To readers of Lowimpact.org over the last 25 years: it’s all change. ‘Sustainable living’ – our angle in 2001 when we launched, no longer makes sense in this system (any more than ‘health & safety’ made sense on the Titanic). There’s absolutely no way to live sustainably within the current economic / political system.
So we’re joining forces with a group of organisations working to help build the only other system that makes sense – commons. We can’t vote for a new system, and we can’t overthrow this one – but we can build commons.
Over the years, we’ve built up a bank of 250 topics, each with 4 sections:
- What is it?
- What are the benefits?
- What can I do?
- Where can I find further resources?
For almost all topics, someone from the Lowimpact team interviewed a specialist and wrote the page, adding images, videos and links to more information, courses, books, suppliers etc., and we update pages constantly. But now the site is so huge, and with hundreds of new topics to add, that’s not feasible any more. So we’re putting the site into the commons – to form the basis of a ‘knowledge commons’, about community and household provisioning, as an alternative to corporations and the state, with a group of specialists for each topic, to curate the information via a wiki.
Commons
Commoning is an ancient practice, but has always struggled against ‘enclosure‘ by centralised power. Hundreds of years ago, that centralised power was represented by kings and aristocratic landlords, who kept peasant farmers off common land that their families had used for generations, by enclosing it for private use, driving peasants into urban slums and grim factory jobs.
Now commons is not just about land. Lots of other resources can be commoned too, including housing, energy, water, transport, broadband, data and care. But we have to beware of new attempts to enclose commons, by the centralised power of corporations and the state.
With new tools available in the 21st century, we can fight back against enclosure and build the basis of a new system, whilst preventing extraction of wealth from communities and building resilience against any dangers that might be coming our way.
For example, in Stroud, locals are building a housing commons (and a commons climbing centre), with plans to develop energy, water, land and care commons, and in Liverpool, a large credit clearing / mutual credit system (you could call it ‘finance commons’) is being developed – all owned by their communities in perpetuity, without any involvement with the banking sector. Everything is replicable and federatable, social franchises can be set up by ‘commoners’ in any and every community to build commons in all sectors, and we’ll help them with playbooks and advice.
Lots of commons (and commons-ish) infrastructure and organisations already exist, but corporations and states still dominate the economy. However, new tools that are being developed can boost the commons movement, and help commons initiatives grow exponentially to challenge the corporate system.
Growing the Commons
A group of organisations and individuals who are helping build commons tools have come together to launch a new initiative – Growing the Commons.
They’re hosting a Substack for blogging relevant articles, a knowledge commons as a repository of commons information, a forum for people’s queries, and an annual Festival of Commoning.
See here for a series of articles introducing the commons, the new tools being developed, commons case studies, and how we can grow the movement.
See here for more information about Growing the Commons, including the member organisations and the tools that they’re providing. More organisations will be joining as we grow.
We’re calling this new package of tools the ‘Integrated Commons Toolkit’. More details can be found here. We think they can really accelerate the growth of the commons movement.
Lowimpact is helping provide the base of the knowledge commons.
Knowledge Commons
The bank of Lowimpact topics is being made available for Growing the Commons to transition into a knowledge commons, after which, the Lowimpact site will be archived, but still available to view, with past comments.
Each topic will be curated (info will be updated, amended or replaced) by a team of specialist ‘stewards’, using a wiki. The reach will be global, and the governance structure will be sociocratic.
Specialists and organisations will have their own pages, all linked to from relevant topics. Visitors will see who the specialists for each topic are.
There will be links to the best sources of info, including suppliers, course providers, books, websites, videos, podcasts etc., decided collaboratively by the stewards. Lots of new topics will be added.
Some topics are commons-focused (eg housing commons); some are commons-adjacent (eg co-operatives); and many are about ‘household provisioning’, including construction, utilities, transport, crafts, food production and bushcraft. These household provisioning topics can be seen as ‘micro-commoning’ – providing things for ourselves in communities, preventing extraction and building community resilience.
Here’s an article by Simon Grant of the P2P Foundation Wiki about why we need a knowledge commons.
What you can do
Use the knowledge commons when it’s up and running. Meanwhile, Lowimpact topics will remain on the site.
Specialists in any of our topics – contact us if you’d like to be a steward.
Subscribe to the Substack and post queries on the forum.
Come to the Festival of Commoning in 2026. More information soon.
Contact us if you’d like to get involved – with the substack / interviewing, organising the festival, monitoring the forum, writing articles, helping with tech, marketing etc.
Spread the word – tell friends about Growing the Commons.
