SoC Open Letter

“When spaces for collective learning disappear, what is lost is not only a programme, but a shared infrastructure for thinking, organising, and imagining together.”

We, the undersigned artists, activists, archivists, organisers, writers, architects, scientists, researchers, students, and educators—working within, alongside, in the margins of, and beyond institutions—write to express our deep concern regarding Zürich University of the Arts’ (ZHdK) decision to discontinue School of Commons (SoC) in its current form.

While we acknowledge the impact of this decision, we also recognise this moment as an opportunity to reflect on nine years of collective learning and to consider where School of Commons might grow next.

______________________________________________________________________________________ Who We Are: School of Commons

Since 2017, School of Commons has developed as a peer-driven, experimental, and commons-based learning community. It brings together practitioners from across disciplines and geographies to study, experiment, and co-create knowledge collectively. Learning unfolds through peer facilitation, shared responsibility, and long-term relational processes, rather than through fixed curricula or credential-driven outcomes. Knowledge is not treated as a commodity to be delivered, but as something co-produced through situated practice, dialogue, participation, and experimentation.

School of Commons is sustained by its ecosystem: 30–50 participants annually and a self-organised alumn* network of over 350 members spanning six continents - a living infrastructure of mutual exchange, experimentation, and symbiotic learning extending beyond institutional boundaries. This distributed structure allows SoC to remain experimental, responsive, and grounded in collective responsibility.

Over the past nine years, School of Commons has developed a range of infrastructures, initiatives, and collaborations, including:

• Completed the EU-funded Erasmus+ FAST45 project (2020–2023), including major international convenings and a co-developed digital learning platform connecting distributed communities of practice.
• Developed the Ways & Ways of Working Directory, a reusable, open-source resource activating collaborative governance, shared authorship, and peer-led pedagogy.
• Relaunched our website with a Directory for Ecosystems, creating a living peer-learning platform and digital garden for collaboratively exploring and strengthening the (infra)structures that support collective study and creative work. This platform foregrounds collaborative knowledge creation, non-linear exploration, and the integration of individual curiosity with collective intelligence.
• Launched Making Public, a public programme and publishing initiative extending cohort research into collective formats, including gatherings, conversations, and the ISSUES digital, print, and broadcast publication series.
• Convened annual Assemblies and public end-of-year events (2019–2026) as hybrid and on-site spaces for working groups, labs, collective exhibitions, research presentations, performances, and public round tables. These gatherings have consistently surfaced cohort reflections, outcomes, and experimental practices, showcasing practice-based projects. Assemblies evolved from the guiding question How do we assemble? (2025) to How do we continue? (2026)
• Convened annual Assemblies and public end-of-year events (2019–2026) as hybrid and on-site spaces for working groups, labs, collective exhibitions, research presentations, performances, and public round tables. These gatherings have consistently surfaced cohort reflections, outcomes, and experimental practices, showcasing practice-based projects. Assemblies evolved from the guiding question How do we assemble? (2025) to How do we continue? (2026)
• Advanced long-term research initiatives, including Mercato Research, exploring collaborative infrastructures, value exchange, accessibility, inclusion, and sustainable cultural ecosystems.
• Built lasting collaborations across education, culture, science, and civic sectors, including partnerships with CERN’s IdeaSquare, CubeCommons, CASCO Art Institute, and others, through co-research, collective experimentation, and guest-led sessions. Practitioners and researchers at the intersections of art, digital culture, pedagogy, and commons-based practice—including Shusha Niederberger (Creating Commons), Ashlee Conery & Carolina Valente Pinto (Digital Commons), Aline Hernández & Luke Cohlen (CASCO, Sonic Infrastructures of Solidarity), Bianca Elzenbaumer (40+ – Commoning as Daily Practice), Bjørn Melhus (FREE UPDATE), and Pendar Nabipour (Consensual Questioning and Collective Implementation)—enriched the cohort’s engagement with experimental, relational, and transdisciplinary learning, reinforcing SoC as a site for peer-led inquiry and collective knowledge creation.

School of Commons operates as a living infrastructure - adapting, learning, and evolving alongside the communities that shape it.

______________________________________________________________________________________ Why This Moment Matters Institutionally While this letter responds directly to ZHdK’s decision, the questions it raises extend beyond a single institution. They speak to broader structural tensions faced by publicly supported cultural and educational organisations seeking to host experimental, accessible, and socially responsive forms of learning.

Beyond a single programme, this moment speaks to broader structural tensions relevant to funding bodies, partner institutions, and the wider cultural sector: How is innovation structurally supported? How is access ensured over time? How do governance frameworks adapt to evolving forms of teaching and learning?

These tensions also unfold within a broader political context. Across Europe, cultural, educational, and civil society institutions are experiencing increasing financial pressure as militarisation and authoritarian movements gain ground. Spaces for civil society, free scientific inquiry, and artistic practice are being narrowed at precisely the moment when they are most critical to sustaining democratic life.

In this context, we call for public resources to be reinvested in the communities and knowledge infrastructures that sustain collective life, rather than disproportionately directed toward military and policing budgets. Strengthening the commons offers a pathway for stewarding shared resources, knowledge, and cultural infrastructures collectively. Three Structural Urgencies for Cultural, Research, and Educational Institutions:

The experience of School of Commons highlights three structural urgencies that extend beyond a single programme. These challenges are increasingly present across contemporary arts, research, and education institutions seeking to support experimental, accessible, and socially responsive forms of learning.

Accessibility

Accessibility has been central to School of Commons’ approach. Through hybrid and digital formats, low-threshold participation, and recognition of experiential knowledge alongside academic expertise, SoC has expanded learning across geographic, economic, and social boundaries. These practices align with public commitments to inclusion and knowledge dissemination, yet their fragility reveals how accessibility often depends on temporary projects rather than long-term institutional infrastructure capable of sustaining open and equitable participation.

Governance

Commons-based initiatives often operate across institutional categories - educational, artistic, digital, and social - and rely on flexible roles, hybrid contracts, and distributed responsibility. When administrative systems prioritise fixed classifications and standardised contractual models, such initiatives struggle to integrate despite their demonstrable public value. Addressing this requires governance frameworks that support collective, process-oriented work while shifting power, knowledge production, and decision-making away from extractive, colonial, and Global North–centric models toward structures that materially recentre Global South epistemologies and decolonial accountability.

Innovation

Across arts, research, and education funding, innovation is frequently assessed through short-term outputs and rigid programme formats. School of Commons develops iteratively and relationally, prioritising methodological experimentation, peer learning, and collective knowledge production. As artificial intelligence reshapes how knowledge is produced and engaged with, pedagogical models grounded in agency, collaboration, and shared inquiry offer a necessary counterpoint to outcome-driven evaluation. SoC’s experience highlights a growing misalignment between experimental, process-led pedagogies and institutional frameworks built around fixed, individualised measures of learning.

______________________________________________________________________________________ What Is at Stake

The discontinuation of School of Commons in its current form places at risk not only a single programme, but a set of public values and shared infrastructures built, tested, and sustained over nearly a decade, including:

• A vital learning and support infrastructure for people worldwide who steward and produce shared commons - from land and water to accessible knowledge and (inter)cultural practice.
• A global, self-organised learning community spanning six continents, grounded in peer exchange and mutual responsibility.
• A proven model for peer-to-peer, transdisciplinary education that operates beyond disciplinary, geographic, and institutional boundaries.
• An accessible digital and hybrid learning infrastructure enabling participation across economic, social, and geographic divides.
• A culture of collective responsibility, care, and process-oriented study, rooted in solidarity practices rather than individual competition or extractive outcomes.

School of Commons represents a long-term public investment in innovative, inclusive, and socially engaged education. Ensuring its continuation is therefore not only a question of institutional affiliation, but of safeguarding the conditions under which such work can endure.

______________________________________________________________________________________ Call to Action & Continuation

Despite Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)’s decision to discontinue School of Commons in its current form, the work of School of Commons does not end here.

To ensure its continuation, SoC is pursuing several pathways:

• Securing a new institutional home
• Establishing new partnerships with funding bodies and collaborating institutions
• Raising structural funding to sustain activities throughout 2027 and beyond
• Building wider networks of solidarity, collaboration, and shared infrastructures

We invite institutions, funders, collaborators, and members of the wider community to partner with us. Your engagement - through institutional partnership, financial support, or other contributions - can help shape the next chapter of School of Commons.

We also extend our deepest gratitude to the participants, collaborators, and partners who have supported School of Commons. Your contributions remind us why this work matters.

If you would like to support or participate:

• Share this announcement and advocate within your networks
• Join in the campaign and contact us at hello@schoolofcommons.org

We invite all who share our belief in mutualism, care, and collective knowledge to stand with us and help ensure this learning space continues to grow.

Our fundraising campaign will launch in Spring 2026. Subscribe for updates: schoolofcommons.substack.com and follow @schoolofcommons.

School of Commons has never been defined by a single institution. It exists because people choose relation over isolation, care over extraction, and collective learning over individual accumulation.

With collective support, this work will continue—beyond any single building, budget, or bureaucratic structure.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Signatories:

Amy Gowen (SoC Alumn & Team Member, Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

Chantelle Lue (SoC Alumn & Team Member, London, GB)

Jelena Mair (SoC Team Member, Zurich CH)

Marea Hildebrand (SoC Director, CH)

Gabriel Hensche (SoC Alum & Team Member, Berlin, DE)

Pule kaJanolintji (SoC Alumn, Johannesburg/Cape Town, South Africa)

Manuela Viezzer (SoC Alumn, Den Haag, The Netherlands)

Eleonora Toniolo (Soc Alumn, Berlin, Germany)

Pablo Somonte Ruano (SoC Alumn, Mexico City / Bremen, Germany)

Kassym Kushkimbayev (SoC Alumn, Almaty / Amsterdam)

Cassie Thornton (SoC Alumn, Vallejo, California)

Mariangela Aponte Núñez (SoC Alumn, Cali, Colombia)

Dylan Spencer-Davidson (SoC Alumn, Berlin, Germany)

Nguyễn Phương Anh (SoC participant, Mellingen, Switzerland)

Lena Pozdnyakova (SoC Alumn, Almaty, Kazakhstan)

Eliana Kirkcaldy (SoC participant, Berlin, Germany)

Jara Nassar (SoC Alumn, Berlin, Germany)

Nora Sobbe (SoC participant, Zurich, CH)