Our Activities
Commons Lab connects theory, practice, and learning through three complementary workstreams that support the development, testing, and replication of viable commons-based systems.
1. Research & Development
We transform abstract ideas into practical, working models tailored to key provisioning sectors.
2. Pilots & Field Work
We test these models with partner communities and translate lessons into field-tested playbooks.
3. Learning & Capacity Building
We provide training and guidance so others can adapt and replicate these models in their own contexts.
Research & Development
Our R&D work integrates existing theory, mechanisms, and tools into practical commons models that are ready to be used in the real world.
At the core of this process is the Integrated Commons Toolkit (ICT), our holistic design framework for developing robust commons projects. By combining multiple dimensions into a coherent structure, it helps ensure that key design choices reinforce rather than undermine one another.
Legal & Governance
Assets protected for good
Structures that permanently lock shared assets under community control, guarding against capture, mission drift, and short-term commercial pressures.
Social & Cultural Practices
The living core
Practices that foster trust, build shared identity, and sustain the active member participation that every commons depends on to stay alive.
Economic & Financial
Funding without extraction
Mechanisms that raise funds without conventional equity or debt, keeping value circulating within the community rather than leaking outward.
This article offers a general introduction to some of the tools and mechanisms we’re using. If you would like to learn more, please get in touch.
Applying the ICT to specific areas of commoning
We then apply this integrated design logic to specific provisioning sectors, such as housing, energy, food, water, or care. For each essential sector, we aim to develop a tailored core model that can be adapted, fine-tuned, and modularised for different contexts without losing its essential protections.
We do not start from scratch. Nor do we work alone.
Instead, our R&D consolidates and synthesises existing mechanisms, tools, research, and practices into coherent designs. This work is inherently collaborative and interdisciplinary – bringing together researchers, practitioners, and domain experts into focused working groups that help test assumptions, refine designs, and ensure models are both conceptually sound and practically usable.
Interested in contributing to commons design?
Our R&D brings together researchers, practitioners, and domain experts to work across disciplines in developing and refining commons models. If you’re working on related questions or approaches, let’s connect.
Pilots & Field Work
Commons Lab is also an engine of practice, not theory alone. Our models only matter if they work in the real world – for real communities, meeting real needs.
We partner with local communities to turn our sector models into actual practice. These targeted pilots act as living laboratories, allowing us to test assumptions under everyday conditions – socially, economically, culturally – and to learn directly from what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Our role is not to run projects ourselves. Instead, we offer strategic co-design and early-stage implementation support to locally embedded partners who lead mobilisation on the ground, helping them develop and establish projects with long-term viability. From the outset, the aim is to build local capacity so that projects can be governed, operated, and sustained autonomously by the community itself.
This field work generates multiple outcomes at once:
Practical feedback that strengthens our core models;
Field-tested playbooks and shared lessons made publicly available for others to use; and
Flagship projects demonstrating the tangible benefits that commons-based provisioning can deliver in practice.
Successful pilots help other communities imagine, trust, and take up similar approaches in their own places, lowering the barriers to action.
Current field work
We are currently collaborating with Stroud Commons and Mutual Credit Services on three separate projects.
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The Stroud Housing Commons is an early pilot for a permanently decommodified model of community housing, with a novel funding and governance structure designed to align the interests of tenants, investors, and operators.
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Local Loop Merseyside is an advanced pilot in Liverpool positioned to become the UK’s first clearing club for small and medium-sized businesses, with a clear operational model to reduce late payments, improve cash flow, and strengthen local commerce.
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The Stroud Climbing Commons is a community project nearing launch as the first climbing gym run entirely on commons principles, providing a reference model for future commons-based recreational services.
Have a project in mind?
We work with partners on early-stage projects to co-develop, test, and document commons approaches in practice. If you’re curious about exploring a pilot, a design collaboration, or a learning partnership, we’d welcome a conversation.
Learning & Capacity Building
Commons Lab works at the ecosystem level. Rather than scaling ourselves, we focus on creating the conditions that enable many independent initiatives to succeed in parallel.
We make field-tested playbooks, shared lessons, and practical guidance publicly available and free to use, lowering barriers for communities and practitioners to take action. Over time, these materials form a growing portfolio of practical, use-oriented resources spanning a broad range of sectors, starting from our pilots and expanding through selected case studies from other successful projects.
Beyond open resources, Commons Lab also focuses on building deeper capacity within the ecosystem. We cannot support every project ourselves, yet communities often require hands-on support tailored to their specific context. To address this need, we work to cultivate a distributed network of trained enablers and support organisations who can accompany projects through co-design and early implementation stages. Here, Commons Lab plays a stewarding role: helping maintain shared standards for quality and safety, without centralising control
While not a primary focus, Commons Lab also engages in targeted knowledge-sharing and advocacy where relevant. We bring practice-based insights into conversations with public bodies, funders, media, and the wider public, to help establish the Commons as a credible and viable way of meeting shared needs.
Open resources. Responsible replication. Expanding awareness.
Looking to apply these approaches in your own context?
We offer guidance and practical resources to help communities, practitioners, and organisations adapt commons approaches to their needs. If you’re exploring how this could work in your setting, we’d be glad to hear from you.