Towards collaborative governance

As someone with a "portfolio career", where I spend my time on many different but broadly interrelated projects, I'm pleased to note that all of them are moving in the direction of collaborative governance. By governance I mean both the regulatory structures and the decision making process employed by any group.

The Garden, the self-directed and relational learning community I founded in 2016, is in the early stages of shifting from a traditional director controlled CIC, to a co-operatively governed entity. Key to this transition will be how we meaningfully incorporate the voices of young people, given the regulatory environment. Everything I know about governance I learned in community with young people and you can read more about What Adults Can Learn from Young People about Transformational Governance in my blog for the Transformational Governance Collective.

Freedom to Learn, which until early 2025 was a programme facilitated by a charity that I was employed by, is transitioning to a collaboratively governed membership organisation. It will likely take the form of a Community Benefit Society.

Circle-A Studios is a small indie games studio, making a game about squatting and community, that I work for in community building. Whilst the company operates in a very flat structure, there too we're having discussions about moving to a form of governance more consistent with the values of the team.

Bristol Commons is a local project I'm involved with around community power, land justice and systemic change and is in the process of figuring out collaborative governance structures too.

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that organisations of all sorts would benefit from a shift from top down, hierachical and competitive structures to horizontal, collaborative and relational ones. You can follow this writing project for reflections, questions and inquiries that emerge from these transitions.

In solidarity and entanglement,

Artemis Bear

If you capacity and inclination to support this writing project, as well as my other work in metarelational learning for regenerative futures you can do that here: https://liberapay.com/ArtemisBear/