Reflecting on: Economies of care

8 December 2025: Artists, academics, cultural and community practitioners met online to explore the emerging creative practices to sustain and co-create commons.

In celebration of our recent Library of Creative Sustainability case study, Land Commons, we organised a Green Tease to explore the commons: what this alternative paradigm is and the emerging creative practices to sustain and co-create commons.

‘Reviving the Commons?’, a report by Dr. James Henderson and Professor Oliver Escobar published by the Edinburgh Futures Institute, features useful definitions:

• ‘Commons are material or social resources that are managed and coordinated (and sometimes owned in a formal legal sense) by a community. Their stewardship is guided by norms and values for sustainable community governance without sole dependence on either state control or market mechanisms. More broadly, the commons can also represent an alternative paradigm for social, economic and political organisation and development, based on principles and practices of solidarity and democratic governance.’
• Commoning is ‘the social practices undertaken by communities to create, develop, sustain or govern common resources. Typical amongst such practices are collaboration, co-production, participation, and deliberation.’

A brief introduction to the commons

To start off the Green Tease, Dr Svenja Meyerricks, human ecologist, independent researcher and educator based in Lochwinnoch, gave an overview of the history of the commons and examples of commoning practices. She explained that the term ‘the commons’ emerged in the communal farming arrangements of the feudal system in Europe. In this medieval system, uncultivated or marginal lands were often used for shared grazing, as described by the Association of Commons Registration Authorities in ‘The History of Common Land and Village Greens’.

The commons were first mentioned in UK law in 1235, when The Statute of Merton gave lords of the land the right to enclose commons and waste land, provided that sufficient land was available to satisfy tenant farmer rights. The enclosures of common land in Scotland happened throughout the Highland Clearances from 1750-1860, when an estimated 70,000 to 150,000 tenants were forcibly displaced from their land, as detailed by ‘The Highland Clearances’ post on the Historic Environmental Scotland website.

Dr Meyerricks described the varied manifestations of the commons:

• Land, water and air commons
• Digital commons (eg open-source software)
• Creative commons

Land commons in Galicia

Fran Quiroga, transdisciplinary researcher and current director of Concomitentes, shared the context of their Land Commons project. Land Commons radically reimagined the role of creative processes in the collective management of a woodland in Galicia, northern Spain.

Galicia is renowned for its common land: almost a quarter of its area (around 700,000 hectares) is officially classified as common land, collectively owned and managed by more than 3000 communities.

Quiroga outlined the characteristics of common land in Galicia:

• Ownership is acquired by inhabiting a place.
• At least 40% of the resources generated on common land must be reinvested in the community.
• They are indivisible and imprescriptible, meaning they cannot be taken away or enclosed.

He described the role of culture in commoning:

• Generation of imaginaries and speculation of futures, which happened throughout the mediation and artistic co-creation process of Land Commons.
• Experimentation with participation and new ways of collaborating, such as through varied methods of creative facilitation.
• Creating places of re-enchantment and reconnection with nature, such as the ritual festival, ‘Os sentires do monte’.

String Figures

Artist Ailie Rutherford then facilitated a brief demonstration of String Figures, a prototype collaborative software for collective working centred on the principles of mutual care and co-operation. Rutherford co-designed the software with Bettina Nissen and creative technologist Bob Moyler.

Using the software, small groups mapped what they might need to maintain an energy commons, a coastal commons and a land commons.

Further resources

• Watch the event recording on Vimeo and review the Green Tease: Economies of care slide decks on Dropbox.
• Read Watery Commons, a book published by Connecting Threads (PDF 5.3MB). Connecting Threads is a creative project responding to the River Tweed. In 2025 their programming theme of ‘Watery Commons’ explored the multiple conceptions of commoning in the context of the River Tweed.
• Listen to Commoning within Arts Collectives on the Frontiers of Commoning podcast, hosted by David Bollier and produced by the Schumacher Centre for a New Economics.
• Read Arts, Culture, and Commoning: A New/Old Path to Collective Transformation, an essay exploring the intersection between theatre and commoning by Jamie Gahlon and Matthew Glassman, published on Howlround Theatre Commons.
• Watch SPRINGBOARD 2025: Degrowth, community and culture on Vimeo, a session led by the Creative Degrowth Network Scotland on the cultural sector’s role in creating positive post-growth narratives.

About Green Tease

This event took place as part of the Green Tease events series and network, a project organised by Culture for Climate Scotland, bringing together people from arts and environmental backgrounds to discuss, share expertise and collaborate. Green Tease forms part of our culture/SHIFT programme.