Conference Program

Schools as Infrastructures for Community Commoning: Participation, shared spaces and community development in Norwegian municipalities

Educational research increasingly explores the idea of the commons as a way of understanding collective responsibility for learning, knowledge and democratic life. Yet less attention has been paid to how practices of “commoning” may emerge around schools as part of broader community development processes. Commoning is understood here as collective practices through which communities organise, maintain and govern shared resources and social relations (McGinnis & Ostrom, 2014). In the cases explored here, young students identify resources in their neighbourhoods and invite residents to participate in activities, collaboration, and collective stewardship of emerging community spaces. The paper asks under what conditions school-based participation processes led by children and youth can develop into collective practices resembling commoning in local communities.

The study draws on collaborative research with Norwegian municipalities that have experimented with asset-based community development (ABCD) (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993) approaches to strengthen child and youth participation in local communities (Agdal et al., 2019). Through participatory action research and long-term collaboration between researchers and municipal practitioners, the study analyses a set of initiatives where school pupils and youth groups engaged in identifying local resources, initiating activities, and mobilising residents around community projects.

The findings suggest that school-based participation processes can sometimes evolve into collective practices resembling commoning, where local actors jointly organise activities, develop meeting places, and take shared responsibility for maintaining community initiatives. Young people not only participated in decision-making but also mobilised peers and adults, organised activities, and contributed to the development of meeting places and shared initiatives in their neighbourhoods, bridging activities in and around the schools.

However, the cases also demonstrate that such processes are fragile and uneven. Sustained collective practices were more likely to emerge when three conditions converged: mobilization led by young people, connector roles and facilitation within municipal organisations, and access to accessible spaces where networks could develop through discussions and activities over time.

Schools and other public facilities often functioned as initial infrastructures that enabled these practices to develop. These conditions enabled the gradual formation of communities of practice around shared initiatives, a key feature of commoning processes.

The paper contributes to discussions on commons and education by highlighting how school-centred participation may extend into neighbourhood contexts and support emerging practices of commoning, linking educational participation with broader processes of democratic community development.

The cases also speak to broader debates on the drivers and constraints of commoning. While some perspectives emphasise commoning as emerging primarily outside or in opposition to formal institutions, others explore how institutional arrangements may support commons-based practices. The Norwegian cases suggest that in welfare-state contexts, public infrastructures and facilitative municipal roles may act not only as potential constraints but also as enabling conditions for children and youth-driven collective practices and emerging forms of commoning.