Monday 08.11.2021 the first day of the workshop week will feature two input presentations by heterodox economist Anna Hehenberger and activist David Bollier. During the morning Anna Hehenberger will build in ‘An introduction to the dominant economic paradigm’ a shared and basic understanding of “our” mainstream economy (capitalist, neoliberal, neoclassical), the various injustices it produces and how it has been subject to critique.

In the afternoon David Bollier will share in ‘The power of the commons’ his knowledge and experience on the commons as a new paradigm of economics and bottom-up engagement.

Anna Hehenberger is currently studying for her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Society in Cologne, before that she worked as Economist at Momentum Institute, a young think tank in Vienna, Austria. She has a passion for heterodox economics and regional development which was sparked by her masters program political economy at Kingston University London.

David Bollier is an American activist, scholar, and blogger who is focused on the commons as a new paradigm for re-imagining economics, politics, and culture. He pursues this work as Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics (Massachusetts, US), and as cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group, an international advocacy project. Bollier has co-organized pioneering international conferences and strategy workshops on the commons, and consults regularly with diverse activists and policy experts in the US and Europe. ⁣⁣

• Links with additional information:
  Interview with David Bollier: A series of conversations about fashion’s relationship to people, the planet and profit.
  Podcast with David Bollier: Sustainable Finance for the Real World

Tuesday 09.11.2021 and the upcoming days are dedicated to three key areas of personal sustainment and livelihood security we all have to care for in our lives:

– Open Design and DIY
– Food and Agriculture
– Housing and Urban Development

Tuesday connects with the topic of ‘Food and Agriculture’. The participants watch Food Coop (2016), a film by Tom Boothe zooming in on the Park Slope Food Coop in New York. This member-owned and operated food store was founded in 1973 by a group of committed neighbors looking to make healthy, affordable food available to everyone who wanted it.

“The most successful supermarket in New York City has zero customers and 17,000 workers. Every day in Brooklyn, hundreds of busy New Yorkers walk past Whole Foods or other grocery stores promoting natural and organic foods to work at a small supermarket that does no marketing and never holds sales–and yet makes more money per square foot than any other grocery store in New York City. The secret of the Park Slope Food Coop’s more than 40 years of success is simple: to shop there, all 17,000 members–rich and poor, old and young, from every culture or race in the city–have put in three hours a month of work. The result is a virtuous cycle. Lower labor costs let the coop charge lower prices. Lower prices attract more people. More people lead to greater buying power. Greater buying power brings even lower prices, more members, makes happier members– and the cycle continues.” – Food Coop film

• Links with additional information:
  All info about Food Coop the film
  Website of Park Slope Food Coop
  Article: The grocery store where produce meets politics

Wednesday morning 10.11.2021 centered around the topic of ‘Food and Agriculture’. In the morning the participants visited Stadslandbouw Mooieweg in Arnhem. The aim of this part of the programme was to engage with alternative modes of food production in Arnhem to explore how this practice might help us take the economy into our own hands.⁣ ⁣
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Volunteers take care and run the farm by growing and harvesting food for the local food bank. Everyone is welcome to join and enjoy being there, helping out, or to heal by getting in touch with the soil after suffering from burn-out or ptsd. The participants were welcomed in the morning by Tom de Koning, one of the farm’s founders. After the introduction the group split up to work together with the volunteers. At lunch everyone enjoyed a pumpkin soup made by Henry.

• Links with additional information:
  Read more about: Stadslandbouw Mooieweg

Thursday morning 11.11.2021 researcher Inez Dekker shared their research in the presentation “Diverse economies and some rural entanglements” using the Diverse Economies framework by Gibson-Graham and some of the ongoing ‘classes’ in the Rural School of Economics. During the presentation they tried out practices that can help us find new ways of perceiving, imagining and thinking that further aligns our participation with the world and economy in which we are embedded. Inez invited the participants to think along, explore the topic together, and question and recognize other-than hegemonic and capitalist knowledge systems.

Inez Dekker is trained as a critical development thinker and likes to be in rural (mind)spaces, embrace subjectivity, and put rest first. Currently Inez is working with the art foundation Myvillages as a researcher and co-creator. Their project ‘Rural School of Economics’ focuses on learning from the rural, language-free methods, a more-than-human approach and diverse economies.

• Links with additional information:
  Art foundation: Myvillages
  Diverse Economies by JK-Gibson-Graham
  Rural School of Economics by myvillages

Thursday afternoon 11.11.2021 centered around the topic of ‘Housing and Urban Development’. After lunch the participants visited Casa de Pauw in Arnhem where they got a presentation by Bernard Smits and a tour through the Casa by Corine Volmer. This residential community is located in a former monastery and consists of 43 adults and 12 children, who together form 10 different residential groups. These residential groups live in three different buildings: De Villa, Het Klooster, and Het Herenhuis. Each living group at the Casa is different when it comes to size, composition, atmosphere and the extent to which people eat together.⁣
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Bernard Smits (1962), managing director at Woningbouwvereniging Gelderland (WBVG) a Dutch social housing corporation working exclusively in the field of cohousing. Living in cohousing projects is his main fascination. His own cohousing experiences have been an inspiration due to the colorful range of fellow tenants, the infinite opportunities communities can create and the fun of active housing. He graduated in 1987 at the Eindhoven University of Technology and started working as an architect. In 1995 he started at the WBVG to strengthen the position and influence of tenants to dissolve the gap between owners and tenants, to improve the affordability of social housing and create an atmosphere of caring for each other. In his opinion the best way to do so is to build communities through cohousing projects. In the past 25 years he contributed with the WBVG in the realisation of almost 30 social cohousing projects. All initiated by the people itself and all with its own characteristics. Ecological, cultural, spiritual, caring. Small or big. For young, elderly or mixed people, single or family households.

• Links with additional information:
  Casa de Pauw
  Woningbouwvereniging Gelderland

Friday 12.11.2021, the last day of the Take Back the Economy workshop week was dedicated to the topic of Open Design and DIY. Artists Bronwen Jones and Dasha Golova facilitated a temporary repair café. The morning started with a presentation by Bronwen and Dasha about their creative practice as well as the ongoing event based project ‘Textile Initiative’. Afterwards the participants started mending together. Around cocktail hour participant Teuntje Kranenborg opened “The Olive Tree”, a bar where everyone could enjoy green Cosmopolitan cocktails paired with pumpkin pie by participant Geraldine Diem and mini cucumbers grown by her mother. This was all surrounded by a mini exhibition of the textiles mended during the repair café. ⁣⁣
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Bronwen Jones is an artist working between text and textile. She is intrigued by bodies and garments — the stories held in their creases and the traces they leave in one another. She thinks of buildings, clothing, and objects as bodies, and considers how we inhabit these spaces, and similarly how they inhabit us. Her practice aims to stretch the boundaries of how we perceive by playing with the familiar.⁣⁣
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Dasha Golova is a Belarusian artist and tailor based in Amsterdam. She is founder of the bi-annual event Textile Initiative and studied Fashion Design and pattern making at the Istituto Polimoda in Florence and Fine Arts at the Rietveld Academie. During 2021 Dasha organised the participatory group show Voices of Belarus Chapter Two: Restoring Connections at the Punt WG, which was generously supported by AFK. She works in close collaboration with the artist duo Liminal Vision, as a costume designer for Zonzai.Zone and Zhouwei.Network, last one presented at the Jan van Eyck Open Studios 2021. Besides her artistic practice Dasha uses her studio as a tailoring atelier, where she crafts unique clothing pieces by request and considers to start giving sewing classes. ⁣⁣
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“My practice originates within the relations that mingle in-between the fabric of society. My interest lies in the combinations of groups that compose this society, and their individual relationships to the world which surrounds them. This process often leads me towards the creation of temporary communities (or participating in) which, by replacing⁣⁣ the ‘real world’, facilitate the work itself. The social sensibility within my practice is based on empathy, listening and identifying seams that keep the body of the imagined group or an entity together. I visualize myself as a tiny seam ripper.”

09.11.2020 – 11.11.2020
This week is the first iteration of the research track Take Back the Economy. A week-long workshop for second year participants within the context of the Community Engagement aspect of the program. Various international speakers and facilitators will share their knowledge and experience on the subject. Here we give you an insight into their research and projects. We invite you to read along.

• Speakers and facilitators:
• Caroline Woolard
  Leigh Claire La Berge
  Oona Morrow
  Anke de Vrieze
  David Bollier
  Godelieve Spaas
  Pascale Gatzen

Read more about our Take Back the Economy Open Call here.

This weeklong workshop will be facilitated by Pascale Gatzen. On Monday morning she will start with a general introduction. The new research track Take Back the Economy in the MA Practice Held in Common program takes its name from the book Take Back the Economy An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities by J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy. We are very grateful that we received the encouragement from Katherine Gibson to use the name of the book for the research track.

Take Back the Economy is an accessible guide to demystifying the economy and creating a more just and sustainable world. Take Back the Economy dismantles the idea that the economy is separate from us and best comprehended by experts, demonstrating that the economy is the outcome of the decisions and efforts we make every day. Full of exercises and inspiring examples from around the world, the book shows how people can implement small-scale changes in their own lives to create ethical economies.

Pascale Gatzen is an artist, educator and fashion designer based in The Netherlands. Within her art and design practice, Gatzen produces and facilitates large collaborative projects using textile and clothing as her main medium. Embracing fashion as a mode of human togetherness, the focus of both her artistic practice and her teaching is on the relational and empowering aspects of fashion, advancing cooperative models of production and exchange. As an Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, she developed and implemented an alternative fashion curriculum, the Fashion Area of Study, in the BFA Integrated Design program. She is a founding member of ‘friends of light,’ a worker cooperative for textile production in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is the Head of Practice Held in Common, a new Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design at ArtEZ, University of the Arts, Arnhem, The Netherlands and co-founder of the Linen Project.

• Links with additional information:
• Pascale Gatzen, Oona Morrow, Anke de Vrieze and
  Caroline Woolard are members of the
  Communities Economies Research Network (CERN)
• Worker cooperative ‘friends of light’
• The Linen Project

In this workshop, participants will consider the role of art and creativity in our economic past, present, and future. We will start with a discussion about the history of capitalism with critical theorist Leigh Claire La Berge and will aim to build a shared understanding of keywords in capitalism — work, alienation, labor, capital, finance, and economy. From here, we will transition into a visioning session with artist Caroline Woolard about values such as worker dignity and cooperation when making creative projects. Caroline will share some of the ways that creative people are practicing and championing cooperative and public ownership, a culture of solidarity, and respect for the earth. Participants will learn about artists who are working to build a just and sustainable economy where we prioritize people and the planet over endless profit and growth. Through written reflections, interviews, and the creation of artwork, students will learn about art and the role that creativity can play in achieving and advocating for economic justice. We will close with a vision of ourselves as working in and for solidarity art economies.

Caroline Woolard is an artist who, in making her art, becomes an economic critic, social justice facilitator, media maker, and sculptor. Since the financial crisis of 2007-8, Woolard has catalyzed barter communities, minted local currencies, founded an arts-policy think tank, and created sculptural interventions in office spaces. Her work has been commissioned by and exhibited in major national and international museums including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, and Creative Time. Woolard’s work has been featured twice on New York Close Up (2014, 2016), a digital film series produced by Art21 and broadcast on PBS. She is the 2018–20 inaugural Walentas Fellow at Moore College of Art and Design and the inaugural 2019–20 Artist in Residence for INDEX at the Rose Museum, and a 2020-2021 Fellow at the Center for Cultural Innovation. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hartford.

Leigh Claire La Berge, PhD, professes at the intersection of arts, literature, visual culture and political economy. She is the author of Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s (Oxford University Press) and Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art (Duke University Press, 2019). She is Associate Professor of English in the Department of English at BMCC CUNY. Leigh Claire’s new project, Marx for Cats, is a book, website, and a series of videos (produced with Caroline Woolard) that narrate the history of capitalism through the figure of the cat.

Links with additional information:

• Marx for Cats
  An introduction to Marx for Cats
  Marx for Cats. Video’s on: Labor, Capital, Work, Alienation
  Art, Engagement, Economy by Caroline Woolard

In this workshop we will explore how re-framing our perspective on our current situation/reality can open up spaces of possibility for transformative change together with Oona Morrow and Anke de Vrieze.

Diverse Economies Framework
Oona Morrow will discuss J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Diverse Economies Framework. Diverse economies thinking reveals diversity in existing economic practices, broadening our view of what is important and viable economic activity. This includes recognizing and valuing care work and the household, and recognizing diversity in forms of economic transactions, labour and enterprise through which people around the world secure their livelihoods. Alternative markets, unpaid work and noncapitalist enterprises all come into view as vital parts of our economy. Community economies scholarship begins by rethinking ‘the economy’ and the discourses that shape expectations of how globalization and capitalism function. Building on the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, the diverse economies framework informs the work of others in the ‘Community Economies Collective’ and the ‘Community Economies Research Network’.

Re-framing our perspective for transformative change
Anke de Vrieze will focus on the role of values, mindsets and narratives, in breaking free from habituated ways of thinking and evoking ‘transformative mindsets’. She will introduce the SUSPLACE Toolkit for Transformative Engagement and explain the thinking behind it. We will practice with some of the methods and focus in particular on the inclusion of non-human stakeholders.

Oona Morrow is an assistant professor in food sociology in the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, where she also Co-Directs the Centre for Space, Place and Society. Her work is broadly concerned with the economic politics of everyday life, a theme she explores through the practice and politics of food provisioning in cities, communities, and households. Her writings on diverse economies, commoning, care, and food sharing have been published in Gender, Place and Culture, Rethinking Marxism, Geoforum, Sustainability, and Urban Geography

Anke de Vrieze, MSc is a researcher and lecturer at Rural Sociology, and coordinator of the Centre for Space, Place and Society. With a background in anthropology and biodynamic farming, her main interest currently lies in creating ‘spaces of possibilities’ for regenerative and inclusive futures through the use of arts-based and creative methods. Specific research interests include: transformative learning, community economies, food(scapes), urban agriculture and place-based development

• Links with additional information:
• The diverse economy: feminism, Capitalocentrism, and postcapitalist futures
  J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Diverse Economies Framework
  SUSPLACE Toolkit for Transformative Engagement

There is not just one economy, although it sometimes seems like it, there are many. Human, non-human or a combination, indigenous, familial, local, global, beneficial for many or just a few. Each one having its own underlying narrative and appearance. Together they form our economic landscape. To change the landscape, to shift the single focus on the current neo liberal narrative we need to diversify the landscape. We are called to find, develop and delineate our own economic narrative. From there we can mould, experiment and create what we live for, how to relate with the generosity of nature and how to meet our beautiful needs.

This program with Godelieve Spaas consists of a 30 minute dialogue with each participant. Listening to the other, contributing to the others’ search is part of the journey. Step by step we look into your work, your ideas and worldview to uncover your economic voice.

Godelieve Spaas is professor Sustainable Strategy and Innovation at Avans University of Applied Science. She is a researcher and creator of and makes performances and podcasts about new ways of entrepreneurial organizing where ecology, society, and the economy all benefit from and interact seamlessly with each other. Her aim is to increase diversity in organizational and entrepreneurial models and realities with a view to the development of a fairer, more sustainable and robust entrepreneurial space. She combines art, science, practices and indigenous knowledge. Godelieve also co-creates new business such as Herenboeren that are collaborative, inclusive and work in harmony with nature. She is associate director of the Pari Center in Tuscany Italy, where she organizes and participates in dialogues and follows and gives courses in between art, science and the sacred.

Links with additional information:

Film: Economy or: How I learned to stop worrying and love growth

Podcast: ‘A beginner’s Utopia’

What accounts for the persistence and spread of “commoning,” the irrepressible desire of people to collaborate and share to meet everyday needs? How are the more successful projects governed? And why are so many people embracing the commons as a powerful strategy for building a fair, humane and Earth-respecting social order?

In more than fifty original essays, Patterns of Commoning addresses these questions and probes the inner complexities of this timeless social paradigm. The book surveys some of the most notable, inspiring commons around the world, from alternative currencies and open design and manufacturing, to centuries-old community forests and co-learning commons—and dozens of others. Margaret Thatcher once championed neoliberal capitalism with the harsh ultimatum, “There is no alternative!” Patterns of Commoning shows in vivid detail that there are plenty of alternatives! We need only understand the robust power of commoning.

David Bollier will share his knowledge and experience on The Commons and will specifically zoom in on the book ‘Patterns of Commoning’.

David Bollier is an American activist, scholar, and blogger who is focused on the commons as a new paradigm for re-imagining economics, politics, and culture. He pursues this work as Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics (Massachusetts, US), and as cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group, an international advocacy project.

Bollier has co-organized pioneering international conferences and strategy workshops on the commons, and consults regularly with diverse activists and policy experts in the US and Europe. His blog, Bollier.org, is a widely read source of news about the commons, and his book Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons (2014), has been translated into six languages. He and coauthor Silke Helfrich published Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons in September 2019. Bollier is an editor or author of many other books on the commons, including Patterns of Commoning (2015) and The Wealth of the Commons (2012), both with co-editor Silke Helfrich; Green Governance (2013), co-authored with the late Professor Burns Weston; and Viral Spiral (2009), Brand-Name Bullies (2005), and Silent Theft (2002).

In 2012, Bollier received the Bosch Berlin Prize in Public Policy from the American Academy in Berlin for his work on the commons. He co-founded the Washington, D.C. advocacy group Public Knowledge in the early 2000s; collaborated with television writer/producer Norman Lear for twenty-five years on political and public affairs projects; and worked with Ralph Nader in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bollier lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

• Links with additional information:
  Book: ‘Patterns of Commoning’
  Appendix C of ‘Free, Fair and Alive’
  Full book: ‘Free, Fair and Alive’

• Essays on commons and learning/education (from ‘Patterns of Commoning’)
  Learning as a Commons
  Open Access Publishing
  Open Educational Resources

• Commons in agriculture
  Design principles of permaculture
  Slow Food
  Farm Hack (Open source farm equipment)
  Potato Park in Peru (Indigenous stewardship of biodiverse landscape)
  Academic articles by Jose Luis Vivero Pol:
  Jose Luis Vivero Pol is a leading proponent of food as commons, and the co-editor of an anthology of academic essays on the topic, “The Handbook of Food as a Commons”