A four-day event on 5 to 8 October in Helsinki, Finland opens with the launch of the fourth book in the Rehearsing Hospitalities series, which is published by Frame Contemporary Art Finland and Archive Books (and can be downloaded free-of-charge here).
The publication, Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 4 asks, What are the possibilities and limitations of hospitality? How escapable are the imbalances of power instilled in hospitality? Should we instead be “rehearsing” redistribution?
In the ten years since the devastating Canterbury earthquakes resulted in 80 per cent of the buildings in central Ōtautahi Christchurch being demolished, a charitable trust has supported more than 700 projects focused on place-making and urban wellbeing.
The work of Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS) is being celebrated with an outdoor exhibition along Cashel St Mall in Ōtautahi Christchurch from 13 to 29 September 2022, and the upcoming launch of a book, Huritanga: 10 Years of Transformational Place-Making.
Community economies artists and practitioners have made an important contribution to the fifteenth edition of Documenta, the 100-day exhibition that takes place in the German city of Kassel every five years and that closes on Sunday 25 September.
Documenta fifteen was curated by the Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa who based this year’s documenta on the values and ideas of lumbung, the Indonesian word that directly translates as rice barn and is used to refer to a communal building in rural Indonesia where a community’s harvest is gathered, stored and distributed according to jointly determined criteria as a pooled resource for the future.
There is a strong theme of community economies running through this year’s documenta fifteen in the City of Kassel (in Germany), and this has been brought to the fore through the contribution of the Rural School of Economies, an initiative being run by Kathrin Böhm from the Community Economies Institute and Wapke Feenstra from Myvillages.
Read more: Community Economies at documenta fifteen
The Community Economies Research Network (CERN) is holding its third LIVIANA International Online Conference, 31 October to 11 November 2022.
LIVIANA is a decentralised series of exchanges and symposia that runs for two weeks, providing an opportunity for CERN members to connect and share.
The event is based on the sense of openness, free-floating train of thought, and cheerful spirit that the Spanish term liviana connotes.
Community Economies Research Network (CERN) members are among the contributors to a new encyclopedia on the social and solidarity economy, with Caroline Shenaz Hossein part of the editorial team.
Hossein says “I was one of the many editors, with Dr Ilcheong Yi and his awesome team, and I am so proud that so many feminists, Global South and Black scholars are cited here in a book on the social and solidarity economy.”
“This encyclopedia reflects how the social and solidarity economy has gained currency across the world, over the past two decades, as a crucial approach to promoting human well-being, social justice and economic and sustainable development.”
Andrew Zitcer’s recent book, Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism, draws on his experiences with food, health-care and arts cooperatives to explore the central question of what makes cooperatives ethical, effective and sustainable.
Zitcer says “This book walks that fine line of searching for the positive value of cooperation while also recognising shortcomings and looking for ways that cooperatives might be more just and effective.”
A recently published book edited by Antònia Casellas from the Community Economies Research Network (CERN) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Department of Geography), introduces Spanish readers to seminal texts by JK Gibson-Graham as well as new materials.
The three seminal texts included in the book are Spanish translations of:
The Summer/Winter School is for PhD students, early career researchers and others. It engages with the foundational concepts and tools that community economies scholars have been using to envision and enact postcapitalist economies. It explores connections with longer traditions that also value collectivity and interdependence.
Members of the Community Economies Research Network (CERN) and the Community Economies Institute (CEI) have been saddened by the sudden death of our friend and colleague Silke Helfrich.
CERN members reflect that Silke was brilliant and warm, a magical commoner and friend.
Silke crossed many of our paths in different places and networks. For example, she played a crucial role in a two-day workshop in November 2019 for the writing of the interdependence charter. Her contribution was characterised by her sharp questioning and creativity with language.
Read more: Vale Silke Helfrich, 1967 – 2021
In the second keynote at the online CERN Liviana conference, Maliha Safri discussed her recent research on social and solidarity economies, describing these economies as “examples of postcapitalist practices in action.”
Safri started her keynote, entitled ‘Mapping the US Solidarity City: Spatializing Diversity, Difference and Social Justice,’ by outlining the participatory action research project she ran in Asbury Park in New Jersey with people of colour, including ex-prisoners and Spanish-speaking undocumented workers.
Read more: Mapping the US Solidarity City
How do communities and commons become a meaningful part of how oceans and fisheries are thought about, researched and managed?
This question was explored in Kevin St Martin’s opening keynote of the CERN Liviana online conference, entitled “Creating openings for community and commons in the Digital Ocean.”
Read more: Community and commons in the Digital Ocean
The second CERN Liviana Online Conference was held from 1 to 14 November 2021.
Liviana is a decentralised series of exchanges and symposia that runs for two weeks, providing an opportunity for CERN members to connect and share. The event is based on the sense of openness, free-floating train of thought, and cheerful spirit that the Spanish term liviana connotes.
Plans are already underway for a 2022 Liviana Online Conference.
The full playlist of sessions from Liviana 2021 can be accessed by clicking here.
Read more: Liviana: CERN Online Conference
Throughout September and into October, cultural innovators are invited to participate in five Study-into-Action sessions.
The aim is to connect cultural workers who do not know one another but are building innovative cultural economies.
One of the project co-founders, Caroline Woolard, says “We need to socialize, study, and dream together before we can take collective action, and this first phase of connecting will be followed by a second phase in which we deepen the relationships, explore together the ways that our ideas, desires, and goals might align, and think about the actions that we might take collectively."
The recently released Yellowhead Institute Red Paper, Cash Back, features an insight from Ngāi Tahu academic and CERN member Matt Scobie (from the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa New Zealand).
Cash Back documents how the Canadian economy has been built on the dispossession of Indigenous lands and how, in the process, First Nations peoples were robbed of their economic livelihoods and pushed into dependency on the state.
A principios de mayo de 2021, la Dra. Demet Dinler y los estudiantes del grupo de lectura "Radical Theories in International Development" de la Universidad de Sussex organizaron el lanzamiento en línea del Handbook of Diverse Economies ("El Manual de las Economías Diversas").
El lanzamiento incluyó una sesión de preguntas y respuestas con una de las editoras del Manual, Katherine Gibson. El video del acto está disponible en el canal de YouTube del Instituto de Economías Comunitarias haciendo clic aquí.
In early May 2021, Dr Demet Dinler and students from the Radical Theories in International Development reading group at the University of Sussex organised an online launch of the Handbook of Diverse Economies.
The launch involved a question and answer session with one of the editors of the Handbook, Katherine Gibson. The video of the event is now available through the Community Economies Institute’s YouTube Channel by clicking here.
A principios de este año, el Centro para Comunidades Resilientes de la Universidad de Virginia Occidental publicó su primer informe anual, "Groundwork: 2020 Reflections".
El Centro fue inaugurado en diciembre de 2019 y, con el apoyo financiero de One Foundation, ofrece programas educativos, becas e investigación de acción colaborativa en apoyo de la justicia social, económica y ambiental.
Earlier this year, the Center for Resilient Communities at West Virginia University released its first Annual Report, Groundwork: 2020 Reflections.
The Center was inaugurated in December 2019 and, with funding support from One Foundation, it delivers educational programs, fellowships and collaborative action research in support of social, economic and environmental justice.
Enhorabuena al miembro del CERN Pieta Hyvärinen, que ha recibido el premio Vuoden Tiedekynä 2021 de la Fundación Kone por su artículo "Mushroom-foraging on Northern Tree Plantations: Diverse Forest Economies and the Problem of Plantationocentrism." (Forraje de Hongos en plantaciones de árboles del norte: Economías forestales diversas y el problema del plantación-centrismo).
El Vuoden Tiedekynä es un premio anual para artículos académicos que demuestran un uso ejemplar de la lengua finlandesa. El objetivo es apoyar y aumentar la apreciación de la escritura académica en finés.
