The commons?
That's what I've been pondering today after a wander to the allotment again with food waste and time to do a bit of clearing to tend to the beds in preparation for seeding early next year. We all 'share' the earth as our home, yet how each of us is able to engage with the commons is so vastly different.
Being able to have the privilege of access to an allotment, after being on a waiting list for 18 months and being able to afford the time, money, and energy to tend the amount of allocated/allotted land has really got me thinking about what 'common' land is/was and could be...
I used to go to the Common near where I grew up for a bit, know a very small amount about the Enclosures Act, and the creative commons options for creative work, but what really is the 'commons'?
What do I have in common with you? What stops us from finding things in common? How can we each creatively engage with a deeper relationship with the commons without doing harm?
Interestingly the allotment I rent beds on was reclaimed on a brownfield site after housing clearance and on looking up the Enclosures Act via Wikipedia
"Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste".[b] "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as pasture, pannage, or estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally) in gross by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and so forth. "Waste" was not officially used by anyone, and so was often farmed by landless peasants.[3]" Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts