About us

Stroud Commons is a group of Stroud residents who have come together to build the ‘commons’ economy in Stroud, and to document everything so that it can be implemented in other towns too.

Origins

In 2022, about 10 people started to meet monthly in each other’s homes, with food, drinks and conversations around old commons principles and new commons ideas about how to bring the essentials of life into community ownership, to build a resilient Stroud that can cope with any future disasters, and to provide affordability, security (of tenure etc.) and jobs.

Achievements

We hosted a couple of public events (around 80 people turned up), built this website and started blogging. This helped recruit more people – now we’re around 30 people, organised into 6 commons groups: housing, land, climbing, energy, social care and water.

We hosted the first ‘Festival of Commoning‘ in Stroud, and the first house has gone into the housing commons, with a waiting list for tenants.

Plans

Those sector groups (above) are sending a representative to a core Stroud Commons group that will start meeting monthly from Jan ’25.

Next year we hope to grow all sectors, open a commons climbing gym and buy more houses for the housing commons.

We’re liaising with people in 20-30 other towns, with a view to helping them implement what’s successful in Stroud. We’re partnering with a group in Liverpool, and hope to bring what they’re doing to the south-west (and vice versa).

We’re going to host more festivals, and build a ‘commons lab’ to design models for the commons in every sector of the economy.

There are some great people in Stroud working on alternative forms of governance, and we’re talking with them about bringing together governance and economic commons to learn from and support each other.