Commons Lab

We’re building an institution to act as a local social research lab, driven by need, rather than just ideas. The lab will look at commons governance and policies, developing scalable tools for ethnographic research, to work out what kinds of things communities need, how the commons can be framed, find any divisions in communities and how to build cohesion so that people can work together. 

It will involve specialists in social research, identity and culture, economic modelling and governance, as well as community-based practitioners. It will become an ecosystem, with community involvement, developing things for Stroud – but as models become viable, we have the infrastructure to distribute them more widely. We’re currently developing an investor pitch to kickstart the process.

If you’d like to get involved, get in touch.  

More info:

We are living through a polycrisis that no singular plan can solve. Its root lies in a financial and economic system that must keep expanding to survive; extracting wealth, concentrating power, and eroding the foundations of life. Our dominant institutions, shaped by this logic, cannot deliver the transformation required. Instead, real change must come from below—by communities that gradually de-commodify the essentials of life.

Corrective:

Across the UK, people are already creating local systems to collectively meet shared needs in food, energy, housing, care and more. This practice has deep roots: for millennia, such systems have existed as commons, based on shared control, self-governance, and long-term stewardship. Historically, when markets overreached and states stood powerless, the Commons resurfaced as a vital correction mechanism to restore social and ecological balance. Now is such a time.

Bottleneck:

Despite growing momentum, many commons initiatives remain fragile: often isolated, starting from scratch, relying on overextended champions, and lacking independent funding. This creates substantial risks: without strong asset locks, projects are vulnerable to market capture; without social cohesion and trust, they may fracture from within. In short, there is plenty of commons activity, but little commons infrastructure to sustain it.

Intervention:

Commons Lab (CL) is emerging to fill this gap. Co-initiated by experts in alternative finance and cultural systems, it aims to equip communities with the means to build resilient commons on their own. At the heart of our approach lies the Integrated Commons Toolkit (ICT), a novel design framework for durable commons built on three interdependent pillars:

  • Economic & financial mechanisms that decouple projects from extractive finance to ensure financial autonomy.
  • Legal & governance frameworks that permanently de-commodify shared assets and embed multi-stakeholder decision-making.
  • Social & cultural practices that sustain continued participation and trust—the lifeblood of every commons.

CL will develop robust, field-tested playbooks for key sectors of the “Commons Economy” which others can adapt and replicate.

Scaling:

CL bridges theory and practice through parallel R&D and field work: each model is co-designed and tested with partner communities; lessons from pilots feed directly into playbook refinement to ensure viability. Around this work grows a community of practice—experts, local partners, and future enablers—who adapt and apply in new contexts. Through open documentation, toolkits, and training, CL builds ecosystem capacity for replication and federation at scale.

Outcome:

Together, these efforts lay the foundations for a new-economy infrastructure from which a distributed network of autonomous yet connected projects can grow organically—forming a resilient, people-centred complement to market and state provisioning. This evolving “Commons Economy” is decarbonised, democratised, diversified, and decentralised.

Collaborative approach:

Our work draws on close collaboration with Mutual Credit Services (MCS) and Stroud Commons (SC). MCS develops the underlying mechanisms; CL turns them into working pilots; and SC serves as the living laboratory where they are tested and refined. The housing model now being co-developed with SC—becoming CL’s first playbook—will build on MCS’s LocalLoop Merseyside project for local trade, showing how the ICT framework can be applied across sectors.

What we seek:

We are looking for initial seed funding to accelerate the field work already underway, formalise the ICT, and expand our network of experts and partner communities to lay the groundwork for wider sector playbooks.