The Commoners’ Society open for applications

The Commoners’ Society is open for applications

Using visual, digital, and performative tools the Temporary Programme, The Commoners’ Society, at Sandberg Instituut proposes a new kind of metropolis that is focused on social interaction and equal opportunities over financial growth and profit.

The Commoners’ Society will look for new ways of living, making, owning, sharing, managing and maintaining; or generally for models for what we call “a new commining.” The proposals we develop will be manifold conceptual and hands on, and will always be tested “on the ground.”

The Temporary Programme will be contextualised by a theoretical reflection upon earlier utopian models and strategies and will have a wider public programme. It will be part of a larger frame where the University of Amsterdam, architectural platforms, the municipality, the project-developer, the building companies, etc. are involved.

Therefore the programme will be located at a yet to be determined Amsterdam urban development area where we will have our actual work and test terrain. The site-specific campus allows the commoners, who are the people that will live and work there, but which also includes the heads, tutors and students of the programme, who are artists, designers, researchers, educators, theorists and communicators, to propose models for alternative ways of living, leading to new urban landscapes.

The programme starts by building a temporary workspace for ourselves that is flexible and adjustable and makes crucial interaction with the surrounding living and working population possible.

The programme take as its departure point city-making structures such as General Management, Economy, City planning and Infrastructure, Arts, Culture and Sports, Housing, Employment, Health, Environment and Climate, Mobility, Public Space, Co-habitation and relationships.

The Commoners’ Society runs from 2018–2020 and welcomes applications from amongst others artists, writers, editors, theorists, curators, philosophers, sociologists, architects, activists, designers, dancers, lawyers.

Programme Directors - Alicia Framis & Lilet Breddels
Coordinator - Helena Lambrechts

Application deadline April 1, 2018, via sandberg.nl/apply