Commoning Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Commoning Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Research and innovation; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The “Commoning Europe” project aims to rediscovery the Public Good as the foundation of Europe. Public and private still exist as the two indisputable poles of economic and social organization and forms of property. Both in debates on economic policy and on systemic alternatives, it seems there is nothing between these two poles, or at least so it appeared until the recent rediscovery of the theme of common goods both in economic theory and in political debate. We deliberately stress the term rediscovery because actually the forms of property and management based on common property pre-date those founded on the notion of public and private.
“Commoning” refers to initiatives concerning material or immaterial resources shared among a community of users who determine by themselves the rules on management, use, enrichment of their resource; it is also based on a set of collaborative and contributive practices. This movement is now experiencing a boom in Europe.
Such initiatives are often carried out by private organizations (associations, informal communities, etc.) designated as “commoners”. Although they often emerge without elected representatives and public administrations, they must nevertheless find support and legitimacy with them to continue. A growing number of local governments are also seeking to develop approaches around the commons.
The project intends to investigate different approaches to the commons at European level, in terms of relations between Commoners and Public Institutions and in relation to overcoming legal, organizational and other difficulties.
The project partners, together with the applying organisation “Biblioteca di pace” (Italy), are the public bodies of Campi Bisenzio (Italy), Fagaras (Romania) and Ankara (Turkey) and the non-governmental organisations BRAL (Belgie) and Open UP (NL). They will share good practices in their respective territories and will attend thematic training courses/study visits to:
– Strengthen the capacities of public officials and commoners to grasp the question of the commons and build together virtuous synergies.
– Build an exchange platform between the partners to take advantage of the complementarity of their approaches, and with their European peers to develop their innovation capacity and contribute to a European deployment of the commons movement.
About 14/15 members from each partner organization will participate directly in the project, for a total of about 85 people. These will be people who are particularly interested in the topic for research reasons or because they are directly involved in the ongoing experiences. To these will be added indirect participants, members of associated partners, citizens and public officials involved in the training activities, which will be three altogether, in Fagaras, Campi Bisenzio, Utrecht. The number of indirect participants can be defined at the end of the project, however the involvement of about 100 people can be expected during the 24 months of the project development.
The project comprises 4 physical Transnational Partners’ Meeting. Participants in the Meetings will be coordinators from each partner organization, with previous experience in the coordination/implementation of international projects.
There are also three Short-term joint staff training events, useful to allow partners to know personally and on the spot the activities in progress involving Commoning and, also, to organize an exchange of information between those who – both public administrators and officials and ordinary citizens – are directly involved in the experiences.
Methodology to be used in carrying out the project will be based on analysis and study of ongoing experiences on the subject of Commoning; learning will take place through discussions, with participatory techniques and methods.
In this type of training, the exchange of roles is very interesting, since each participant – depending on their skills and experiences – is alternately a person who teaches and a person who learns. As part of the training, visits to significant ongoing experiences are also planned, in which the participants will be able to speak directly with the managers of the various activities.
The desired impact will be a reinforcement for political decision makers who already support ongoing experiences in this context. They will be more motivated and legitimated to share project results with the public administrators of the territory, driving them to rethink any attitudes of distrust or lack of understanding towards requests by groups of citizens or associations. Meetings and debates on the theme, in areas outside the strict limits of the partnership, can help to change the idea that Common Goods are only a matter of ‘good policy’ or ‘good’ citizenship, creating a new cultural model leading to introducing into the legislation of the states a new kind of property, alongside the two traditional ones of ‘public’ and ‘private’.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 109294 Eur

Project Coordinator

Biblioteca di Pace & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Open UP let youth be heard
• ANKARA AILE, CALISMA VE SOSYAL HIZMETLER IL MUDURLUGU
• BRAL vzw – Stadsbeweging voor Brussel
• Comune di Campi Bisenzio
• MUNICIPIUL FAGARAS