Episode 14: Participatory Commons: Living Maps for a Regenerative Future
with Jamaica Stevens, Jeff Clearwater and Keala Young
We are all intimately connected to each other and to life in many ways and making that visible helps us navigate in a more graceful way through the challenges of collaboration and team-building and community building as well as all the dynamics of start-up culture. The Participatory Commons is a ‘map’ as well as a manual that I’ve been using for a number of years as a way to tell a story to help us see how we can more easily play together. Given the times we are in, there is a cultural urgency to bring it out into our movements and communities because we need ways to increase our collective intelligence and decision-making with the whole in mind. The primary development of the Participatory Commons emerged out of Village Lab and the work of Jeff Clearwater along with Jamaica Stevens and Keala Young. All three of them are my guests for this episode. Jamaica Stevens is the Co-Founder of Open Future Coalition, developing social, technological, and economic tools for systemic change. She is also Author of “ReInhabiting the Village: CoCreating our Future”. Keala is a whole systems designer and regenerative practitioner with a background in the healing arts, pattern language and group facilitation. Jeff Clearwater is the cofounder of VillageLab and has enjoyed 36 years as a leader in intentional community design, appropriate technology, and new paradigm economics. He also co-founded the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and served as the Director at Sirius Ecovillage for 6 years.
In this conversation, you’ll hear how the deepest understanding of the principles of living systems can help us be better stewards. We believe in a thriving civilization and this is one of the trim tabs for supporting our process right now. Group forming is an ancient aspect of life, it’s at the foundation; it’s what we humans do. It’s humbling to see that we are still figuring out how to better coordinate with each other. We need all the tools we can get so we can activate our greatest social potential. The Participatory Commons is a tool we can all use for the essential community building that is needed as we stand together in cocreating our regenerative future. We are learning to think and act like living systems that ultimately can enable groups of different sizes to take on complex challenging issues and create impactful and empowering outcomes.
As you listen to our conversation, you will quickly learn that we all have a love of nature and the principles of living systems that inform how we work and play together. In our alignment and connection, we can behave more like a gorgeous super-organism and handle the metacrises with all our intelligence and wisdom fully online. In order to do that, we need maps and practices and worldviews that allow us to bring the lessons of nature more fully into our lives and learn together how we can work together more naturally and with less ego and shadow. The time of separation and fragmentation and competition must be left behind as we embrace a more life-giving operating system. We do this by holding to the ancient lessons of nature along with the insights of indigenous knowledge and the breakthroughs from cutting edge evolutionary biology.
I must apologize in advance that the screen sharing did not work as the settings on the back-end of zoom were not set properly. So you will need to click on the first link in the Themes/Links section below in the Show Notes to see the map. What a great lesson to learn.
And thank you for joining us and we welcome your feedback. Many of us are in these inquiries already and to have spaces to dive deep and explore together are needed, as incubators and living labs of the emerging future. All souls on deck is our mantra! You are so welcome here!
Bios
Jamaica Stevens is the Co-Founder of Open Future Coalition, developing social, technological, and economic tools for systemic change. She is Author of “ReInhabiting the Village: CoCreating our Future”, focused on village ethics and regenerative principles for social transformation and ecological restoration and a consultant and designer with VillageLab. As a social architect, facilitator, storyteller, and seasoned event producer, she leverages cooperative processes, living systems principles, and transformative convenings to empower people, communities, and organizations to THRIVE as social ecosystems integrated as a part of a Living System. Like a mycorrhizal function in an ecosystem, Jamaica strategically connects nodes within networks, weaving webs of reciprocal value, strengthening the capacity for coordinating global movements of locally based Planetary Solutions.
https:/openfuturecoalition.org
Jeff Clearwater
A. Keala Young
Keala is a whole systems designer and regenerative practitioner with a background in the healing arts, pattern language and group facilitation.
Keala is a co-founder of Atlan Community near the Columbia River Gorge in Central Cascadia and serves as a Network Steward Circle member and Regional Liaison to the Global Ecovillage Network representing North America.
Keala is a co-steward of multiple emergent Participatory Commons explorations including with the Collaborative Technology Alliance.
SHOW THEMES/LINKS
What is the Metacrisis, Here and Here, and Why It Matters
Pattern Language, What it is, Legacy of Christopher Alexander
Group Pattern Language - great tool for groups (and fun too)
Principles of the Commons, Prosocial Commons, Prosocial World
Story of Separation, Charles Eisenstein, video, book chapter
Regenerative Footprint
7 Core Needs, part of Eco-Governance Framework
Commons - Elinor Ostrom, David Bollier, Michel Bauwens
Rights of Nature Movement
Kinship Worldview, video and book
Sociocracy, Sociocracy For All, Sociocracy 3.0: Evolve Effective Collaboration
Compassionate Listening Project, Thich Nhat Hahn on Compassionate Listening