Workshop format and objectives

In this workshop, we aim to explore the relevance of the commons as an objective and commoning as a way of doing and being for participatory design activities, especially for those that aim seriously and critically at supporting sustainable futures for all (not only humans). There seems to currently be a lack of infrastructures to cultivate and care for commoning approaches. The available technologies, spaces and organization principles are mainly focused in dealing with scarcity and private property. There is a need to look for broader spectrum issues, not to run the risk of making it too easy to abuse resources, too difficult to make contributions, or embrace pluralities. Furthermore, issues of passing on ‘best practices’ related to commoning seem to always pose challenges [7]. The need to connect commoning practices to the variety of cooperative subjects transforming our society is also urgent [20]. Based on the above, we seek contributions that highlight, reflect and raise awareness around some of these questions:

  • How can we design better infrastructures and frameworks that enable, mediate, protect, and foster the emerging and increasingly complex commoning practices?
  • What new design vocabulary, principles, policies, guidelines, and practices are needed to contribute to co-designing commons? How to connect this vocabulary with the one of feminism, environmentalism, indigenous movements, and the other transformative movements populating our common world?
  • How to articulate collaborative practices with sharing resources in the long run? What kind of alliances need to be made? Which ones should be unmade?
  • How to deal with the contradictions that arise from cultivating commons in capitalist societies and in individualistic cultures?
  • What is to be learned from activist commoners globally already experimenting with and applying new practices of commoning?
  • What other commons-based practices can we learn from indigenous knowledge and sharing traditions?

Our intention is to continue ongoing efforts to link discussions and research done  in a commoning framework to collaborative practices found in design around (more established) human but also (emergent) planet centred design, participatory design and open design, and in line with the PDC2020 theme, for Participation(s) otherwise.

Format

The workshop will be facilitated online and conducted as a remote/virtual one. It includes a main live and synchronous session during the 16th June, plus smaller sessions and activities that can be conducted asynchronously and online by the participants in groups/pairs before the 16th.

As a first step, interested researchers and practitioners should send position statements reflecting on a past, current, or envisioned project/case about the theme of commons/-ing and participatory design (1 A4 page case/project presentation). The statements will each be reviewed by two of the workshop organisers. The deadline for submission of position statements is 8 May. The selected participants will be informed by 15 May

The workshop organizers will then form small groups (or pairs) based on participants’ position statements, where the participants will briefly discuss their own cases and identify relevant aspects worth sharing with the other participants. The organizers will collect these input as basis for the activity of the main session on the 16th. There, we will further elaborate them and start composing together the key elements of the pluriversal card deck on commons and commoning.

Workshop organizers

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