SoC Summer Newsletter ☀️
Before we pause for our summer break, we’d like to share a few highlights from the past month, reflect on what we’ve created together, and share a glimpse of what’s ahead.
From gatherings in Geneva and Zurich to new collaborations, public programmes, and opportunities to connect — thank you to each and every one of you for continuing to shape School of Commons with your curiosity, generosity, and care.
This July, we began our annual Gathering with a visit to CERN IdeaSquare in Geneva, continuing our collaboration with CERN for a second year.
Across four sessions — three online and one in person — participants worked in interdisciplinary teams, co-facilitated by CERN and School of Commons, to imagine bold responses to complex societal challenges. Together, they explored what it might take to build a new society from the ground up, considering questions of governance, education, healthcare, infrastructure, ecology, and collective care.
During the in-person workshop at CERN, participants also met students from the Stony Brook Center, who were exploring related challenges in parallel. The exchange created an opportunity to share perspectives across disciplines and institutions before travelling together to Zurich for the School of Commons Gathering.
🌱 School of Commons Gathering
Our community gathered at Zurich University of the Arts to share practices, exchange methods, and reflect on what it means to learn, create, and organise in common.
Over four days, we shared conversations, workshops, walks, meals, moments of experimentation, and quiet reflection.
What stays with us isn’t simply the programme, but the generosity, attentiveness, curiosity, and openness everyone brought. Thank you for showing up with your full selves and for helping to create a space where learning could unfold through trust, care, and exchange.
The Gathering reminded us that School of Commons is more than a programme—it is a community shaped through relationships, mutual learning, and collective care. Our deepest thanks to all the participants who brought their curiosity, generosity, and practices into this year's Gathering: Sabine Hagmann, Susanne Hofer, Mary O’Neill, Paul Alexander Stewart, Anouk Hoogendoorn, Elvira Koroleva, Manning Dong, Marilyn Nova White, Chengwei Xia, Huiqiao Qiu, Shuhao Lin, Songzi Wang, Xiyun Tan, Gu Qiu, Rok Kranjc, Pablo Somonte Ruano, Marianna Stefanitsi, Pakhi Sen, Martha Oelschläger, Johanna Ackva, Lotta Beckers, and Eliana Kirkcaldy.
→ Explore the SoC Cohort 2026 projects, profiles and contributions.
☀️ Summer Break
School of Commons will be on summer break until 17 August.
We’ll return in September with a new season of public events, peer-learning sessions, conversations, and opportunities to connect.
Coming Up
💌 Long-Form Interviews Return with Lena Pozdnyakova
A space for sharing the thinking, practices, and questions of School of Commons alumn* in greater depth.
The first conversation explores something fundamental: Food as Commons.
In a fast-paced world, food is often treated as a commodity or simply a means of sustenance. Yet food can also be understood as a commons — a shared cultural practice that passes on knowledge, builds relationships, and creates new ways of living together.
We speak with Tunis-based Cyrine Ghrissi about the Broudou School project and how food sits at the intersection of socially engaged art, situated pedagogy, and community organising. Developed alongside an online exhibition in collaboration with Studio106, the conversation explores food as a medium through which histories, ecologies, memories, and political realities are shared, negotiated, and reimagined. Together, we reflect on collective learning, local knowledge, and the role of artistic practice in cultivating more just and connected futures.
🌊 Previous Interviews on Substack:
Care(fully) Following the Salt Traces Standing “ashore,” dives into questions of water, bodies, culture–nature relations, and artistic practice with Salt Traces, a collective formed by several School of Commons Alumn*.
👾 Autumn/Winter Programme
1 September — Making Public: Ways & Workings A public workshop led by Amy and Chantelle, exploring the methods, environments, and themes that shape School of Commons.
15 September — Peer Learning Session: TEXT ONLY HOME PAGE Facilitated by Sasha Kurlyka. This skill-sharing session is for multi-disciplinary artists interested in exploring text-based computer art and web interventions.
29 September — School of Commons Town Hall Join us for an open community conversation where we’ll share updates following the Open Letter, reflections on where School of Commons is heading, and insights from our work mapping the funding landscape — with space for questions, discussion, and collective thinking.
13.10.2026 — Feedback Session: Counter Care Facilitated by Loren Beard and Sheila Shankar. Counter Care attends to the subversive, relational practices that sustain life under conditions designed to exhaust it—working in response to systems that unevenly distribute care, merge it with coercion, commodify it, and sustain it through devalued labour.
24–25 October — Play for the Commons Florence In collaboration with School of Commons, Alter’azioni Firenze is inviting proposals for participatory games that explore commoning through play. They’re looking for playful, collaborative, and non-competitive formats that cultivate trust, belonging, and collective imagination. Proposal deadline: 7 September → Submit a proposal
10.11.2026 — Peer Learning Session: Queering Somatics Facilitated by Louise Croff Blake. This session explores the language of fashion and how wearable aesthetic codes shape our movement through the world — looking into legacies of semiotic dress in marginalised identities and activist movements, “decoding” our forebears’ wardrobes.
🌻 Stay Connected
We’ll be back in late August with our first long-form interview, updates on the autumn programme, and new ways to learn, connect, and build together.
Until then — we wish you a restful and restorative summer. 🌿
Your SoC
Follow us on Instagram (@schoolofcommons) for programme updates and news from across the School of Commons community.
