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On Tuesday 8 June from 16.00 to 18.30h we will play a game with the digitised version of the Game of the Commons. In a session organised by Barcelona Activa, and open to all, we will play with Katuma , CommonsCloud and Radios Escolars en Xarxa to learn about the three projects and experience commons practice with three other fictitious projects.
We will talk about collaborative economy, platform cooperativism and open cooperativism, we will see how they differ from startups and the unicorn model, and we will think about whether technological platforms can contribute to creating and sustaining projects with a solidarity economy and commons approach.
In this session we will see how, alongside the numerous cases of production, reproduction and management of the traditional commons that have been sustained over hundreds of years, technological, urban and cultural projects have been launched in recent decades. All of them share knowledge in the open, have distributed and democratic models of production, reproduction, management and decision-making. They are different projects, but they share principles and qualities and have become the key to the necessary transformation and innovation of our economies.
But have you ever tried to put these principles and qualities into practice? Have you approached other similar or complementary projects? How have you built alliances with them? Have you found ways of inter-cooperation? How have differences or misunderstandings been managed? Have you talked to iron out differences in order to get closer to each other again? Have you found ways to ensure that you all have the necessary resources to support each other? Have you shared your insecurities, fears, egos, eagerness to take the lead with each other openly so that they do not become an impediment to working together?
In the session on the 8th we are not going to solve all this, far from it, but we will see how the Game of the Commons works, where complicities are sought instead of competing or creating dependencies, where resources are shared instead of exchanged and where the production of services that benefit everyone is promoted. We will see how to ensure that our project is sustainable while making sure that the projects of others are also sustainable.
The commons is a model of social organisation that resolves needs and social relations collectively through self-management and co-production, appropriating the necessary material and immaterial resources in a sustainable way, without exhausting them or putting them at risk. A commons implies the articulation of a community that jointly takes responsibilities and decisions, that produces collectively with its labour force, that provides itself with agreed rules and, when necessary, with shared goods.
If you want to go deeper into these ideas, before or after the session, read the materials we use in the Transition Programmes (for now, only in Catalan).
If you want, you can download and print the Commons Game (in English) to play at home, at school or in the cooperative!