Events Schedule
Below you’ll find a chronological listing of all upcoming EcoGather events, class sessions, and gatherings. There is a lot going on! If you’re new to our learning community, you might start with an EcoGathering…
Our EcoGatherings are free and open for anyone to join
– just drop in whenever you can, regardless of experience or preparation!
Sign up for a monthly email with all the events for each month.
EcoGathering: The Commons
EcoGathering: The Commons
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Conversation
In this lunar cycle of EcoGatherings, we will discuss the ways that Commons are misunderstood, and the role that a more nuanced understanding of their past, present, and future might serve us in a just transition from this world into the next. To begin the cycle, we will conversationally unpack our own assumptions, misconceptions, fears, hopes, around the Commons.
Recommended resources for this EcoGathering:
EcoGathering: Enclosure and Primitive Enclosure
EcoGathering: Enclosure and Primitive Enclosure
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Conversation
Enclosure is seen by many as the beginning of capitalism as a dominant economic system. It is an ongoing process of claiming once commonly managed resources (both physical and abstract) as private property that can only be accessed through a financial transaction, while facilitating the forgetting of the skills and culture needed to cooperatively manage those resources. The history of enclosure is often overlooked, yet it is a vital piece of the puzzle about how we got to this point of disconnection on the brink of civilizational collapse. In this EcoGathering, we will discuss the forgotten history of enclosure, how it is continuing to claim ever more abstract frontiers, what will happen when it finally runs out of new ones and how we might resist enclosure and reclaim commons.
Recommended resources for this EcoGathering:
EcoGathering: Commoner's Consciousness
EcoGathering: Commoner's Consciousness
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Focus
David Bollier said “There is no commons without commoning.” The commons is more than just a collectively managed resource. It is a nuanced, adaptive, participatory culture that requires community, history, connection, communication, and reciprocity. We may have forgotten the skills and knowledge that make commoning a part of life, but it is possible to intentionally reclaim the mindset of a commoner with community and practice. How might we learn from examples of historical and contemporary commons to begin reclaiming the commoner’s consciousness? How does a commoner think and view the world? In this EcoGathering, we will dive deep into a focus session on a piece that explicates the examples of commoning, and the shared characteristics of commoner cultures, so as to begin reclaiming these skills in our own communities.
Recommended resources for this EcoGathering:
EcoGathering: Re-Commoning
EcoGathering: Re-Commoning
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Generative
In this final generative EcoGathering of the lunar cycle on Commoning, we will unveil the beginnings of EcoGather’s digital learning commons to receive feedback and proactive input from our community of learners on how best to develop and manage the space to be most useful and enlivening to its users. We will practice applying what we have learned throughout this lunar cycle to a real-life example.