The IGOP school hosted the first of 3 workshops on “New municipalism, democratic public ownership, and the politics of the common” funded by the Urban Studies Foundation and co-organised by Bertie Russell (IGOP-UAB), Iolanda Bianchi (University of Antwerp) and Lavinia Steinfort (TNI org).
The activities took place in Barcelona from 18 to 23 September. The week included a series of field trips, including to Can Batlló and the housing cooperatives of Cireres and La Morada; training sessions on the use of games in action research; presentations by all participants; and a collective synthesis guided by three questions:
1. What are the ingredients that characterize ‘commons-based approaches to democratic public ownership’, and under what conditions can such arrangements thrive?
2. What dangers, challenges and/or shortcomings are faced in attempting to produce commons-based approaches to democratic public ownership, and how can social change actors overcome these?
3. How might commons-based approaches to democratic public ownership contribute to a radical municipalist project of systematic transformation across different scales?
We are now planning our next steps, taking a group decision on how we want to move forward and what results we wish to achieve. This will be facilitated in a further face-to-face session in Antwerp, jointly organised by the project partners.
