Where is there common ground between the groups?
- Where are there tensions?
- Is it possible to overcome these tensions through a process of negotiation?
- How might you do this?
Opportunities for Embracing Uncertainty
Interpretations of whether something is a ‘commons’ is also complex and nuanced, such as the Amazon forest, where there are different interpretations of how it might be a commons, and competing interests about whether it is or should be a commons or else serve commercial purposes. There are different definitions of the word ‘common’, and the usage of the word itself has changed over time in England, that have multiple and competing connotations. Some students might be interested in an image of the trends of the use of the word ‘commons’ since the start of the 18th century using: https://books.google.com/ngrams/. Ask them to consider what might be happening and possible reasons for the change in the use historically, as well as how they currently use the term, and what might happen to its usage in the future, and why.
Opportunities for All Students
This short introductory video on the Amazon Rainforest may be a good starter to support students for whom this seems very far away and disconnected to their own lives, as it gives an overview of the Amazon including the species and indigenous communities, as well as the threats such as deforestation, mining and agriculture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxyDNrTlViw&t=4s.
To reduce the complexity of the activity, students could focus more on discussing the questions in points 2 and 3. They might also consider places and things that they share in their community. What are they? What things do they do there? What do they notice others do? How does it make them feel? What is easy or difficult about it? Greater complexity can be achieved by digging deeper into the issues, following some of the lines of inquiry in the Climate Justice section below. You could also link to Topic 9: ‘Forests’, particularly the Sensory Encounter, which shows a film of life of communities in the Amazon during Covid. It also links well to Topic 15: ‘Creating a Global Agreement’, particularly the Deliberative Encounter which outlines some of the interests of key groups within Ecuadorian forests (such as the indigenous/local community, spider monkeys, and the government).
Opportunities for Creativity
The students must work out how to communicate their group discussions visually, and they may do this in multiple different ways. This topic fits the theme of conflict and power that might be picked up in other areas of the curriculum, such as English literature. It relates well, for example, to William Blake’s poem London, which critiques how streets and rivers of the city are privately owned (described as ‘charter’ed’).
Opportunities for Linking to Climate Justice
This topic is rooted in a particular colonial history of removing and ‘enclosing’ common land, placing it in private ownership and removing the assumption of common access. This has happened globally. You can find further excellent resources on the history of commoning in England here: Three Acres and a Cow. The encroachment on the commons continues today with the extraction of resources, which can include minerals for ‘eco’ products as well as fossil fuels, as well as clearing land for agriculture, to meet modern consumer demands. Here is a link to a New Scientist article on mining extraction, with an excellent image that shows the Amazon being cleared for agriculture: Amazon rainforest under threat as Brazil tears up protections | New Scientist. An example of an indigenous community trying to protect their ancestral land claim in the Amazon, can be found here: In the Amazon rainforest, an indigenous tribe fights for survival | OHCHR
Beyond the Classroom Encounter
Creating a commons beyond the classroom
- Think about an area that you might all consider being or becoming a ‘commons’. This might be an area of your school/organisation building or outside grounds (however small); a space in your local neighbourhood; a digital space; or an object.
- The challenge of creating a ‘commons’ is that sharing can be difficult.
Thinking about your own commons, work out how you will address the following:
- Is it possible to share? Are there limits on what you can share? What will help you to share?
- What does it feel like to share?
- What belongs to everyone? And what belongs only to one or a few?
- How will everyone benefit and contribute in some way (even if this is in different ways)?
- Can other species or things be included in your commons? In what way?
3. There are further challenges for the commons.
Discuss how you will address the following:
- Challenge 1: Agreeing how decisions are to be made. Who will get to make decisions when there are lots of people to be heard?
- Challenge 2: Defending the commons from those who might want to take it over or use it for their own benefit only. Does your commons need rules or not? What happens to those who break the rules?
4. Create a manifesto for your commons.
- Take a sheet of A4 paper and create a small booklet using these instructions: https://futurenatures.org/how-to-make-a-mini-zine/
- Together, write key things that you have decided for your commons.
- Include simple visual icons for each key thing included in your manifesto that can be easily communicated to others.
- You can decorate your manifesto in any way you want that reflects what is important to those in your commons.
Opportunities for Embracing Uncertainty
This activity engages students with the nuance and complexity of sharing, beyond a romanticised view of ‘sharing’ as simply good and easy to sustain. Thinking about such challenges is important for considering how to share the world’s resources in ways that are sustainable for humans and other species.
Opportunities for All Students
The inclusion of the visual icons helps the students to think about how to make their manifesto accessible to different groups. The students might write their manifesto together or else first each create their own draft that they then discuss, negotiate and agree together. To engage with more complexity, some students can be introduced to the work of Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Peace for Economics in 2009 for her work on how to manage a commons well. Read about her eight key principles on how to do so.
https://earthbound.report/2018/01/15/elinor-ostroms-8-rules-for-managing-the-commons/
Another helpful article about her work can be found here: https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth.
Opportunities for Creativity
The manifesto enables students to think visually, as well as in text, about what is important and how to communicate this to others. It enables them to focus on their relationships with others and to different spaces or things, and how they value these. They will have to think about how to design their manifesto in a way that is engaging and clear to their intended audience.
Opportunities for Linking to Climate Justice
The challenge for students is in thinking how resources can be shared between everyone, and with other species. It aims to explore the values and processes for ensuring such equity and might raise philosophical questions about what it means to live well, together with others on the planet, and the extent to which this should be driven by individual desires or a communal endeavour to the benefit of a larger group. Advanced students studying economics or politics might wish to explore a critique that is named the Tragedy of the Commons, and whether this is indeed an ongoing challenge to the idea of the commons or an ideological argument for privatisation. The following two films might be useful to watch and compare to inform such a discussion. The first outlines the Tragedy of the Commons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSuETYEgY68):
The second offers a critique of this assumed tragedy, with an assertion of the human and planetary benefits of living and working together with a common purpose and shared provisions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ZWFPVBTws).
These students may also enjoy reading this Zine on The Commons which connects this to ideas of capitalism, privatisation, colonialism and enclosures: https://futurenatures.org/comic-future-natures-a-primer-for-the-curious/
