In this first brief episode, Joanna, Sanna, and Giacomo chat about the commons, commoning, and designing. Furthermore, they talk about how their research interests have sparked the idea for the production of this podcast, and they anticipate the type of content and invited guests that the forthcoming episodes will engage with. Stay Tuned! 🙂
Speaker Key – JS: Joanna Saad-Sulonen; GP: Giacomo Poderi; SM: Sanna-Maria Marttila
| Time code | Speaker | Text |
| 00:15 | JS | So, welcome to the first episode of the commoning design and designing commons podcast. Maybe you have heard designers throwing in the word commons or commoning in their conversation, and are unsure what it is about. This podcast introducing the notion of commons and commoning in design, making the concepts more approachable to design practitioners researchers, and the likes. |
| 00:44 | We are here in the recording studio of the IT university in wonderful Copenhagen. Grey weather, unfortunately, but it’s cosy inside. And I’m Joanna Saad-Sulonen. | |
| SM | My name is Sanna-Maria Marttila. | |
| GP | Hi, my name is Giacomo Poderi. | |
| JS | It will not always be only the three of us, because each episode will host a practitioner or a design researcher or a commons activist who would bring forward their views on the relationship between design and commons. | |
| 01:20 | So, the big question, what are commons? What is commoning? | |
| GP | Good question, Joanna. I think it allows us to open up a very broad conversation or discussion. But trying to keep it simple and brief, we could just go back to some of the maybe most foundational work that recently, at least in western countries have opened up again the interest around commons, that is the work of Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize for her work on economics around commons, as a form of organising and preserving resources. | |
| 02:07 | Primarily at that stage it was about preserving natural resources from depletion, overconsumption and ultimately destruction. So you can think of pastures, fisheries or other natural resources that, by using and overuse, might end up being ruined, depleted or exhausted, and our problems that of course come from that depletion. | |
| 02:37 | And commons, preserving the commons, and also then commoning, is a way to think of these resources as a way that it can be preserved by collaborative action, collective action and some collectively decided principle along which we want to preserve these resources. And sort of the contemporary understanding of the commons is focusing on how we can preserve, protect and nurture these resources. | |
| 03:09 | But of course, that was the 90s, the end of the 80s and 90s, and it was primarily an economic based, oriented work from Ostrom. And since then a lot of different areas or entry points to the commons have emerged in many different fields. | |
| 03:32 | SM | Yes, for example, you mentioned, Giacomo, already that in the 90s there was new openings for tackling the concept and the notion of commons. And because we entered the digitally networked society and internet was used more, there was a discussion and research about the knowledge commons, and digital commons, that is different from natural resources. |
| 04:03 | Because by using them, you cannot overuse because they’re not spent. And then the third point that I would like to add is this activist strand of research and discussion and dialogue about commons, that is focusing on social relations and how we can self-organise the commons and common resources. | |
| 04:38 | And of course, that brings the political dilemmas and dimensions to the discussion that are also prominent now, in design research. | |
| JS | So what are examples of commons in our everyday life? Would we say that, for example, about these digital commons and knowledge commons. Is Wikipedia a commons? | |
| 05:09 | GP | Yes, my understanding is that it is a form of knowledge sorting, knowledge organising and encyclopaedic knowledge creation, by collective engagement, that is freely and openly accessible to everyone. And as such, can be nurtured by everyone but also accessible and used by everyone. |
| 05:35 | Maybe I or we can consider it a commons because it is an alternative understanding of encyclopaedic knowledge that does not rely on gate-keeping the knowledge behind paywalls or other forms of enclosure of the knowledge. | |
| 06:06 | So it’s basically preserving an open resource, knowledge in this case, through the medium of digital platforms such as Wikipedia. | |
| SM | I would argue also that Wikipedia is a good example of a commons and digital commons. And to add, I think it’s important to also understand the social structures and rules and rituals that are in common and in commons that these people part of Wikipedia have themselves been part of shaping. | |
| 06:45 | So that has the autonomy on the rules and the practices, how we actually are maintaining and accumulating these common resources. | |
| JS | So, Sanna, are you already kind of touching on this commoning? There’s a lot of buzz about it, suddenly we’re talking about the verb. Is that part of this need to talk about this action, these social practices etc.? | |
| 07:21 | SM | Yes, precisely. I think the word commoning was coined in order to foreground the agency around commons and had to have an active form. And not only talking about the resources and how they’re managed, but the relationships between people and the resources, and how they are unfolded and how they are becoming. Because what is important in commoning and commons is that it’s not static, but it is becoming and it’s a part of our activities who are taking part of commons. |
| 08:02 | JS | So I guess we, at least the three of us, and there’s a whole bunch of other people out there that have been starting to think that these concepts of commons and commoning are useful and interesting to explore further in the context of design. And that’s part of the podcast, right? |
| 08:32 | The aim of the podcast is what are the connections between commons, commoning and design, design research, design as a practice, doing design. And you remember, Sanna, already almost ten years ago, we had a seminar when we were at the university in Helsinki, and trying to start making connections between these two worlds, in a way. | |
| 09:07 | And the three of us also have been engaged in different workshops and different design conferences etc., trying to explore further these connections. But I think we don’t have a definite research agenda or definite answers, and we hope that with the people whom we’ll invite actually to this podcast, they will help us think together about these connections. | |
| 09:47 | But anything from outside that we want to say, that… So why are we actually interested in making these connections? | |
| GP | Well, from my side, I’ve always been interested in these entanglements. The complexity that resides in trying to preserving or engaging with the creation or the defence or the nurturing of a commons. | |
| 10:17 | And it has a lot of interesting questions from a research or analytical perspective of what does it do to us people who engage in these practices? To be part of those practices, how does the fact that we are engaging as such, affect us as humans, as social beings? | |
| 10:45 | And I’ve always been interested in this form of commitment. As I said, the complexity, the problems that come, because also these social gatherings that engage in these practices are sort of full of problems, contradictions and challenges that they have to face. So it’s not just a silver bullet to create, that automatically makes everything better. | |
| 11:16 | It’s something that we have to struggle with, something that we have to be somehow also deeply committed sometimes, and it is, to me, it has always been interesting from a, if you want, from an ethnographer’s or sociologist’s point of view. But also as a person that is also very interested in more intervention based forms of research, and so trying to see whether we can support or we can engage with those practices. | |
| 11:44 | But also, as maybe we said at the beginning, how those practices also change us, change our field itself. And it’s something that over the past maybe eight, ten years I’ve also been engaged in. | |
| SM | I have been doing research on cultural commons, and it started also quite many years ago when I was collaborating with different culture institutions. | |
| 12:14 | And it was at the time when culture institutions such as libraries, museums and archives were opening up their digital collections. They have digitised a lot of their holdings and then there was a discussion what to do with these different archival collections. And my background is in participatory design. | |
| 12:42 | So the idea of commons and commoning and shared resources and responsibilities resonated very well with the political agenda that the participatory design had. And when working with these institutions and along with different user groups, it became evident that, like Giacomo said, about that we need the commitment and long-term thinking, because it comes about the funding. | |
| 13:15 | Because many of our researchers and even being a practitioner in design, comes from a commissioned work or then research projects that are maybe two years, three years, if we’re very lucky, five years. But this is when working with the culture and working with culture ahead, it’s very short-sighted, that you have to create conditions for different communities and stakeholders to have this long-term commitment. | |
| 13:47 | So I was fascinated by this idea of introducing commons and commoning with digital culture heritage. And what if we could think heritage in a way that it would be common that we all have a possibility to take part of the decision-making and using it. Because it’s very vital for our history and for our cultural identity. | |
| 14:16 | So that was my take on it. And I think it’s, as a practitioner, for me it gives a possibility of vocabulary and thinking and theoretical framework of creating these conditions and trying out different things together with people involved in those different assets or resources. And it is difficult to navigate those complexities, because people participate in having different commitments, different motivations. | |
| 14:54 | And in terms of thinking about culture of resources, even of course there is interest to benefit out of them, and who benefits and profits out of them. And of course, then there’s the other discourse that what if this should be open for all to build upon and re-use. So it very much resonates in this kind of thinking. | |
| JS | And you wrote the PhD. | |
| SM | Yes I did, infrastructure in cultural commons. | |
| 15:25 | JS | Yes, yes, fantastic. For me, I think it started maybe with the interest I have with the urban context. So having been originally trained as an architect, and having worked in urban design projects, I’ve been interested in who has the right, basically, to do stuff in the space of the city. |
| 15:53 | And I think here this, maybe this entry point for me was more in terms of the urban commons, like some people call it. And with that, looking at how people, residents, citizens, people who pass by cities, take into nurturing some parts of the city. | |
| 16:19 | Like for example, we can see with the people starting urban gardenings in parts of the city, and self-organising, basically, to take care of a little part of the city, and stuff like that. But also I think, like both of you, this interest in the commons also very much relates to participatory design, which I have also practised for quite a while. | |
| 16:51 | And from there, this interest in understanding design also beyond just something that is done for the money, basically. So looking at how communities of people engage in design activities and how this kind of community-based design might resemble or have affinities with what other people would consider as commoning. | |
| 17:25 | So from there, I’m also interested in this connection. So, slowly, I think we will end this first episode. I hope you’ll stay with us and check out the next one. In brief, we will be kind of asking our guests different questions, all relating to the relationship between commons, commoning and design. | |
| 17:59 | What does it mean for practitioners or researchers, what does it mean for them personally, how they have engaged in this reflection or in this activism, related to commons and commoning. And with some of the guests, we will also bring out something we have worked on together, which is the pluriversal card deck, that is about providing a vocabulary for commons and commoning in the context of design. | |
| 18:40 | We’ll probably put a link to it in the description of the podcast, but we will also discuss it further with our guests. | |
| SM | We would also like to invite you, our listeners, to comment on what you have heard, and also if you have any relevant thoughts or suggestions for our guests, what to talk about. And we would like to continue the discussion with you online. | |
| 19:12 | GP | Yes, mostly just to say a final word, maybe this is a very new project for us, and we’re very happy to be talking, having started it, and we look forward to see how it develops. And as Sanna just said, we hope to get feedback or comments from you to see how we’re doing, but also what we could do to make it more interesting and more also relevant for you as audience. |
| 19:43 | Okay. So I will say bye, and to the next episode! | |
| SM | Yes. | |
| GP | Okay, bye. | |
| SM | Bye. | |
| JS | Bye. |
Commoning Design & Designing Commons by Interest Group on Commons and Commoning (ITU) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.