Acts of Commoning: Workshop on Housing

Acts of Commoning is a series of gatherings on how to build community-led infrastructures for a better world. The events will be practice-oriented to exchange ideas in a playful environment with others, bringing together existing communities and campaigns and reigniting old ideas for a brand new world on fire.

Imagine if we could put housing, land, and institutions into common ownership? Custodianship, stewarding, commons — these are all terms we might be familiar with, but what do they actually mean? What would they look like in the context of Sydney? And what can we learn from where they have been tried and tested in other parts of the world?

Join us for a practice-led hands-on under-the-bonnet workshop and discussion series for how we can create change in a world on fire.

Learn about:

• How do we create a Community Land Trust?

• What other models for radical municipalities are being successfully trialled across the world?

• How has Blak struggle paved for the way for our collective liberation?

• How can creative play and radical games help us imagine-otherwise in a time of dark anxiety?

GUEST SPEAKERS

Louise Crabtree-Hayes is Professor at the Institute of Society and Culture, University of Western Sydney. Her work focuses on community-driven housing and housing innovation in Australia. She co-authored Enabling CLTs in Australia (2019), is a founding board member of the Australian Community Land Trust Network, and has advocated for Community Land Trusts since the early 2000s.

Lorna Munro, or ‘Yilinhi’, is a Wiradjuri Gamilaroi artist, producer, educator, poet and long-time active member of her Redfern/Waterloo community. Lorna's work is informed by well-studied insight in culture, history, politics, art and popular culture. She has presented widely, across the nation and internationally. In 2015, she was the sole designer and creator of Sydney’s (possibly Australia's) first initiative to teach Aboriginal language through poetry, in partnership with Red Room Poetry. Most recently she was the first Aboriginal Person invited to open Palestine Writes Literary Festival at the University of Pennsylvania.

Simone Parsons is CEO of Bridge Housing and Chair of Shelter NSW and the Community Housing Industry Association’s Domestic and Family Violence Community of Practice, and previously chaired the Social Housing Tenancy Advisory Committee (SHTAC) for Housing NSW. Simone was also Deputy CEO of Women’s Community Shelters.

Jess Scully is currently Executive Director of RadicalxChange and has served as Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, on the Board of Parents for Climate, and on Women for Election’s Political Advisory Board. She offers solutions to the climate and inequality crises in book, Glimpses of Utopia: Real Ideas for a Fairer World.

*Acts of Commoning is an event series co-produced by Artist in Resident Bek Conroy, and MAPA (Heidi Axelsen, Hugo Moline) for the Open Field Agency.