This year feels so full already and it’s only March. All the energy I would have usually spent on writing has been going towards moving country and relaunching the Common Knowledge website. Things are starting to feel a bit more settled this month though.
Some photos from this weekend.
We spent today cleaning up our garden and planting some seeds that Susana kindly gave us last weekend — tomatoes, butternut squash and zucchini — as well as some wildflowers and cat grass. The cat that regularly visits us watched us intently as we worked. Later in the afternoon, two new cats visited to investigate the changes too. We must be doing something right.
We’ve worked out (also thanks to Susana) that the yellow fruit is a loquat (nêspera is Portuguese). They taste very sweet and somewhat like apricot. H picked some and made them into a jam — two parts loquat to one part sugar and one part water, with lemon juice, cayenne pepper and rosemary.
We also planted basil, mint, coriander, parsley and thyme in pots to sit on our kitchen bench.
I love my riso-printed calendar by Lauren Doughty. Happy April!
A few weeks ago we visited Cooperativa Integral Minga, a multisector co-op in Montemor-o-Novo, about an hour east from Lisbon in the Alentejo region.
They have around 100 members across four branches: agriculture, products, services and housing. These branches run as autonomous working groups using sociocracy. They also have a number of elected administrative roles that make up their board.
Anyone living in the area around Montemor can pitch an idea to join the group, as long as their practice is in accordance with Minga’s values: sustainability and degrowth. Once they join, they can run their company through the co-op rather than individually, sharing resources and lowering costs for everyone. In return, 5% of each invoice goes towards Minga.
They have a small store in the centre of town where you can buy local and seasonal fruit and vegetables, groceries, ceramics and textiles from co-op members. The shop is a way of promoting locally sourced goods, fair trade and a circular economy. Everything is grown or made by hand, with natural materials and human energy.
On one of the shelves there are skeins of cream and brown yarn, produced by Suarda. Last year, two cooperators (Jorge and Telma) started the company, which is focused on encouraging fairer and more sustainable wool production from all angles: fair prices for producers, improved animal welfare, and a regenerative approach to environmental stewardship. It’s an attempt to create an entirely new value chain around wool and revive the national textile industry.
Around the corner from the store is the Espaço Integral, a coworking and event space which houses a communal library, seed swap and some wooden looms. Another cooperator (Teresa) weaves with Suarda wool there, sharing her knowledge with anyone who is interested in learning the craft.
For me, the fascinating thing about Minga is how it weaves together so many strands of life: from food to housing to work to education to health. They share the same cooperative values, but operate at a whole different scale to a worker co-op. Rather than focus on one industry, it’s possible to work in collaboration with many other in order to address issues across and between sectors, with a philosophy of degrowth underpinning everything they do. The people involved have such a wide range of expertise, sharing knowledge across different sectors and different generations. They are deeply rooted in Montemor, slowly creating a commons from which everyone can benefit.
I’m just about to start the Mobilising Hearts and Minds course initiated by Max Haiven and Sarah Stein Lubrano. We’ll be exploring the question “How can we change people’s minds and create the conditions where they not only support but join the movements for radical change we desperately need?”
I’ve been following Max’s work for a while and am in the middle of reading The Radical Imagination, so looking forward to a few months of guided study and reflection and conversation. I’m curious about how to learn from psychology / sociology / philosophy / critical theory and apply it to my design practice, given that a big chunk of my work is about motivating people to take political action and join movements.
I’m really happy to share that I joined the Centre for Other Worlds, a research centre for art and design initiated by Lusófona University in Lisbon. It’s a distributed network of designers and researchers, all of whom I deeply admire. They also publish a journal edited by Silvio Lorusso.
We value design cultures, but we approach them without devotion. Instead of celebrating the power of design, we focus on the power structures that, willingly or not, design reproduces. For us, more than a solution, design itself is a problem and a challenge.
I’ve also joined a local cooperative, Rizoma. It’s similar to Minga, which I wrote about previously, in that it’s a multi-sector cooperative with five integrated strands: consumers, services, culture, agriculture and housing. It’s based in Arroios with a grocery store, cafe and terrace at ground level, a co-working space upstairs and a cultural space downstairs. They also have two fledgling sector groups focused on habitation (campaigning against the housing crisis and setting up cooperative housing) and agriculture.