AC Discussion | Common Good: A Primer on the Commons
On November 29th, Manne Cook and SaRena Freet sat down with Amanda Huckins, to consider ‘the commons’ more deeply and discuss the terms and social charters that help artists negotiate the often messy process of collectively managing shared resources for the wellbeing of the many, rather than the few.
Watch a video recording or read through the transcript of the full conversation below, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Title of Discussion: Common Good: A Primer on the Commons
Panelist 1: Manne Cook
Panelist 2: SaRena Freet
Moderator: Amanda Huckins
Date of Discussion: November 29th, 2023
List of Acronyms: [MC] = Manne Cook; [SF] = SaRena Freet; [AH] = Amanda Huckins; [PF] = Peter Fankhauser
Transcript
[PF] Welcome everybody. I think we’re going to go ahead and get started. My name is Peter. I work here at Amplify and it’s great to have you all here for tonight’s Alternate Currents panel discussion, Common Good: A Primer on the Commons with our panelists Manne Cook, SaRena Freet and Amanda Huckins. They’ll introduce themselves to you in just a minute.
Before that, for anybody who’s joining us for the first time, Amplify is a nonprofit arts incubate for just and equitable futures in Omaha, NE and Alternate Currents is one of our cornerstone programs designed as an alternative to a conventional MFA, in which cohort members work together to understand how justice in the arts is interpreted, documented, and enacted.
Tonight’s discussion is just one in a year-long series that investigates how regenerative economies and alternative modes of exchange and value creation might bring about more just and equitable futures; not just for artists but for everyone.
Our panelists will be in conversation with each other for 40 or 45 minutes before we open the floor to questions, but the Q&A and chat functions will be active throughout so please feel free to share your thoughts anytime.
I’ll also mention quickly that a video and transcript of tonight’s discussion with links to additional articles and more resources will be posted to the Alternate Currents Blog in a couple weeks. You’ll be able to find it, and a lot of other great discussions like this one, on our website at amplifyarts.org.
So, thank you all again for being here. We really appreciate your participation and willingness to engage in critical discussion with us. Thank you to the Sherwood Foundation, Nebraska Arts Council, and Nebraska Cultural Endowment whose support makes Alternate Currents programming possible. And with that, I’ll pass it over to Amanda.
[AH] Hi everyone! My name is Amanda Huckins and I'll start by introducing myself. I’m part of Amplify's Alternate Currents cohort this year. I am an early childhood educator, formerly worked in public schools, and now I'm self employed, taking care of babies. So I also have a massive interest in holding public spaces open for community use and experimenting with nontraditional relationships and cultural building. Manne, could you introduce yourself and talk more about the idea of the commons and how it plays into your work?
[MC] Sounds good. Hey, I'm Manne. I’m an urban planner. That's what I do as my main gig, but I’m also very active in the arts and culture arenas. The commons really ties into my work. It's pervasive, really, from an urban planning lens, when you look at how you plan, build, develop the spaces around you. And then also, in the arts, in creative spaces, it's about how you do the same thing. How do you define those spaces and give them meaning?
[SF] Hey, my name is SaRena. I run the Hot Mess, a bar in Lincoln. The commons mean a lot of things to me. I think, in general, it's about being able to create a space that's free for people to be, to exist. Sometimes it's temporary. Sometimes it can be a physical space, sometimes it can be something more fluid than that. I try to use the opportunity of having a physical space, like a bar, to do different things in the community, at no cost when we can.
[AH] I think that's something I want to dive into with this first question. We know that real estate is inaccessible for many, many people. Most members of the public can't access real estate ownership. SaRena, you mentioned you have the opportunity to have this physical space and you want to open it up. What are some ways to do that? Manne, I know you also have thoughts about this.
[SF] Yeah, so I will say sometimes it can be complicated at the Hot Mess because there's alcohol in the space. A lot of the times when we use it, like for community forums, we're not actually selling alcohol, there's just alcohol on the shelves. And so there are limitations around that, which I think is important to name. That just is what it is. In the past, we've hosted mid-morning, all ages, dance parties, for young people, and potlucks pre-pandemic. We have a bunch of games and there's ping pong, and a lot of interactive stuff for people to do. We support artists in different ways. We do some fundraising for First Fridays for Wild Learning, which is a democratic, self-directed learning space. We've done poetry workshops. We've packaged food in the bar. We've handed out and collected items for flood relief. Whenever it is helpful to have a physical destination for people for community project needs, or offer an opportunity for people to physically gather, we’re there.
[MC] I think globally too, in a lot of ways, when you talk about real estate and how that impacts the ways people are able to access the commons or access space, it's like who can access what, right? Where are your commons? Where are those places where people gather? What's the community in the commons? I also think a lot about opening up spaces, and I think that's where a lot of creative things happen in those spaces that are unused. Those, a lot of times, become common spaces. And to your point Serena, the idea of the “third space” also came to mind. Bars are third spaces where different communities come together, different groups that frequent those spaces. I also think of coffee shops. But then, what are those outdoor third spaces that can be considered common spaces as well? And do you have to pay to get in? What do you have to pay to get in? How else can you contribute to access the space?
[AH] The way the commons overlaps with business is really interesting to me. I don’t have a background in running a business or a nonprofit. So in the past, when I've participated in creating space, it's always been not up to code, kind of illegal, probably. And people will use it anyway. Because, for the most part, if something seems useful, it’s okay if it isn’t totally legitimate, as long as there's no damage being done. I'm really interested in this idea of how that model becomes more sustainable. I love this idea of third spaces that can be nominally owned and operated as a certain thing, but then in the off hours, be something else. I was wondering Manne, could you describe Fabric Lab?
[MC] So, Fabric Lab is an urban design lab and community hub. It focuses and centers Black spatial practitioners–urban planners, designers, architects–but also expands the idea of what that means. Everybody can influence their space, right? Whether it's creatively or the physical space, or being civically engaged in changing policies. The commons is not owned by one person, ideally. Sustainability and compensatory models should be built in, but then I think of some common spaces that are just a big party, and they’re temporary. You leave and they go back to being whatever. But anyway, that's what fabric lab generally is, a third space for people to use.
It's a program of a nonprofit called Spark, which is here in Omaha, where I worked. We acquired some buildings. One of the spaces housed emerging business, one housed larger business to create balance, because you have to at least break even ideally. And then with the third space, third space, we asked, how do we do community development in a way that is not extractive. If we have space and the community wants to do things, why not support the community to do those things? So that's how it came together.
[SF] I think the limitations and precarity of spaces held in common come down to practical things like, who's going to be on a lease? Is there insurance? Is this space accessible? Is it a physically safe space? And you start running into all of these questions that, in a capitalist arrangement, you can't really avoid. Sometimes you can slide under the radar for certain things for a certain amount of time but there is always a bureaucratic weight pushing everything down.
[MC] I hear you. I've gone into spaces and tried to utilize them for creative reasons and often what you find is dangerous. But not all the time. Sometimes places are just undervalued. Places like the “bad” part of town. Whatever town you're in, wherever you're at, the bad part of town is more affordable. And there are spaces that aren't being used, historically. Today, who knows. Spaces are at a premium everywhere. But I think those are the other spaces to look at.
[SF] I also think that brings up the idea of time and the temporality of the commons. Sometimes they're these really beautiful offerings and they're fleeting. And sometimes they can stand for longer. There is something about the natural fluidity of their lifespans that speaks to what the commons is and how it's sustained and ever growing and ever present and changing forever.
[AH] That's a really good segue into another question. I know the term “prefigurative” comes up a lot when I'm talking to people about the commons. Our society privileges private ownership, and it's hard to hold on to even government maintained public property. It's often not just about maintaining a commons, it's creating and constantly recreating and re-securing and protecting or rebuilding a commons. I think there's a lot of value in the example that a common space can provide as an alternative to a purely transactional, purely commercial, or purely private space. And I wondered if you could both share a formative experience with a common space that’s shaped your perspective?
[SF] I have a couple. I first began to think about the commons and common spaces, during the Occupy Movement here in Lincoln. For several months there was an encampment on Centennial Mall. And it was really the first time that I had been a part of physically holding a space for all sorts of conversations, all sorts of events. And that was also temporary.
[AH] Wasn't it also the longest running Occupy camp in the country?
[SF] Yes, it sure was. That was a really, really powerful experience for me. From there, Amanda, of course, was one of the main facilitators of The Commons, an actual physical space that used to exist in Lincoln. That was the other experience that was really, really meaningful to me.
[MC] You know, Amanda also had a special across the street for a while that I liked.
When I was younger, I stayed in this massive apartment building here in Omaha. And they had a courtyard and half courtyards on the outside of that. So there were kids playing in three different courtyards and the thing to do was play hide and seek. When I think of my first experience with the commons, I think that was it. A space that no one was using, but we were using it.
The second one that comes to mind is a building that used to be a bowling alley. This was a long, long time ago. For a while, the bowling alley was abandoned. And so we figured out how to have a clubhouse on the inside. That was the next commons. A place just because.
[AH] I can see your early experience of scoping out places nobody's paying attention to is still there.
I actually want to ask you to go a little deeper, SaRena and talk more about Occupy. What about being in that space felt really important?
[SF] I think it was the first time that people really began to acknowledge that they could make their own decisions and that we would collectively make decisions together. We sat down and we had community agreements, we discussed what behaviors were acceptable. We discussed what it means to be in that physical space together and to be in community. I think it was really powerful because it was the first time I really got a chance to practice that. We think about what it means to be in community, but a lot of us live in more isolated ways. And so I think, especially as adults, I think people kind of lose what it means to figure stuff out together, and be unsure, and make decisions using more democratic processes. I think it manifested in a lot of different ways, not just in the physical space, and the encampment, which was important, but it also encouraged people to consider how they move through the world more deeply.
[AH] What would it look like if the city was more of a commons?
[MC] I think of the Parks Department. But it's the same question, right? How are we going to occupy this space together? How are we going to live in this city together? How are we going to keep things functioning and not terrible?
[SF] And I think honestly, one of the things that can't be overstated is the Commons is held in community, and collectively, and it must be said that conflict will be there.
[AH] We have a question from the comments:
“Amanda, can you talk about how the Commons was established after Occupy and then establishing Media Corp as well?”
I feel like Occupy had more of a psychological impact. I was in Portland, Oregon when Occupy started and there was a camp downtown that got shut down fairly quickly and cordoned off. But I felt impacted by this idea that people who don't know each other already would gather in a physical space, and then get to know each other, and then share a lot of common aspirations and common complaints and that something could come out of that.
For The Commons in Lincoln, there was a group of six of us that had our eyes out for any space that was affordable. We came across this ridiculously big storefront that was $400 a month to rent.It had a giant basement and it seemed impossible that it was only $400 a month. It was in a neighborhood that was considered the “bad” part of town but that’s where most of us lived. So we rented it and ended up with twenty people sitting in a room for a couple of weeks talking through what conflict resolution would look like and how we'd pay for the space. It was that. It was getting to the point where we could offer space to others who needed it. It became more important in 2016 when people got really upset about electoral politics and were trying to figure out how to impact local politics.
I think that was my biggest learning experience. If you apply yourself with some friends and community members to hold a space open, it will fill with things. There's no shortage of important activities, events, and connections waiting to be made because they can't be made anywhere else. Even if it has to be in a subpar building and for a limited amount of time, it feels important to hold those spaces open.
Media Corp was the same thing. I needed a place to put these giant 1000 pound printing presses and I was renting an apartment in Gifford Park in Omaha and our landlords also owned this totally falling apart uninhabitable house. They were like, you can do art stuff there. And it was very cheap. But the most functional piece of either of those spaces was that there was a Google form that people could fill out and if you wanted to have an event, you just fill out the form. There was no money that changed hands. If you're going to be making money, we always ask for a free will donation. We'd have a fundraiser every year, and some groups who met regularly to help offset the rent and that’s how we kept it going. Finding cheap space is the key, I think.
[MC] Absolutely. That's the best type of space. There are some gems out there.
[AH] What are the first steps, just based on your experiences, for people who want to get together and buy a space or somehow secure space common space?
[SF] I think really the beginning is making some phone calls and asking people some questions. I find that that’s really the best starting point.
[MC] I think so. I think it's harder to acquire spaces. You have to find them and then find a group of people all willing to pay the rent, or whatever it is. To collectively purchase a space, then that's a lot more complicated. You have to contract lawyers, figure out shared responsibilities, and determine a structure for collective ownership. Do you have an LLC, or a corporation or something else? That is even more complex. Collective purchasing actually overlaps with real estate and development and things like that.
[AH] Does expanding the concept of ownership factor into your thoughts and intentions for your work? Whether it’s collective ownership or cooperative housing, what's standing in our way?
[SF] I frequently think about what it would mean to share ownership of all sorts of things, whether it be business, homes, community centers, anything. One of the limitations that I personally have run up against is that people just don't really want to take on additional responsibility. And I respect that. And I think that's okay to acknowledge people’s boundaries. That's oka, too.
[AH] What about the Tragedy of the Commons, Garret Hardin’s theory that commonly held spaces will eventually be completely destroyed, because anybody who has access to the space will use it up, because that's what people do. They're greedy. And they're jerks. Is that total crap?
[SF] Well, I think instantly it denies the reality of reciprocity and the relationship component of what it means to not only be in community with other humans, but also with the space that you occupy. And also, not everything has to be inherently resource extractive. That's sort of what his framing of the commons implies–the world will run dry. Elinor Ostrom pushed against that idea in her work. Really, if everybody is contributing, the world will continue to provide.
[AH] It's worth noting that this continent was a commons for millennia. And very well managed.
Maybe building relationships with the people in the community that are going to be using the space is a good first step. What besides making phone calls would you suggest if somebody wants to open like a commonly held community art space, for example? What are some like pointers, you could give to somebody who wanted to do that?
[MC] Do it. Find a space, start doing it, and see if anyone stops you.
[SF] You have to try it to find out if it's going to work!
I think I’d also say I think people worry about failure. If something sunsets or closes it’s as if it wasn't a success. I push back against that. Just because something doesn't last forever, that doesn't mean it wasn't an important endeavor, or that you didn't learn something, or offer something important to your community. There's a lot of beauty in that. Don't be afraid it won’t work out. You can always try again.
[AH] That’s a great place to wrap up. This has been fun. Thank you both so much.
*This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
About the Panelists:
Manuel Cook (Manne) is an urban planner and spatial practitioner from North Omaha who works to create vibrant places and more liveable built environments. Manne works closely with local artists and grassroots organizations to produce events, exhibitions, and creative placemaking projects. He is the Director of Urban Planning & Design with Spark where he specializes in the planning and development of projects that support more livable, people oriented, human scale places. Manne is a former neighborhood planner for the City of Omaha, studied Spatial Sciences at Rijks University in the Netherlands, and holds a Masters in Urban Studies from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
SaRena Freet (she/her) currently is a bartender at The Hot Mess. She is also a co-facilitator of mutual aid projects, political education and community spaces. SaRena graduated from UNL with a Women’s and Gender Studies degree.
About the Moderator:
Amanda Huckins is a Nebraskan poet whose work has been published in booklet form as "Trying to End the War" (merrily merrily merrily merrily, 2017) and featured in A Dozen Nothing (adozennothing.com), among other places on paper and online. In her weekday hours, Amanda is an Early Head Start educator and participates in building the brain architecture for social emotional and cognitive development in infants and toddlers. In addition to her paid work, Amanda is a grassroots organizer who works alongside fellow community members to build self-determination, forge non-transactional relationships, and create radical free spaces (such as past DIY spaces The Commons in Lincoln, NE and Media Corp. in Omaha). She is also a letterpress printer who produces posters and other ephemera in her garage print studio, where she teaches typesetting to anyone who wants to learn.