Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier

Marcos García is Artistic Director of Medialab-Prado in Madrid, Spain -- an independent, city-funded 'commons laboratory' that facilitates bottom-up innovation on various tech platforms. As a commons incubator, Medialab-Prado actively facilitates the formation of new communities of experimental, collaborative practice in such diverse fields as citizen science, participatory budgeting, data visualization, open source software, Wikipedia entries, and book translations, among many others.

Neera Singh, a geographer from the University of Toronto, shares her insights on community forests in India. She highlights how the emotional connections individuals have with their land lead to healthier forests than corporate management. Singh discusses the resilience of Odisha's communities fighting against bureaucratic mismanagement and the importance of the Forest Rights Act in balancing legal and traditional practices. Ultimately, she advocates for a care-based approach to environmental stewardship that honors local governance and biocultural heritage.

Drawing on their worldwide work with schools, tech ventures, and other projects and organizations, Ted Rau (left) and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Cofounders of Sociocracy for All, explain how Sociocracy provides a fair, effective, commons-based system of deliberation and decisionmaking.

Paul Baines, Outreach and Education Coordinator of the Great Lakes Commons, fosters new attitudes and practices toward the Great Lakes in collaboration with other groups. Through crowdsourced maps, public celebrations, cultural projects, and reconciliation work with indigenous peoples, the Great Lakes Commons is exploring what stewardship of water means.

Rachel Moriarty of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics tells the history of the BerkShares currency and its ongoing evolution in developing a new vision for its regional economy. BerkShares, which circulate in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, are one of the most successful local currencies in the world today.

Matthew Glassman and Carlos Uriona, co-artistic directors of Double Edge Theatre, explain how commoning animates the performances and stewardship of their artist-owned ensemble theater company in western Massachusetts.