Procomum Institute

URL = https://www.procomum.org/the-institute-procomum/?lang=en

Description

1.

"The Procomum Institute (IP) is a non-profit organization whose mission consists of working towards recognizing, empowering and protecting common goods, as well as creating community networking and preventing enclosure acts carried out by private and/or public sectors.

When talking about the commons, we refer to the communities that are self-governed, managing and enjoying collectively their natural goods (water, land, forests, air), intellectual goods (knowledge, language, popular culture), urban streets, public squares and parks), rural (grasslands, farms and villages) or digital (internet)."

2.

"The organization encourages the interaction between people and the promotion of experiences to strengthen democracy, create a more solidary society and build a new model of existence based on Common Wealth thus creating alternative political and economic solutions to the current predatory model.

The Institute began its activities in 2015, as an organizational experiment committed to create new models of community and network management and aspiring to become a 21st century institution. Its associates are women and men who, in the last decades, have dedicated themselves to the commons cause (experienced professionals in organizations from the public, private and non-governmental sectors, always eyeing to promote equality, freedom and the role of civil society).

The IP is currently part of a network of people, initiatives and infrastructures that call themselves “communers”. These are people from different parts of the world who seek for alternative ways to live and produce thus developing an promising and nomadic citizenship, based on local action and international vision (translocal).

IP’s practice is based on processes of caring for people and for the planet, sharing knowledge, promoting collaborative cultural and political efforts, respecting individuality, valuing different ways of being and feeling, and constant work towards racial and gender equality." (https://www.procomum.org/the-institute-procomum/?lang=en)

History

"The Procomum Institute (IP) began in 2015, when the Technology and Alternatives project (projeto Tecnologias e Alternativas) was launched. It focused on rethinking the role of free culture organizations in face of the changes brought by the internet – including the advance of State surveillance and the growing presence of big corporations on social media. At this point in time, the commons issue was already a simmering one and was part of the agenda that enlisted the actions of the Brazilian digital culture during the years of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration (2003 – 2010).

In August 2015, the Santista Laboratory Project (Laboratório Santista – LABxS), which was conducted by the Procomum Institute (although the institute had not been officially established at that time), was selected to be part of the first edition of the Civic Innovation program promoted, in a joint effort, by the Secretariat General for Latin America (SEGIB) and MediaLab-Prado (Spain). Alongside Argentine (SantaLabs) and Uruguayan (Montevideo LAB) experiences, the LABXS was prototyped, incorporating the civic innovation, while keeping its focus on free culture.

The Technologies and Alternatives project developed a series of activities concerning research, debates, technical visiting and experimentation. Those events allowed the founding team of the Procomum Institute to better understand the contemporary scenario, not only in Brazil, but also in Ibero America, Africa and Asia. We realized that the issues that afflicted us at the beginning of that project were also present in other contexts, and that the issue of restructuring organizations to deal with the current world is a rather burning issue. Thus, from the resulting experiences of this research, we set out to create the Procomum Institute.

Between March and June 2016, we held the LAB.IRINTO – International Meeting of Free Culture and Citizen Innovation, in Santos (SP). The event promoted a series of debates and opportunities for participants to share experiences, as well as international articulation between breeders of the Baixada Santista area and others from different regions of Brazil and the world, for two months. During this process, we were able to (1) subsidize LABxS (Lab Santista), a laboratory of free culture and citizen innovation that is our main prototype in progress; (2) strengthen a national network of free culture and citizen innovation and (3) advance in international articulation around the common goods agenda.

On August 18, 2016, the institute was officially established and since then has been developing a series of projects and actions focusing on social changes." (https://www.procomum.org/where-we-came-from/?lang=en)