Building Commons Knowledge

The "Building Commons Knowledge" research project will build upon the success of AHRC-funded Contested Common Land project. It will create new pathways to both knowledge exchange and research impact through a programme of community workshops and commons sustainability workshops, and through the development of a new comprehensive online resource for researchers, community groups and public bodies with an interest in the history and contemporary sustainable governance of common land. It will create a comprehensive database and bibliography of commons available to all and will also develop a 'commons community history toolkit' of materials to equip local stakeholders and community groups to capture the history of common land. The project will also build upon the knowledge exchange developed by the Contested Common Land project, and extend it's impact by bringing its research outputs to a wider audience of key policy community members and stakeholders. Finally, the on-funding project will seek to foster sustainable self regulation of the modern commons by stakeholders, and will seek to promote a fuller understanding among key stakeholders of the interaction of common property rights with the legal and economic instruments used to promote sustainable commons management. The project activities will have two strands: (i) a programme of Community History workshops at which local community groups and commoners will be trained in the use of a community 'toolkit' for recording the histories of their own commons and (ii) two commons sustainability workshops focusing on the ecology of common land and its preservation, and on the role of common land in promoting sustainable rural communities. The project will culminate in a national Conference - "Sustaining the Commons"- for commoners, community groups, other stakeholders, the policy community and representatives of public bodies with responsibility for commons management. The project's work programme will be delivered with the active participation of two project partners - the Foundation for Common Land and the National Trust. The Foundation for Common Land is the national body representing commoners' associations in England and Wales and has umbrella groupings of commoners in four regions: Cumbria, Yorkshire, Wales and South-West England. The National Trust has, since its inception, been one of the largest owners of common land in England and Wales. The purchase and preservation of common land was one of the principal objectives for which the National Trust was formed and it currently manages 11 per cent of the commons in England. The promotion of the sustainable management of common land is a key policy objective of the Trust, and integral to its wider vision to promote sustainable rural communities. The Trust has a keen interest in new work that helps us to better understand the history of common land resources and how commons function in specific locations, and in work that identifies future management models that take us beyond the 'simple' model of National Trust ownership. The "Building Commons Knowledge" research project will explore these themes in close collaboration with the Trust.