Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier

Janelle Orsi, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, in Oakland, California, is an accomplished practitioner of creative legal hacks. She and her colleagues at the Law Center focus on ingenious ways to decommodify land to keep housing and farmland affordable; to empower peer governance and give people control over their lives; and to provide legal structures that help people acquire greater security by "surrendering into each other's arms." Orsi and the Law Center

More on the commons at Bollier.org.

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. More on the

Professor Neera Singh, a geographer at the University of Toronto, has long studied forest commons in India as part of her research into conservation, “development,” and the governance of natural systems. One of her key findings is that the “affective labor” of commoners produces healthier, more resilient forests than corporate or bureaucratic state management. A key challenge is how to honor the power of affective stewardship in a world dominated by state and corporate power.More on the commons at

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.More on the commons at Bollier.org.

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.More on the commons at Bollier.org.

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.More on the commons at Bollier.org.

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.More on the commons at Bollier.org.