The Commons of Care: a springtime gathering
This article explains what happened at the Commons of Care event, including key themes and next steps
[Before I begin the main article, a quick note about this Substack. I’ve created it to have a repository for articles and thinking about the commons of care over the coming months, but I have no intention of making this regular or paid. I just want somewhere logical to put these pieces which aren’t appropriate for newspapers or magazines. So sign up if you want to be alerted about future articles (there will be at least one more between now and the end of May), but I promise, it will not become overly frequent.]
What does a ‘commons of care’ mean and how do we create it?
In April, I hosted an online, two-part event to explore this question.
It drew on the vision outlined in my Orwell Prize shortlisted book, Who Cares: the hidden crisis of caregiving and how we solve it, in which I explained why this approach is necessary, instead of solutions which rely solely on paid services, either from government or the private sector.
In brief, there are 5 core reasons why those options won’t suffice:
Bodies, especially when unwell and impaired, are unpredictable; planned services are …planned. There is no care system in which family/friends aren’t needed, even if just to step into the breach at unexpected moments.
People who receive care (which may be all of us at points in life) have the right to choose how that care is delivered. Many people (especially elderly people who have not needed care as younger adults) refuse paid care support because they perceive it as tarring them as needy, among other reasons. You can have all the dreams of a state-provided service you want, and then your mum/dad/whoever will simply refuse it…this experience is SO common among carers.
Many people who receive care need a loved one to advocate for them to paid services, and to project manage those services too. This is especially relevant for people with cognitive impairments, for example people experiencing dementia or glioblastoma.
Fourth, we love people, so we may well want to be with them, providing care in their time of need, at least some of the time, regardless of the external support on offer.
Finally, the state is not a friend to everyone. There are many groups of people for whom having a sort-of-government employee come into their home is not going to feel acceptable.
I go into more depth, with research-based evidence and real stories, in my book, so I won’t do that here, but this is why I favour the commons of care as an approach to addressing our ‘care crisis’.
Being a proponent of the commons of care does not mean there’s no role for a social safety net.
Instead, it’s a vital complement to that net, one which acknowledges the reality of how care occurs in human life and society.
I tend to notice that people who are, or have been, carers understand this instinctively, and people who aren’t, or haven’t, hope for a government-backed knight in shining armour instead. Maybe that knight will come some day. I don’t feel safe enough to wait, and I also know, for reasons one to five above, that at best, it’ll only be necessary but insufficient.
Over the past year since Who Cares was published, every time I spoke at events, people asked for more information, more ideas, more practical advice, to help create this ‘commons of care’ idea. And so, as winter came to a close, this springtime event was born in response to that desire.
It wasn’t about all the ways in which carers are erased, harmed, impoverished and broken by a culture and governing regime that actively abandons us. I go into that in-depth in the book.
Rather, this event was to focus specifically on these practical and positive approaches to building a better future of care.
A springtime convening: what happened, how it worked, and what I learned
We gathered twice. In the first event on 2nd April, we heard briefly from me, and then from four guest speakers, covering different manifestations of a commons of care: cohousing, mutual aid projects, and Hilary Cottam’s CIRCLE. This was intended to be stimulus and insight, whetting our appetite for deeper conversations.
My brilliant co-facilitator Brigid Reid and I designed the second event, 16th April, in direct response to feedback forms sent between the two convenings. We created breakout groups on the most desired themes, and also on issues which were raised but which hadn’t had much airtime.
About 70 people came to the first event, a great turnout from my perspective. The speakers shared a lot of information in a short time period – we could have heard from most of them for much longer and still had a world to learn. In brief:
Hilary Cottam gave us her insights into the different narratives of care, helping us to situate our own thoughts, before explaining her project, CIRCLE. In a nutshell, CIRCLE is 2 staffed freephone lines and a database. People in the designated local area are invited to join as members for a small fee (as she pointed out, this fee was desired by participants – they didn’t want it to be free, because they correlated payment with ownership – lots of consider there). As members, they got to call the phone lines for anything they needed, and the staff worked out how to get that need met, like a concierge service. CIRCLE also put on social events, but crucially these were determined by members not staff, the latter acting as ‘possibility makers’ (a term from my book) for the former, rather than imposing things on them. My love for CIRCLE comes from how it evolves over time – in her book chapter on the topic, she explains that after a while, the staff stopped being needed so much, because people had made new local connections and were self-organising…in this way, it acted as a catalyst for more mutualist, non-hierarchical approaches.
Maria Brenton shared her knowledge about cohousing as one of the foremost British experts on the topic and, importantly, an expert by doing not just by thinking. She explained the meaning of cohousing (you’ll know this if you’ve read Who Cares, but basically it means living in a mix of private and shared space – it’s not a commune), talked us through the origins of New Ground, and expanded from there on aspects of cohousing and the different ways in which people have made it a reality. She was joined by Jude Tisdall who actually lives at New Ground. Jude provided a wonderful description of life at the cohousing project, delving into how support for each other operates and why it’s such a nourishing and deeply human way to live. I particularly appreciated her honesty when talking about people finding their feet with each other – living in community takes time to figure out, especially when atomisation is the norm. Hearing how that’s improved over time is a great lesson for anyone thinking about this model.
Kennedy Walker introduced mutual aid as a way of meeting individual and collective needs, acting in cooperation over competition. I particularly liked their suggestion that the best way to approach starting a mutual aid group or network was to ask oneself, ‘what do I need?’ and build from there. Over the last year, I’ve encountered so many isolated and lonely people at book events who are currently being carers or are bereaved former carers. I always think that there’s just no way they’re the only person in their local area feeling like that. Mutual aid is about pushing past the boundaries of the nuclear household and the individualism we’re taught is normal and instead, reaching out and constructing something in common.
I didn’t think it was going to work
I’ll be honest, even though it was wonderful to hear from the guest speakers, at the end of the first event, I wasn’t sure if the format was going to work.
I could see from the attendee list that we’d attracted a dichotomous crowd; a mixture of people in the throes of caring right now (or recently bereaved), and a group of people whose interest is more theoretical or professional than personal, i.e. they’re academics who have some interest in ‘care ethics’ and the politics of care, or they work for an organisation that does something related to care.
Of course, these two groups overlap at times, but there is often a distinct difference in the thinking of people who are relatively untouched by the grind of intensive care versus people who are inside it.
This is partly why I’m so passionate about theory and policy being developed from lived experience (political theory folk might be interested to know that all my research and action is guided by Nancy Fraser’s politics of need interpretation and Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice).
I felt I should have made it clearer in my promo that I wasn’t trying to create a rarefied, academic space.
Instead, it was intended as a practical, learning-oriented space for people who might want to build something in their own lives, right now, most likely because they have a pressing need.
I’d do that next time, if I did it again.
I also felt like there wasn’t enough time for the q&a section. In some ways, this was intentional – after all, this was the first half, not the whole event, and the second half was where the discussion and participation was supposed to happen. But people aren’t accustomed to that format so it felt a bit like short-changing the attendees.
If I use this format again (or if you’re thinking of doing something similar), I’ll make it acutely clear that the q&a is just for asking specific questions of individual speakers, and bigger points are for part two.
However, by the end of the second event, all my fears were allayed: it worked beautifully, and I’m so grateful to everyone who came to it.
Thankfully, we had around half the turnout for the second part – any larger would have been unwieldy – a wonderful gathering of deeply curious people, angry at the current state of things and keen to consider alternatives. We focused on four areas: i) cohousing, ii) mutual aid groups and CIRCLE (put together because they have similarities, but differences too), iii) cultural courage and communications, and iv) the politics of unpaid labour.
Wonderment, starting somewhere, and prefigurative action
We asked people to come with a stance of ‘wonderment’ – this is Brigid Reid’s term, a joyful, expansive notion for which I’m so grateful to her. It’s a suspension of disbelief: we allow ourselves to open up to possibility rather than identify all the problems or reasons something can’t be or can’t work.
Of course, this is not to detach material reality, like poverty or racial injustice, from ideas, but rather to allow ideas a moment to be spacious so that we might do the work of imagining.
I’m reminded here of the gorgeous quote from Adrienne Maree Brown: ‘I believe that all organizing is science fiction - that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.’ Wonderment. Wonderful.
With this as our guiding principle, here are some of the themes that arose:
Intentionality – these projects, networks, groups, these new/old ways, do not arise by chance. They won’t ‘just happen’, especially in the political and economic climate we inhabit which teaches us their polar opposite. They require intentional action. This sounds obvious but unless we articulate it, repeat it, believe it, we don’t follow through. Of course, one of the problems for everyone (especially parents and carers) is lack of time, resources and energy. This is why thinking longer term is important – what can you begin now that means when it’s your turn in the extremity of care, you’re supported Etc. It’s also why support structures to help people turn these ideas into reality feel important, on which more at the end of this article.
Start small – everything begins with a a few first steps. When we’re talking about things like cohousing and mutual aid – projects which require resources, plans, people, all sorts – they can feel unwieldy, and thus, unrealistic. It’s vital to break them down into their small beginnings. In the mutual aid breakout group, I shared a checklist for the steps to start a mutual aid network, drawn from this great toolkit by Mariame Kaba and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and a bit from Dean Spade’s short book on the topic. Breaking down a seemingly nebulous and new-to-some notion into actionable steps showed how these things become possible. It was exciting to hear some of the attendees thinking aloud about taking those first steps. Imagine what that could look like a few years from now!
Relatedly, the cohousing breakout group spent some time being shown the UK Cohousing Network website by Brigid Reid. The Network has a wealth of resources and guidance, as well as an interactive map of cohousing projects across the UK and a database to which you can sign up if you’re interested in starting one yourself. It stops cohousing seeming like pie in the sky, and instead turns it into a genuine possibility. For me, that strikes right to the heart of what this event was about – let’s move from dreaming to action.
A few people brought the need to be i) intergenerational and ii) not urban-centric in our thinking. I really appreciated this corrective – I grew up and now live in cities and am definitely at risk of only thinking in terms appropriate for that lifestyle. I suspect the intergenerational concern was because, in the first event, we heard from two people involved with the dreamy New Ground cohousing scheme which is for older women only, but many cohousing schemes are not age restricted, and many mutual aid groups are predominantly ‘young’ if anything. Nonetheless, it’s a useful thing to bear in mind; if we construct projects purely for those most likely to need more care, what does that end up looking like in terms of energy and ability? I know New Ground itself has been thinking about this, actively recruiting younger (50s) women to its waiting list (I’ll be signing up when I’m old enough!). Attendee Emily spoke insightfully about the problems with transposing these methods to rural areas, leaving us wondering how it might work where there are few, and disparate, people? I hope we’ll find out in coming months.
The C-word. Capitalism. Of course it was raised, and as attendee Cas put it, “much of this can’t happen until capitalism is no longer king”. I agree entirely, but also believe in the power of ‘prefigurative action’ – this is action we take now, despite our conditions, which ‘prefigures’ (is an early version) of what will come in the better future. We become the example from which other examples spring. Relatedly, people raised issues like the pension age getting older, working weeks, income etc, as constraints on what’s possible now – all very true, and why ‘care’ is not a singular cause, but part of a much wider political project. I loved discussing this facet because too often, political conversations about care (especially about ‘social care’) pretend that care is a singular cause, separable from everything else. But it’s not. Care nests within the rest of life, and so it is enabled or constrained by time, energy money, and so on. It was great to see our narrow conversation about the commons of care broadening into this systemic awareness.
There is a role for listening, without advising or doing, in amongst all this. One of our attendees, Brigid Russell, has co-created a project focused called Spaces for Listening (see resources section at the end too). It was discussed at the event in terms of creating more in-depth spaces where people can share what’s on their mind – this, in turn, perhaps leading to clarity, solidarity, change and/or action, to “the quiet wondering that can lead to connections you didn’t know could exist” (Brigid Reid)
We also talked about something which gets right to the core of all of these ideas: that ‘need’ is pathologized in our culture, and this creates all sorts of problems when it comes to giving or receiving care, asking for support and so on. In part one, Hilary Cottam had shared that CIRCLE had to provide two types of membership – member and helper, because men would only join if they could be a ‘helper’… There was also an interesting, brief discussion about some people being happier to be helped than helpers and vice versa. I’ve actually noticed this a lot at book talks – you learn a lot about people’s personal narratives by the questions they ask or comments they make at signings…I remember especially one woman talking to me after an event here in Edinburgh – she wasn’t at all sure about my vision because it required too much ‘airing of dirty laundry’ which was how she framed receiving help…to be honest, I just felt sorry for her, because that way of thinking leads to loneliness and over-burden. But back to the event! The Cultural Courage breakout group talked about seeing your needs as the needs of the ‘we’, rather than of the ‘I’ – i.e. we are all part of a human web, one which flexes in different ways at different times, the ebb and flow of the collective human life. Your needs stop being your own shortcoming (which is nonsensical anyway) and instead an expected and natural part of the way of things. In Who Cares, I quoted the care theorist, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa who describes the human condition as “a thick mesh of relational obligation.” In that sense, our need is not some sort of failing of our own, but part and parcel of existence, and inherently interwoven with all the other needs around us and over time.
The second event concluded all these rich and broad discussions with a truly moving, exciting, energising and generative go-round of everyone present, in which we all completed aloud the sentence ‘Based on what I’ve heard this evening, I’m going to put my energy into [blank].’
It was brilliant.
I started noting down what people said about halfway through, and you’d be reading this all day if I wrote them here.
Everyone had something they were going to think about, read about, contact, initiate, plan, seek out… everyone moved forward in whatever way was best for them, and that, to me, was beautiful.
Since the event ended, I’ve been sitting with a couple of additional reflections, and I share them here, partly to situate my work and partly in case it’s useful for other people’s thinking and acting.
The risk of voluntarism and the role of political education
When you convene a space without restricting entry based on knowledge, experience, characteristics, political background etc, it can be tricky to speak and facilitate in a way which holds that breadth.
In this event, it was clear that there were some people deeply versed in the principles of things like mutual aid or feminist care ethics, and other people meeting them for the first time. This meant, at times, conversation shifted from a solidarity-based model to a more charity-based and voluntaristic one – that sentence only means anything if you already know stuff about mutual aid practices! If you don’t, they can sound like the same thing.
A specific example: time banks were raised as one way to get people to share support in their communities. Now, if you’re familiar with mutual aid practices, then you’ll know that these are very different approaches. Time banks are inherently a transaction-based model (you do an hour, you get an hour) whereas mutual aid is about ‘generalised reciprocity’, a term I explain in Who Cares but basically means you don’t expect immediate reciprocity.
I found I had to make continual choices about whether to encourage or to instruct, and I chose the former, partly because that’s how I think people learn best, and partly because I have no idea whether the attendees agree with anything I think so it would be inappropriate to become didactic. This meant we had quite a jumble of principles and ideas at some points, but that’s just the nature of these sorts of discussions and spaces and, perhaps, their value too.
On time banks versus mutual aid, it was really interesting to hear that the person proposing time banks (I’m sorry, I didn’t record your name) had worked on several and that, in her experience, the transactionalism stops being so relevant. People begin simply giving or receiving, ignoring hours accrued or required. The time bank construct was actually acting as a legitimising factor, enabling the emergence of a mutual aid style approach. I wonder about the theory of change here – could time banks (and Cottam’s CIRCLE) be used to instigate the kinds of practices we desire, formal catalysts that give way to the informal, or would they actually just be obstacles to such an ideal? I have no idea. And having no idea is why I love convening spaces to learn.
Overall, this melange of people and perspectives made facilitation feel a bit like walking on a tightrope during unpredictable gusts of wind.
I can see the value in spaces which are more clearly delineated, but I’m also deeply passionate about everyone being allowed to learn and discover from different starting points (including myself). We all have different histories. I adhere to the etymological root of ‘to educate’ – to bring out, not to drum in, and viewed the Commons of Care event as a way to encourage exploration, listening and initiation. Wonderment, preceding ethical action, perhaps.
The pull of the saviour ideal
Wow. It was SO hard to maintain the focus on the commons of care, rather than be drawn into conversations about the government and what it should or should not be doing. This was very interesting to me and honestly, a bit frustrating. I’d tried hard to demarcate the space as explicitly not about government policy – in the letter I published in advance, online on social media ahead of the event, in everything I said in welcoming remarks, in facilitation etc. I don’t think I could have been clearer yet so many times, conversations and offerings veered back to it. I’m learning 3 things from this aspect:
People have a lot they want to say about care and government policy, totally understandably, so if you make a space to talk about care, then people simply will talk about that! I’m putting some links in the resources if that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s not what I’m trying to do here.
Activism can occur in many ways but has become limited in many minds to targeting government and official policy alone. Creating projects and structures in our communities is also activism – we choose to act in solidarity with each other, against the isolationism and individualism of our reigning culture, building a future of justice and support. I wonder if, for some people, it feels more straightforward and fulfilling to advocate to government, because it’s formalised, professional-ish, and there’s a clear site at which to direct anger and frustration. Again, if that’s your jam, great, it’s much-needed! See the resources section at the end for places you might be keen to get involved with. But it’s not here.
I think it’s simply more difficult to see ourselves as part of the solution than to hope that a solution will come from on high. Right now, so much of what we’re doing is what an attendee called ‘waiting with hope’ – for a new government, a new party leader, a new whatever. And this is cultural. This is what we’re taught. Capitalism, ‘representative’ government, even royalty, all teach us that there are certain high up repositories of power and it’s to those we must look for change, for help, for salvation. This is a particular belief system, not ‘truth’. And it has really well trodden pathways laid out – make a petition, start a campaign, do a photo stunt outside parliament, lobby local government, and so on. I know that – I did it for years. But it disempowers us, renders us without agency, and when that hope never turns into success, where are we left? I choose now to focus on us instead, as holders of silver particles that need to be joined and fashioned into something effective, rather than focusing on them, the alleged silver bullets than never quite seem to arrive. This is my approach (and it could probably be best understood as ‘abolitionism’ if you’re into political terms). If it’s not yours, that’s cool, and I hope we can collaborate and support each other effectively without judgement.
What next?
So, what next? There has to be a next. No one, I think, could have left the second event without feeling that way. The energy. The interest. The commitments. The need. What next?
Some of what comes next has nothing to do with me. It’s about you. What will you do? What is your first-small-step and then your second-small-step? Which resources at the bottom of this page are calling your name?
For my part, I have three next steps professionally, and one personally:
Research: I’m excited to share that I’ll be conducting a couple of small research projects on unpaid carers in the second half of 2024. I can’t say much yet – more to come, but I’ll be recruiting people (paid, a small amount, but still!) for that, so if you’re a current carer perhaps watch this space. This research will help make more of an empirical case for why a) carers need better government support and b) we need to think about commons of care approaches too.
Thinking: I’m going to publish an article here about why we need a typology of care scenarios – I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few months and the event really hit it home for me. So look out for that in the next handful of weeks - I’d love to know your thoughts once it’s out.
Action: Now this is an exciting one.
Exciting in the best way; half scary, half invigorating.
Through the course of the Commons of Care event, I realised that sharing information about these approaches is necessary but insufficient; people need active support to get going, to troubleshoot and to continue. So I’m working on an idea for a Commons of Care Incubator (not sure about that name yet, suggestions welcome!) – a very limited number of people will be invited to apply, each of whom want to start, or have already been creating, a ‘commons of care’ project.
In the incubator, or whatever it gets called, we’ll meet online once per month for 7 months through October to April, using a simple but effective process known as ‘action learning’ to provide collective support and accountability, to troubleshoot and to learn together.
The result?
Seven more projects exist or are strengthened, lots of collective learning, and a small but beautiful step forward to a better world. If you already know you’re hoping to set something up, or you’re already involved with something which you’d love to bring to this group to get insight and encouragement, then please follow me somewhere (sign up here, or follow me on social media, or sign up to my not-a-newsletter box at the bottom of my website www.emilykenway.com, just go somewhere and you’ll see me post about it!) and then you’ll get the information when I release it - it won’t be until the late summer, I think).
This will be a deliberately small, precise intervention, and I’m so excited by it – I hope some of you are too.
In my personal life, perhaps like lots of you who came to the event, I’ll be focusing on my own kinning practices (a word you’ll recognise if you’ve read Who Cares). I recently co-created a sharing circle with a friend here in Edinburgh, so I’ll continue nurturing that, and I also hope to make more time for friendships over the summer than I have recently.
What about you? Where’s your commons of care energy going?
Thank you so much to everyone who was part of this weird and wonderful event, for bringing your curiosity, your anger, your energy. Here’s to a better world, step by tiny step.
RESOURCES
If you want to get involved with campaigning to government and other official institutions, try these:
· And other mainstream charities like Oxfam periodically pay attention to care and produce relevant reports etc
If you want to get peer support for the emotional struggle of care, try these:
· Carers UK care for a cuppa groups
· Mobilise
· Check out Facebook and other online forums – there are TONS of groups for carers where people pour their hearts out and get support
· Macmillan (cancer specific, I imagine charities focused on other ailments have equivalents)
· Your local community centre or similar may have something already
· Consider joining one of the #SpacesforListening convenings – there is more about this here where you can also contact the project creators) and you can contact Brigid Russell on Twitter/X at @brigidrussell51.
If you want to learn more about mutual aid:
· Read Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, pleasingly rhyming eh
· Toolkit here – US focused but I recommend the approach of ‘how can I adapt this’ because there’s plenty that’s useful
· Truly, google ‘how to start a mutual aid group’ and you will find SO many resources
· I also recommend looking to see if there is one in your area already
If you want to learn about CIRCLE:
· Read the relevant chapter in Radical Help by Hilary Cottam
If you want to learn more about cohousing:
· The UK Cohousing Network site is WONDERFUL – see the resources page, case studies, the interactive map, guide, etc etc etc
· The New Ground website is here
If you want to understand more/find solidarity about caregiving and about the ‘commons of care’ concept… read my book ;)
If there are other institutions, groups, books, resources you think should be listed here, feel free to add them in the comments.