Newsletter Archive

A New Gramdan Movement

December 10, 2019

At the Schumacher Center, we envision a world in which gifts of working-lands to CLTs are as common as gifts of ecologically sensitive lands to conservation land trusts. To reach that goal will mean educating estate planners, lawyers, and philanthropic advisors about the mechanics and options of land gifting to CLTs. Lands held by CLTs can help address such issues as climate disaster recovery, urban displacement, rural community revitalization, and socially positive commercial development.

Challenging Conventional Economics

December 3, 2019

We steward an exceptional research library to inspire new theory and application. We lead by example in our own region of the Berkshires with innovation in currency issue, community land tenure, local investment, community supported industry, and crowd-sourced business planning. We experiment, make mistakes, adjust, and publish the results – proud to display economic institution-making in process. We engage media with stories of what is possible. We partner with other organizations to expand outreach. We answer questions about replication.

Stewarding a Legacy of Innovation

November 26, 2019

The project underway is to build out the ground floor level, an additional 1,600 square feet, providing a light and humidity controlled environment. By moving a significant part of the existing collection downstairs, it will mean additional room upstairs for educational programs.

Supporting Intelligent Idealism

November 18, 2019

MANAS was the highlight of the week for me. I would walk to the mailbox at the foot of the drive and start reading on the way up. It was like having a private clipping service that spanned the ages of great thinkers and activists. The same issue would have bits of Plato, Kropotkin, and Simone Weil, combined with news of Wes Jackson’s work to recreate a perennial agriculture or John Todd’s work at the New Alchemy Institute to employ plants to filter water. MANAS never failed to reorient me to the finest idealism, an idealism that was, after all, at the heart of our work at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.

Public-Common Partnerships

October 18, 2019

The stakes really couldn’t be higher, the fate of the world depends on humankind’s ability to collectively govern the global commons of the atmosphere. Public-Common Partnerships (PCPs) represent a training in democracy that, by increasing the capacities of those doing the commoning, can help set the conditions for a democratic solution to the biggest issues … Continued

One Island | One Ocean Earth

September 26, 2019

  Buckminster Fuller was one of many to recognize how maps shape our worldview, policy, and decisions. The most common map, the Mercator, projects a sphere onto a flat plane with inevitable distortions; Greenland appears as large as all of Africa when, in fact, it is thirteen times smaller.     Fuller felt that a … Continued

Announcing: North American Community Land Trust Directory

September 18, 2019

Both climate change and wealth inequality have roots in an unjust system of land tenure wherein land is sold to the highest bidder. Faced by these rising global crises, it is not a question of whether land redistribution will occur, but how. Time-tested and democratic, the Community Land Trust model was designed for this moment. The … Continued

The Insurgent Power of the Commons

September 12, 2019

Free, Fair and Alive shows the path to respond to the ecological emergency and the polarization of society economically, socially, culturally. The recovery and co-creation of the commons offers hope for the planet and people.   – Vandana Shiva Dear Friend, From cohousing and agroecology to fisheries and land trusts and open-source everything, people around the … Continued

Restoring Ciénegas | Saving the Planet

September 3, 2019

A ciénega is a wetland system unique to the American Southwest. Ciénegas are spongy, shallow, wet meadows with permanently saturated soils in otherwise arid landscapes, although few remain in such a healthy state today. One of the goals of a well-managed ranch is to restore the ciénegas. Dear Friend, Sallie Calhoun’s work found her, unfolding … Continued

Land for the Many

June 26, 2019

The neighborhood of Lewisham, London, which received mayoral recognition for its CLT program. In a June 4, 2019, article in The Guardian, George Monbiot comments: What is the most neglected issue in British politics? I would say land. Literally and metaphorically, land underlies our lives, but its ownership and control have been captured by a tiny … Continued

Martin Buber On The Social Future

May 30, 2019

While reviewing early Schumacher Center newsletters, we found this April 1985 reminder of Martin Buber’s contribution to new economic/social thinking. Buber On The Social Future We came to trust Martin Buber for his careful record of the human spirit in its process of observing itself in relation to the universe. In his book I And Thou, Buber … Continued

All Business is Community Business

May 10, 2019

Fogo Island is located northeast of the island of Newfoundland. 150 square miles in size, it is home to 2,500 persons. Beginning in 1954 the Canadian government introduced a resettlement plan for Newfoundland that encouraged populations in remote areas to relocate to more inhabited centers, arguing that government could not continue to provide needed services … Continued