Our impact and events

The Commons Consortium is COVER’s applied wing, offering strategic consultancy and design services for democratic and commons-based systems change. Rooted in the same values as COVER, the Consortium serves as a platform for researchers, think tanks, cooperative practitioners, and community organisers to develop and implement commons-based alternatives to neoliberal governance, extractive economics, and technocratic development models.

Rather than a service provider or research cluster alone, the Consortium is a growing ecosystem dedicated to enabling systemic transition. It is focused on embedding democratic governance, ecological responsibility, and collective care into public institutions, economic models, and technological infrastructures.

A collaborative infrastructure for knowledge exchange and political action. Programming includes a Commons Summer School (with the Centre for Heterodox Economics), a Commons Atlas, and a Speaker Exchange Programme.

The Network is not simply a list of partners or collaborators, but a living infrastructure for learning, sharing, and collective strategy. It enables mutual support and amplifies the visibility and viability of commons initiatives across regions, sectors, and disciplines. By cultivating an interconnected ecosystem of knowledge, solidarity, and strategic action, it complements the research and consultancy pillars with sustained international presence and influence.

The backbone of our academic engagement, these weekly online seminars provide a global platform for emerging and established scholars to share research related to the commons, post-capitalist alternatives, digital governance, and democratic innovation. The seminars also provide a key vehicle for early career researchers and students to present work-in-progress and receive feedback.

COVER’s London-based public seminar series, AI Rights & Wrongs, critically explores how AI and other digital transformations have impacted societies, cultures, arts, humanities, and political economies, where right and wrong are limited categories, and futures must be built with critical energies and a commons spirit.

Held once a month at the Royal George in Deptford or at Pelican House in Bethnal Green, we host researchers, practitioners, and activists. As part of our COVER network, we co-host with colleagues from Goldsmiths and Exeter Universities; and co-organise with the Autonomy Institute and the Institute for the Future of Work.

A bi-monthly evening meeting that brings together academics, community organisers, artists, technologists, and cooperative leaders.

Hosted both in-person and online, the Salon will serve as an informal but intellectually rigorous space to incubate collaborative projects and real-world applications of commons-based thinking.