Looking for examples of successful enabling of vital civil action
Hi all! I’m making a small study on promising solutions on supporting or enabling civic action, as part of a project aiming to address the development of Finland as a ground for vital and autonomous civil society. The task is wide and I would very much appreciate suggestions and tips from you as commons experts on examples worth studying in more detail!
We are interested in a wide scale of international examples Finland could learn from, for example
- Holistic approaches such as Enspiral as a network community with co-creation tools and practices
- governmental attempts such as the Oregon Kitchen table serving as a forum for interaction between the government and local actors, including things like support for P2P lending
- platforms for organising and funding civic initiatives, for example Open collective enabling transparent crowdfunding and follow-up of the economy of the initiatives
- reported cases illustrating vitality of civic action and how it has been enabled
- any other particularly useful approaches, practices and tools related to governmental action in relation to civil society: regulation, resourcing, education, evaluation etc.
Our project is funded by the Prime Minister’s Office and our results should serve national governmental actors especially but we can make suggestions also for other actors, for example municipalities, civil society organisations and enterprises.
Sophie Jerram Wed 4 Sep 2019 8:03AM
here are some women. www.commonstransition.org/category/articles-and-resources/100-women-of-p2p/
Andy Sat 31 Aug 2019 11:14AM
Hey @Maija! Really interesting project. I'm actually in Helsinki and work at the software company Vincit as a designer on our new Planet-Centric offer. Would be really interested to meet up and see if there could be a collaboration. My Vincit email is [email protected] if you'd like to connect.
Phil Green Sat 31 Aug 2019 2:47PM
Hi @Maija. Wondered if you're aware of Participatory City and their local/current project Every One Every Day, and if relevant? Might also be some links you'd be interested in via a couple of wiki pages on CASwiki: Community involvement & Urban sustainability
Best wishes
dilgreen Sun 1 Sep 2019 7:52AM
I can't see how autonomy is achievable in any context without economy - taking economy to mean organisation and allocation of resources of all kinds.
In a developed capitalist state, economy has mostly been removed from the sphere of civic action - one of the characteristics of capitalism, of course, is separating people from the means of production.
Thus for me, any civil action initiative which does not have well-developed economic mechanisms is unlikely to have much autonomy (practically, this means they will depend upon grant funding or crowdfunding, or try to get by without funds).
Open Credit Network is starting out to build a UK wide Mutual Credit economic platform - where value exchange can take place without fiat money (or blockchain :relieved: ).
At a wider scale, the Credit Commons whitepaper describes how such networks can be federated together), and the Credit Commons Org is building the technical underpinnings for such federation.
Sophie Jerram Wed 4 Sep 2019 8:05AM
In Wellington our Vogelmorn Community is working as an ongoing experience of commoning and community - in conjunction with, but not dependent on, local government
www.vogelmorn.nz
Danyl Strype Thu 9 Apr 2020 10:15AM
Hi @Maija Faehnle , sorry for the slow reply, but I can recommend a couple of resources:
Tazia Gaisford's Masters thesis, ' An Alternative to Development Framework: A Study of Permaculture and Anarchism in Global Justice Movements in New Zealand': http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10063/9/browse?type=author&value=Gaisford%2C+Tazia
Emma McGuirk's journal paper , 'Timebanking in New Zealand as a prefigurative strategy within a wider degrowth movement': https://doi.org/10.2458/v24i1.20897
If you contact Emma, I'm sure she would be happy to send you a .PDF copy of her PhD thesis, ' Timebanking in New Zealand: Academic and Activist Discussions of its Challenges and Pleasures': https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/time-banking-nz/
mike_hales · Fri 30 Aug 2019 4:45PM
Hi @Maija Faehnle no links to give you - others can do this better - but just wishing you great success with ‘vital and autonomous civil society’ in Finland. Yes, Fearless Cities @Graham is great. Yes, the Synergia MOOC @John Restakis is great - next time they run it, you and colleagues should consider participating - but be aware, it does require a LOT of attention and some filters in the first couple of weeks, until the forums settle down a bit.
Something you may be less aware of is the ecocities work of Chris Ryan and colleagues based in Melbourne. Finland is very different from Oz (urban vs rural mix?) so this might spin in an interesting way in Finland?
Goodness me, what a lot of blokes! 😉 Where are the women? How about here. Warm regards.