The Common Views collective addresses social-ecological concerns at sites-in-conflict. Our methodology of Environmental Reconciliation, which we have been evolving over the course of our work, in a range of sites and with various communities internationally, applies a post-anthropocentric Commoning perspective and a social-ecological re-framing in the context of arts engagement, as a way of working towards understanding, unpacking and redressing contested issues. We employ participatory strategies and aim for horizontality at all levels of a project, an approach that goes beyond project process and structure, forming a basic understanding that questions entrenched hierarchical attitudes of human vs human and human over nature. Our methodology engenders co-learning and calls for an alternative approach to curation, one that is centred on public engagement, mediation and process.
Our research at the SoC explores Commoning within engaged arts practice, asking how we can expand our collective's shared knowledge- and skills-space and broaden our collaborative learning, exploration, decision-making, creation and reflection, to increase shared-ownership of the creative process and its outcomes with project participants. Specifically, we set out to compile a toolkit of strategies, methods and practices that will facilitate our work as catalysts of a Commoning process, through labbing and reflection, applying the practice of Commoning to the process of examining our own modes of working and interacting as a collective, by engaging in a reciprocal and convivial exchange.
