Skip to contentConsolidate a charitable body such as The Lewes Commons, with People In Commons CIC and other partners as operational arms.Secure at least one flagship site – the former Bus Station is an obvious candidate – and commit it to commons ownership, with a mix of permanently affordable homes, workspaces and shared facilities.Launch a pilot cost‑of‑living membership for a cohort of households, covering food, basic energy and mobility, so we can show residents and funders that this model works in practice.Bring a growing share of housing into the commons through equity‑for‑support agreements and social housing partnerships.Extend membership so that more of people’s everyday costs flow through commons structures rather than extractive corporations.Support existing employers and institutions to transition towards cooperative, commons‑aligned models.Link Lewes nodes into a wider network with neighbouring towns and rural areas, sharing knowledge, surplus and resilience.Aim for a situation where most essential needs – housing, food, energy, basic mobility – are secured through commons membership, and money is just one tool among many, not the master key.Explore how our assets, planning powers and purchasing can support commons ownership and cost‑of‑living membership, rather than feed speculation.Work with The Lewes Commons and others to structure equity‑for‑support agreements and pilot schemes in ways that are legally robust and socially just.Advocate at district and county level for funding and policy that back community‑owned, commons‑based approaches.Look at our own buildings, budgets and staff and ask: what part could we play in a commons landscape?Experiment with shared membership models, pooled procurement and cooperative work structures.Bring our members, clients and communities into the conversation, especially those whose voices are usually last to be heard.
More
Share
Explore
Colleagues, friends, and fellow custodians of Lewes,
We are all here because we know something is profoundly wrong with how our town – and our world – organises the basics of life. People who work full time still cannot afford secure homes. Families juggle rising bills for food, energy and transport. Young people see more debt than possibility. And the organisations in this room are increasingly firefighting the same crises, year after year.
At the root of this is a simple rule our current economy runs on: if you don’t own, you pay forever. Those who own land, housing and infrastructure can charge everyone else for access, month after month, generation after generation. Those who control money and credit can enforce repayment through courts, bailiffs and sanctions. Those who control jobs can dictate how people spend their time and their bodies.
We see the results in Lewes: escalating land values, speculative development, empty or under‑used buildings, and residents priced out of the town they sustain. We also see the strain on councils, charities and co‑ops trying to plug gaps in housing, food, energy and wellbeing with short‑term projects and limited funds.
I want to offer a different pattern – not a tweak, but a structural shift we can begin here. We’re calling it the Fractal Commons.
The idea is straightforward. Instead of a few private owners holding the assets that everyone relies on, we create commons “nodes” at multiple scales – a building, a street, a neighbourhood, the town – that hold key resources in common: housing, food, mobility, utilities, tools and spaces. People and organisations become members of these nodes. They contribute in three main ways: by redirecting what they already spend in bills into a shared membership, by sharing assets such as homes, vehicles or equipment into the commons, and by giving time, care and participation to keep the system alive.
In return, they get something our current economy struggles to provide: guaranteed access to what they need to live well.
Let me make that concrete.
Imagine a cost‑of‑living commons for Lewes. Instead of residents paying separate bills to energy companies, supermarkets, bus operators and landlords, they pay a single membership contribution – at a level no higher than what they already spend. That membership entitles them to baseline access to food, energy and local transport. The commons, acting as a cooperative, uses the pooled funds to bulk‑buy food from local producers, negotiate energy contracts, run shared vehicles, and cover essential utilities. We move from everyone individually negotiating with corporate providers, to a town‑level structure negotiating on behalf of its members.
Now imagine a housing commons. A charity or trust – The Lewes Commons, for example – acquires and holds homes and sites like the old Bus Station for community benefit. Individuals and families can choose to transfer their homes into this commons through equity‑for‑support agreements. When they do, they give up private ownership. The title changes hands. But they are not left worse off. Their equity is converted into a long‑term commitment from the commons: secure housing, help with their cost‑of‑living membership, and support with utilities and mobility.
Over time, the value of what they have gifted is used to support them and others. Instead of a house being a speculative asset, it becomes part of a shared base that guarantees security. Instead of equity being something you can lose in a crisis, it becomes a promise of care.
In parallel, we recognise that work is more than jobs. At present, employment is the main gateway to money and therefore to survival. That gives employers and the state enormous leverage over people’s lives. A fractal commons approach treats work as contribution in a much broader sense: caring, organising, repairing, hosting, governance, creative practice. Organisations – whether councils, schools, co‑ops or charities – can start to flow resources directly to members’ needs: housing, food, energy, transport, and then cash on top where necessary. Over time, we reduce the pressure to accept any job at any wage simply in order to survive.
We can support all of this with carefully designed local tokens – but not as a new form of money to hoard. Tokens are simply a way of recognising contribution and coordinating access where we need a bit more structure. In a Library of Things, for example, a person who donates a £100 tool might receive tokens they can use to borrow other items. Another person might earn tokens by volunteering to run the library. Those with spare cash can buy a small number of tokens, but there are strict limits: no‑one can buy their way into privileged access. Basic needs remain guaranteed by membership, not by a token balance.
Crucially, this is not a neutral technical exercise. The current system is not neutral either. It is rooted in histories of land theft, enclosure and racialised dispossession. If we are serious about building a different economy, we have to name that and design against it. That means giving priority voice and leadership to those who have been most excluded. It means monitoring who actually gets housing, food, energy and voice in our new structures, and changing course if we begin to reproduce old hierarchies. It means being honest that some ways of relating to land, money and work – the idea that owning more gives you the right to extract more – have no place inside the commons.
What might this look like here, over the next decade?
In the next three years, we could:
Over three to seven years, we could:
Over the longer term, we can:
What I am asking from you today – as councillors, officers and community leaders – is not blind endorsement, but serious engagement.
As a council, we can:
As local organisations, we can:
Fractal economics is not a distant utopia. It is a pattern we can start weaving into Lewes now: one building, one membership, one commons node at a time. It offers us a way to stop treating our town as a set of assets to be monetised, and to start treating it as a living commons we all care for and rely on.
If we are prepared to work together – council, community organisations, residents – we can build an economy where security does not depend on owning more than others, and where nobody’s survival depends on someone else’s profit.
That is the invitation of the Fractal Commons. I hope we can explore it together.
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ··· in the right corner or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.