Democratic and caring economy

Vera, Sophie and Florine wrote a think piece for the Journal of Cooperative Studies. For cooperatives to succeed in The Netherlands, the think piece stresses the importance of both the development of a cooperative ecosystem rooted in a collaborative culture of ownership as well as institutional structures that enhance cooperative development.

Read the think piece here.

Commons Network has been involved with the municipal team of Community Wealth Building in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. Contributions have been made to the CWB CoopRoute, guiding emerging worker cooperatives, and a research to neighbourhood cooperatives.

Commons Network is supporting the Noorderpark Foundation in developing a starting point for cooperative(s) that carry broad support, a clear mission, structure and shared ownership.

How can the European economy be designed to meet everyone’s needs within the planet’s ecological limits? In this Primers series, Commons Network, together with Oxfam Novib, explores how European countries can move beyond growth towards a new economy and reorganize Work, Food, and Welfare systems to secure good lives for all within the boundaries of our planet.

With 300 participants, we celebrated collective energy, local initiatives, and a shared vision for a fairer and more sustainable Amsterdam economy. We also presented our manifesto to Alderman Rutger Groot-Wassink.

In this explainer series developed by Commons Network & MeentCoop, we dive in into community economy. We show economy is not something that happens to us, but shaped by us.

First explainer: Community economy. Read here.

Second explainer: Community economy and the cooperative movement

Third explainer: Community economy and public-collective partnerships

On Friday 29th of November, Commons Network co-hosted a roundtable and a panel discussion about postgrowth in Madrid! It was an occasion to bring together members of Parliament from our Postgrowth pan-European network, and to learn from Spanish politics at a time when the rest of Europe is facing a conservative backlash.

Commons Network and Commons Lab organized an inspiring evening where we explored the history of cooperatives, local entrepreneurship, and Community Wealth Building. Additionally, we discussed the role of labor unions and politics in fostering a democratic economy with FNV and GroenLinks. A more in-depth reflection on the event can be found here.

As part of our “Transitiewerkplaats” (Transition Laboratory), we organised a design session in October 2024, bringing together civil servants from various city districts, neighborhood initiatives, funders, and civil society organizations. The goal was to learn from one another and build stronger public-civil cooperation, as well as sustainable support for neighborhood initiatives and emerging (worker) cooperatives.

In the last week of September, degrowth researcher Pr Jason Hickel visited Amsterdam. Here are some important ideas and takeaways from Jason’s approach and from the various conversations with civil society, ministry officials, members of parliament, trade unionists, and academics.

From September 2023 to July 2024, we explored the vision, ambitions, and potential cooperative structure for De Bol through a collaborative process. Through various inspiration sessions, site visits, and neighbourhood meetings, we mapped out the target groups, values, neighbourhood functions, models, and opportunities as thoroughly as possible. With the support of a cooperative business coach, De Bol has been working on establishing and structuring the worker cooperative—ranging from writing a business plan to learning about collective decision-making and shared ownership.

Starting in September 2024, Commons Network has been collaborating with Samen Wonen Samen Leven (SWSL) in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. Here, Commons Network has contributed to strengthening the CWB practice network through practice meetings, core partner consultations, and workshops with the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative. We have also been involved in supporting the cooperative Circulair Wildeman.

On July 15th, Commons Network co-hosted an online panel discussion on the topic of a just agricultural transition beyond growth. This event was organized in collaboration with Oxfam Novib, Friends of the Earth Europe, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and the European Environmental Bureau.

In December 2023, Commons Network organized a roundtable on welfare beyond growth in the European Parliament with national MPs and trade union representatives. This event was the second of a series that aims to establish a pan-European network for knowledge exchange and strategy building on post-growth policies.

Commons Network started the 2 year Transition Laboratory project on Community Wealth Building and the community economy. With various municipalities and neighbourhood actors in Amsterdam and other cities.

Commons Network is activating the community economy in the 2 year Transition Laboratory project on Community Wealth Building. Together with various municipalities and neighbourhood actors in Amsterdam and other cities, we are helping to build caring economies where collective wellbeing, democratic ownership, and participation take centre stage.

Commons Network joined the coordination of the translocal network in April 2022. After a kickoff session in Berlin in the autumn of 2022, we also organised a series of online skills-share sessions. These aimed to reinforce peer-to-peer learning among municipalist actors facilitating exchange and learning on practices, methodologies, experiences and strategies that we need to transform the system.

During three days, a landmark conference on post-growth took place in the European Parliament. As a contributing partner, Commons Network co-organised two events in the Beyond Growth conference: a session on what post-growth means for the digital transition and a round table with MP’s.

We took the initiative to establish a cross-party working group for and with parliamentarians from the First and Second Chamber in the Hague, that would function as a sound board, inspiration hub and an instigator of postgrowth thinking within national politics in The Netherlands.

Even though the effect of the ecological crisis is already a daily reality for many people living in the Global South, those who have an interest in preserving the status quo continue to defend why we need more economic growth in the Global North. In this series of articles, we respond to their arguments one at a time.

We publish our Manifesto for a Caring Economy, which is a plea for caring as an antidote to neoliberalism. In it, we argue for a regenerative and provisioning economy in which caring communities are the foundation of a truly democratic and sustainable society.

Common In: A half year-running project together Art Collecive TAAK  on the intersection of commons and art. Common in is a process of collective imagination, where artists, organizers and participants together experience a commons-inspired world.

We publish our new book which is the result of a two-year exploration of the degrowth movement, merging planetary health thinking, feminist economics and fieldwork from Dutch caring commoning practices.

Our new publication (in Dutch) about the future of social security in the Netherlands is launched! Based on our collaborative theoretical and empirical research with the innovation lab Novum, the book contains a rich bundle of insights about a possible new meaning of the term ‘social security’ – one that is built around values like care, reciprocity and trust. We then discuss a set of ‘building blocks’ and ‘transition paths’ towards a society that serves this novel understanding of social security.

Together with the municipality of Amsterdam, Commons Network started researching and piloting Community Wealth Building in three disenfranchised areas of the city.

We kicked off our new research to explore what a degrowth transformation could mean for how we think about health and organize care. We dived into literature on degrowth & (planetary) health and conducted fieldwork to caring citizens collectives in the Netherlands part of NLZVE.

In 2020 Commons Network worked together with Novum, the innovation lab of the SVB, which is the institution responsible within the Dutch government for national insurance schemes, to find out what the commons can teach us about social security.

Commons Network partnered with the Fearless Cities programme of the municipality of Amsterdam to bring the new municipalism to Amsterdam and to empower local movements. We organized a 2 year program in Amsterdam for municipalists, policy makers, researchers, students and local activists. We developed policy ideas, papers, as well as live and online gatherings and events.

In collaboration with the municipality of Amsterdam, Commons Network researched the chances and challenges of the commons in Amsterdam.

Together with partner Raumlabor, Urban Commons – Shared Spaces was a research project, published by Commons Network, about the emerging urban commons, based on research on scientific literature and fieldwork in Berlin and Amsterdam.

Together with partners Remix the Commons and P2P foundation we organized the European Commons Assembly, a two-day event in the European Parliament and in a social centre, with hundreds of commoners from across europe.