Dil Green identifies what’s needed for commoning to keep the beat.
Commons is a term which gets bandied about – sometimes very loosely, on other occasions rather specifically. I try not to use it much, even though I have been actively working on something we call the Credit Commons for a few years now.
The word I prefer is ‘commoning’, and I’ve come to see it as a fundamental human activity – one which all of us are engaged in in almost every unforced situation with others. It’s so fundamental that we don’t need to call it anything. We don’t need to be taught to do it; it comes with being human.
Think of the simplest, most banal conversation with a stranger at a bus stop. For it to progress at all, both people must be trying to create something shared, no matter how small and fleeting; otherwise, the conversation will falter. Neither can do it alone, and they keep going because it offers each of them something worth the effort.
Thus unremarked-upon, ubiquitous ‘commoning’; people willingly offer their effort into a shared context, working towards a joint creation that has value, which other participants choose to contribute to; all gain something from the outcome, which can only be experienced through their interaction.
From which it follows that even a short conversation is, in some way, a ‘commons’.
It seems that we only notice and name a commons when the work of commoning is sustained and achieves some scale. And then, we often don’t call it a commons.
I said that the conversation could ‘die’ – inviting the follow-on thought that a commons is ‘life-like’ – only a ‘thing’ for as long as the actions which sustain it – commoning – are maintained. So, it is the commoning – the active process – that matters. It seems that we only notice and name a commons when the work of commoning is sustained and achieves some scale. And even then, we rarely think of it explicitly as ‘a commons’.
So how do we create a living commons? Two examples in my life have shed some light on this for me: playing in a post-punk band and forming a property co-op.
Post punk
In the 1980s, I achieved what I had desired since I first became a punk – to be in a “proper’ band. You may not have heard of us, but we’ve made enough records for it not to be a flash in the pan. We recorded four John Peel sessions on BBC Radio 1, played gigs all over the country and had a couple of short European tours. Forty years later, we can hear that we have influenced some contemporary bands, and a record company has just issued a vinyl collection of those Peel sessions—nothing extraordinary, but not nothing.
While all of us were somewhat political and leftist, we never thought of the band as anything but a band. We didn’t consider it an economic activity (we were appropriately anti-commercial) and were not very explicit about how we created what we did.
Mostly, we just did the obvious things – choose a name, attempt to write songs, discover what we could aspire to (and give up on what we could not), practice just about enough, and make efforts to be noticed. We did only one formal thing really: we agreed that the songs were joint creations, however they had come about.
Considering the band as a formalised commons would be taking it too far. Still, one key aspect of commoning stands out for me from this experience – what I call, in commoning contexts, “material interdependence”.
To achieve even the small things we managed, without any money, contacts, or (for two of us at least) any musical training, the level and quality of this interdependence was vital. We were heavily reliant on each other’s ongoing contributions: with no formality and no financial backing, nothing forced any of us to commit, yet only a high level of dedication could have made anything happen — plenty of other people wanted to perform on those stages, get onto the radio, get signed to a label.
There was, too, a further interdependency – the people who came to the gigs, bought the records, put on gigs for us in village halls and above pubs. We depended upon them, and they depended upon us.
Between us all, we made something that was not nothing. In contrast, my following example, Brixton Common Land (BCL), was much more formal.
A bulwark against gentrification
BCL was born out of the experience of the late ‘90s Brixton Local Exchange and Trading Scheme (LETS), which at its height had about 600 members and felt incredibly impactful. Walking past a gutted and unloved house with a “for sale” sign, two of us dreamed up a proposition: we would buy buildings in need of extensive work, and have that work done through the LETS (in other words, for credits, not cash). This would address gentrification, build community assets, and charge lower rents. It was an exciting idea.
The reality of what it might take was different, but we took it seriously. It would be a cooperative; we would raise funds by issuing bonds, and we would only rent to other cooperatives. We had a decent group of capable people who were interested and contributed. We spent money on lawyers, printed a detailed prospectus, looked at properties, created outline business plans, raised core funding, and attended auctions to bid on potential buildings.
Our business plans were based on real local rents. Buyers at the auctions were speculating on future property values, so they would pay twice what we had budgeted, and then leave the properties derelict.
And there we got stuck. Our business plans were based on real local rents. Buyers at the auctions were speculating on future property values, so they would pay twice what we had budgeted, and then leave the properties derelict, happy to wait while the market made more money for them in terms of land value than rents ever could.
We eventually bought a tiny mews block with four small artists’ studios and a yard, and that was it. The artists wouldn’t form a co-op; the members had lost heart. There is still a tiny co-op with four members and a building; not nothing, but definitely not something substantial.
BCL aimed to be big, to raise substantial funds, and amass an estate of properties that would hold value. It became formal right away, and it was pretty complex – requiring the coordination of funders, stewards, and tenants, while undertaking both renovations and management. And for all of that, we had laid decent foundations. What we did not have – what could not materialise until we had a successful building – was material interdependence; we had come together around an idea, and we did need each other to bring it about, but what held us together was an idea, rather than real value generation.
Future practice
Alongside many others – particularly Stroud Housing Commons and Local Loop Merseyside, I am currently working on several models of commoning. All these conditions and experiences are in play. In Stroud, with the necessary formal framework to raise funds, purchase, and manage housing, we have developed a set of interconnected rights and responsibilities. These lay the foundation for win-win-win scenarios where stewards, tenants, and funders rely on one another. Together, they should create a solid foundation for effective local politics, which will be the equivalent of bus-stop chat – where shared values are created, keeping the initiative alive.
