Here we outline three broad projects that are implicit in Making the Living Economy. These furnish the rationale for a venture of formacion.
By formacion, I mean: - Practices of skilful, **alternative production** . . - of activist **formations**, which . . - have the capability to produce radically alternative, working ‘chunks’ . . - of **forces of production** (FoPs) . . - in three necessarily interweaving but differently inhabited **landscapes of practice**: material, cultural and aesthetic.
This conception puts us into a ‘cultural’ frame, which is to say, a frame of producing and re-producing **the forces of production of knowing and organising** - which might be thought of as ‘a politics of knowledge’. It’s for this reason that I see the proposed project as ‘a college’ >College: late Middle English, from Old French, from Latin *collegium* ‘partnership’, from *collega* ‘partner in office’, from col- ‘together with’ + legare ‘depute’.
I'm not speaking of college as one of the professionalised, mandatory institutions that Illich fingers as deadening and oppressive, processing bums-on-seats into certified graduates. I invoke college in the sense of a collaborating group of experienced and knowledgeable people engaged in real-world ventures, with commitments to contribute as peers, and gains from mutuality - like the 17th century ‘invisible college’ that was the Royal Society of London.
The significance of formacion, within a commitment to living economy and to a multiplicity of contributions and needs, is nicely evoked in a comment made by Albert Tucker - a long-term Fairtrader-venturer - in a Robin Murray discussion forum (my italics):
> In recent conversations about *multi stakeholder* working and formation, it has also become critical for me to think about the element of *not losing what we have learnt* in the painful evolution of more equitable/alternative/fairer etc systems and ways of working. When we are beginning to be successful and growing, how do we ensure the whole organisation/business/ production system grows with the values and practices learnt, but also brings something to the *expansion of a living or regenerative economy*. How doe we keep our people focussed on the new forms and not revert to the system that exists and to *continue regenerating*? I like the concepts of *practice and theorising walking side by side*, accompanying each other as we go forward.
Next : Living economy
--- >Designers at work. Watch this space! xxx