Hello,

Thank you for your interest in this event. I’m so glad you want to join with me to think about these ideas. In Commons of Care: a two-part event we’ll be exploring ideas and projects which are both old and new, stunningly necessary yet culturally obfuscated: they require some orienteering. I hope this letter provides some useful context before we meet.

I’ve thought hard about whether and how to mark the publication of the paperback of my book, Who Cares. Having the book out has been a great privilege, and it’s also been hard - talking about care, my own experience, and so on, as a ‘professional’ while being a human underneath. If I did anything to mark the paperback, I needed it to feel positive.

Fortunately, over the past year since it came out in hardback, I’ve noticed great interest from event audiences in the climactic and hopeful point of the book – the idea of a ‘commons of care’. Countless people have spoken with me after events, replied to posts on social media, or emailed through my website asking for more about this idea – more examples, more inspiration, more method…The start of this year has felt bleak for me, for several reasons, and so here we are, a marriage of my desire to contribute something small and beautiful in dark times, and your appetite to explore this idea. It’s a simple offering, and I hope it’s of some use and inspiration. I’m not trying to make a claim for any of these ideas, but to offer a kind of virtual agora for us to gather and explore together.

A commons of care

So what exactly is ‘this idea’? In Who Cares, I write variously of a ‘commons of care’, ‘kinning’ and ‘collective care’. Here are working definitions of what I mean by each (and this is not to suggest that what I mean should be definitional – it is simply what I mean, and I am always learning):

Commons of care – a commons is a resource stewarded and used collectively. Thus, it is both the ‘thing’ itself and the relationships and practices that surround that thing. The usual example is the ancient land commons where everyone in a village was allowed to graze their animals and about which they made collective decisions regarding maintenance and so on. Or, we could think of language as one – no one owns a language, but we all shape and use it. A commons of care riffs on this idea. As you may know from Who Cares, I come to the issue of care from a hands-on practical place, as the former carer for my mother. Care, in this guise, and in parenting too, is not a fluffy, nebulous concept, but a series of identifiable tasks. A commons of care, then, is a way of sharing those tasks collectively, making care an embedded and embodied part of our everyday lives, rather than an aberration pushed to the margins.

Collective care – ways of supporting each other in our communities, outside government-provided services.

Kinning (‘to kin') – creating and cultivating ‘family’-like bonds beyond the conventional biological-legal idea of the ‘family’ (what sociologists might call ‘fictive kin’ and LGBTQ communities often call ‘families of choice’). This is increasingly urgent in the context of shrinking and disparate biological families.

Under this rubric, forms of collective care and practices of kinning feed into and generate each other; in turn, they constitute the commons of care.

Living together in need and care

Living within the commons of care means being part of an ongoing web of support, one from which we draw during times of need, and to which we contribute during times of abundance. In this way, the commons of care approach does not simplistically divide us into powerful/dominated, able/dis-abled, needy/capable, but embeds the possibility that we will be all of these things through the course of our lives. ‘Neediness’ is not something pathologised, but a basic fact of human existence, as is care: our lives become a duet of the two states.

This idea, the commons of care, can manifest in a multitude of ways. Perhaps you dream of a literal concrete manifestation in the form of co-housing (which means living in combined private-shared housing – it’s not the same as a commune). If you’ve read Chapter 4 of Who Cares, you’ll have read about one pioneering example based in north London which I was fortunate enough to visit during my research – we’ll be meeting one of the women behind that project at the event. There are many more. I know lots of people are excited about this way of living and want to know the same thing I do – how do we make it happen?!

Or it might not entail large-scale projects and architectural endeavours, but be found in community-based structures which stretch across conventional spaces, like ‘care circles’, Hilary Cottam’s ‘Circle’ (which I profiled in Who Cares too and about which she writes in her own wonderful book, Radical Help) or mutual aid networks. We’ll talk about all these too.

The principles of ‘commons of care’ projects

To me, these ideas/projects all have some key principles in common.

1. They are expressions of our fundamental interdependency – the fact that we exist not as singular organisms but in an ever-needy reciprocal arrangement with everything and everyone around us. The natural reciprocity we might have found in previous eras is curtailed, constrained and suppressed by the way we live today.

2. They are redistributive – those with more time, energy, ability, etc, give to those with less. We do not assume permanence in either category of more/less – some people will have more in some ways, less in others, more at some times, less at others. In this way, it is a respectful, justice-based redistribution.

3. They require skills and vocabularies which we lack. These are things like articulating our boundaries about what we can give, facing our vulnerability by asking for help, accepting gratitude and so on. There’s much work to do in this regard.

4.  And finally, they operate outside government. This is not the same as suggesting we do not need government-provided services, like ‘social care’. I explain in Who Cares why we need a commons of care as well as government-provided services, and the role of government in enabling (but not controlling) collective care structures. I won’t restate the explanation here, but I will just say that it’s usually people who haven’t yet been carers (pre-carers, as I like to say) who feel confident that state services can cover our caring needs, whereas actual carers tend to see the reasons for my assertion…I also offer a reminder that government is not a friend to everyone, and so the idea of government-provided services as an ideal ‘fix’ is deeply political, about which more shortly.

Laying the seeds for practical, collective care

The thing is, these structures (or perhaps organisms?) only work if they’re cultivated over time. After one of my book talks last year, a well-spoken grey-haired woman came up to me and asked incredulously if I was suggesting that her neighbour washes her husband. Obviously not, but also, maybe?  

First, if you’ve been a carer, or presumably a parent, then you know that care is made up of a series of tasks, some big, some small, some intimate, some not, some requiring knowledge, others instinctive. Collective care structures can support us with the tasks that are appropriate, reducing our overall load. So no, your neighbour might not wash your husband, but they might do a food shop for you, or watch him while you have some much-needed social time, or be on your emergency plan in case you are suddenly ill or injured, etc.

Second, there is also a temporal (relating to time) aspect to collective care, impossible to capture in an elevator pitch and part of the reason for this letter. When we find ourselves in need of support, ideally we are not simultaneously attempting to make structures which give us that support. Ideally, we have prepared the foundations of networked support, and so when our hard time arrives, we can draw on that network. For this reason, some examples (like the ‘care circles’ or ‘sharing circles’ we’ll talk about in the event) may seem detached from intensive caring like parenting, or like the sort I did for my mum. But they’re not. They’re the seedbed from which practical collective care can spring, just when you need it most.

I find that many of us are terribly far away from having that seedbed and it frightens me, viscerally. But it also means that there is lots we can do, proactively and joyfully.

Some necessary context

I am not putting any of this forward with a pretence of novelty, nor that I am the only person working on and with this idea. I know this is counter to our dominant media-saturated, brand-building-obsessed culture. I should be laying claim to some ‘invention’, a ‘solution’™ about which I could give a TED talk. But no idea is new, and the ideas of collective care, of ‘kinning’, etc, have roots we must acknowledge here.

My own journey out of the illusion of independence and individualism came because of caring for my mother (as well as a horrendous break up which you’ll know about, a bit anyway, if you read the book). I realised that the way we were living was harming us – by us, I mean me and my mum, but also all of us too. One night at the hospital, my mum and I had been talking about my great aunt Coralie who was a nun, and how she’d spent her final, infirm years in a convent on the English coast. Her care was a sort of by-product of the kinning she’d performed for decades with other nuns, the convent an architectural expression of collective care.

From there, I researched all sorts of communities, including digging up out-of-print 1970s novels about women-only worlds and learning about the beguines, a movement of women in medieval times who lived in communal housing (Chapter 4 tells you about these intriguing ancestors). 

But just as I had my own pathway into these ideas, rooted in my particular heritage and experience, there is also a more general history to ‘collective care’. As I wrote in Who Cares (and as Leah Cowan has written about extensively in her excellent forthcoming book), marginalised communities and those who have been on the receiving end of state violence are the people to whom we must pay respect and, indeed, reparations, when we pursue collective care ideas. It is Black communities, LGBTQ+ communities, undocumented communities, unhoused communities, and others, in which collective care has had to exist, as a matter of survival. The fact that I took up these ideas in my thirties is a symptom of privilege, not a victory of invention. Rather, the practices of collective care among marginalised communities provide a rich, confronting and necessary education for those of us who, like me, are not marginalised by race or other ‘characteristics’.

This is not solely a theoretical point, but a very practical one. To take one example, there is a distinctive white middle class distaste with the idea of money within collective care structures. I’m not suggesting collective care structures should necessarily involve money (or should do anything, I’m much more interested in what’s needed which will be context-dependent), but I want to draw your attention to the fact that this distaste is only feasible in the context of i) affluence and ii) feeling safe relying on the government for grants. In this way, our personal characteristics – race, class, gender, other – shape our priorities and practices, just as they may have enabled us to realise the need for collective care only in the extremis of sickness or parenting, rather than as a condition of daily life. In Who Cares, I nest the commons of care within a broader series of policy interventions, relating to rights, income, working time and others, because the idea that we can all pitch in and create these structures within the current pressures of late capitalism is deeply problematic and blind to systemic injustices. I hope this explains why, if you pay for a ticket, you’re making built-in reparative donation to KIN as part of that cost.

Yes we want this, but how the hell do we do it?

Over the last few months of talking publicly about these ideas, I’ve been met with a resounding two-fold response: yes we want this, but how the hell do we do it? I’m wondering that too.

And frankly, the classic panel discussion doesn’t work for the kind of exploration and investigation we need. Nor do ‘book talks’, in which I am positioned as the Knower and you are the Receivers, a flawed logic mired in the very cultural issues with which we’re grappling here, as if the best things aren’t cultivated through iteration and collaboration. I have the time and resources to host this event, but that doesn’t mean I think I have the answers. I come, perhaps like you, armed with curiosity and the need for hope. I want to learn alongside you. So, I’ve made up this weird little event-thing which is designed to learn and explore, rather than know and receive. It looks like this:

Event Part 1, 2nd April, 7pm: Learn – we’ll hear from a wonderful, thought-provoking and deeply knowledgeable line up of speakers, and me, about projects and thoughts on this topic, including q&a. I’ll be gearing it towards practicalities as much as principles. I hope it acts as a kind of smorgasbord to whet your ‘commons of care’ appetite, and a portal to new things to discover.

After Part 1: attendees will receive an online form. This form is a space for you to share your further thoughts, questions, concerns, the themes on which you’d like to focus, the things you want to research more, whatever really. I’ll take a look at those (anonymous) forms and responsively design Event Part 2.

Event Part 2, 16th April, 7pm: Explore – there are no special speakers this evening; it’s just us, with me and another thoughtful human facilitating our space. We’ll design it to enable discussion of what you shared in your forms, taking us deeper into this territory, and pointing towards the future. If there are clear commonalities across the parts of group, I’ll create break-out rooms, and we’ll also have some time all together.

After Event Part 2: I’ll write up what’s come out of our time together and share it with all attendees, pointing the way to what’s needed next, sharing further resources, and whatever else seems appropriate in response to our time together.

At the risk of starting to write another book here in this letter, I’ll bring myself to a close. But I wanted to say all this so we’re starting off on mutual ground – or, at least, you know the ground on which I’m standing, and you can choose whether to meet me here.

I’m learning, always, fearfully/fearlessly, and I would love you to come and learn with me too.

Warmest wishes,

Emily

P.S. There are loads of amazing people, projects and organisations working on this sort of idea, sometimes in ways that directly align with my interests and sometimes in other, equally valid ways. I’m putting a list of links below in case you’d like to peruse other people and entities – they aren’t endorsements because I haven’t read everything they’ve ever said, but are shared partly as acknowledgement of their work, and partly because it might be enriching to look into them.

UK Cohousing Network – amazing org and online repository full of practical support for people interested in cohousing, something I intend to draw on heavily in my own future.

Carefull Economy – this is a new project and I don’t know too much about it, but it sounds interesting and thoughtful (and has gorgeous branding).

Paul Chatterton – he’s an academic and also one of the founders of LILAC, a cohousing scheme in Leeds. He’s published loads about this topic, often with a sustainability focus.

Social Care Future – this org is trying to challenge how we frame ‘social care’ – the ways in which we speak about it, the stories we tell, and how those shape our understanding, ideas and politics – something I also talk about in my book.

We are Carers – this is a campaign run by a family carer, Katy, whose story I told in my book. She sends out regular emails about all things unpaid/social care and is generally a good person to listen to about this topic.

Free, Fair and Alive – this is a very cool book about the commons, a radically different way of thinking about power, care and being human. I think (?) it’s directed at activists, rather than beginners. 

The Commoner – is an online magazine about the commons, basically, and has a load of articles here about care and the commons. It’s one for people who are more steeped in political theory and left-wing political campaigns than not.

Galdem – this media platform ran lots of articles about mutual aid over its years of existence, and they’re still available to read. I’ve linked one, but if you google Galdem mutual aid you’ll get lots more. They’re important for situating mutual aid in a context of racism and capitalism.

What other resources, people, magazines, videos etc have inspired you?