The following project suggestions can be taken up by students alone or with the help of teachers and mentors. These suggestions promote understanding of Regenerative Economics through creativity, collaboration, communication, research, and service. The suggestions can also inspire other engagement ideas from students.
For graded projects, teachers and students should agree on the assessment criteria based on the type of project and school or programme guidelines.
Suggestions are tagged by relevant section to help students match ideas to their interests.
Mapping local eco-commons
Explore a local shared natural space such as a forest, beach, river, or park. Identify how people use and care for it. Who benefits? Who decides the rules? Create a short report or map showing the resource, community, and rules that keep it functioning (or threats that harm it).
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.2.1, 4.3.2
Regenerating a school commons
Choose one small ecosystem within or near your school—such as a courtyard garden, pond, or green verge—and design a plan to manage it as a commons. Decide what the resource is, who the community is, and what rules of care are needed to sustain it. Present your plan with drawings or a care agreement.
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.1.5, 4.2.1, 4.4.5
Community water stewards
Research local examples of collective water care, perhaps a community garden irrigation system or river-clean-up group. Compare them to the acequia or johad examples in the book. What practices help water systems stay resilient? Share findings through posters or a mini-exhibit.
Sections: 4.2.1, 4.3.1, 4.4.1
Community commons inventory
Create an inventory of commons in your town: community gardens, tool libraries, timebanks, public libraries, open-source networks, or repair cafés. Note what resources are shared, who maintains them, and what rules guide participation. Identify any missing areas where new commons could emerge.
Subtopics: 4.1 (all), 4.2 (all)
Surfacing care relationships in commoning
Choose one local commoning practice (like a community garden, library, or digital platform) and interview participants about how care is organised. You can use Elinor Ostrom's design patterns to frame your questions. Choose a way to share your findings with others.
Subtopics: 4.1 (all), 4.2 (all)
Redesigning our school commons
Choose a shared space in your school, such as the common room, library area, garden, or canteen seating area. Observe how it is currently used and cared for. Who uses it? Who maintains it? What rules (formal or informal) shape behaviour there? Working in small groups, analyse how the space functions using Elinor Ostrom’s design patterns. Then propose design changes or new agreements that could make it more cooperative, fair, and cared-for. Present your redesign in drawings, a poster, or a short commoning plan.
Subtpic 4.1 (all)
Designing a community land trust
Learn how community land trusts (CLTs) make land or housing available for shared benefit rather than private profit. Then, working in groups, choose a real site in your neighbourhood or school (a disused field, empty building, or garden area) and imagine it managed as a CLT. Identify who the members would be, what the shared goals are, and how decisions would be made. Draw or model your plan and explain how your trust would balance access, care, and long-term protection from enclosure. Present your idea to classmates as if proposing it to local decision-makers.
Subtopic 4.1 (all), 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.4.1-4.4.4
Stories of commoning
Interview people who share resources, like a librarian, a community gardener, an open-source software user. Ask what motivates them, what rules they follow, and what challenges they face. Create a photo essay, podcast, or illustrated story.
Subtopics: 4.1 (all), 4.2 (all)
The enclosure story
Tell a historical or local story of enclosure, where something once shared became privatised. This could involve land, water, digital knowledge, or culture. Present as a comic strip or through other visual or written form showing what changed and how communities responded.
Sections: 4.1.3, 4.3.2, 4.3.3, 4.4.1
Digital commons showcase
Explore a favourite open-source platform, online learning tool, or creative commons project. Produce a short video or infographic explaining how its rules and licences keep knowledge accessible.
Sections: 4.2.5, 4.4.1
Exhibit: commons around the world
Create a classroom or online exhibit showing examples of commons featured in the book—seed networks in India, acequias in New Mexico, or digital commons communities. Highlight their resources, communities, and rules.
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.2.1–4.2.5
Voices of Nature multimedia wall
Design a creative display that gives “voice” to natural entities that have been granted (or could be granted) legal rights—a river, forest, or mountain. Combine art, audio, and short texts written in the first person (“I am the Whanganui River…”). Explain how granting legal personhood changes the rules and responsibilities around care. End the exhibit with a local invitation: If one place near you could speak, what would it ask for?
Sections: 4.4.1, 4.4.3, 4.1.5
Project ideas from the other sections on this page can also be turned into exhibits.
Commons management game
Use tokens or natural objects to simulate a shared resource (like fish in a pond or trees in a forest). In early rounds, allow open access; then introduce community-made rules. Observe how cooperation and care influence outcomes.
This document is a detailed lesson plan for simulating the tragedy of the commons and teaching Ostrom’s eight patterns for designing effective commons. If you are a teacher, you can set up the simulation to run in class. If you are a student, you can set up the simulation to teach others.
Gaming for the commons - a site that explains how a new game called Commonspoly (like Monopoly but for the commons) was developed. The website for purchasing or downloading (free) the game can be found at Commonspoly. Difficulty level: easy
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.1.3, 4.1.4, 4.3.2, 4.3.3
Enclosure and resistance role-play
Create instructions for and stage a role-play where part of the class acts as a community managing a forest and others as a company or government seeking to enclose it. After the simulation, discuss legal, civic, and care-based strategies to defend the commons.
Sections: 4.3.2, 4.4.1–4.4.3
Digital commons design challenge
Teams design their own open-source digital platform for learning, art, or data sharing. They must decide the resource (content), community, and rules, and choose a Creative Commons licence.
Sections: 4.2.5, 4.4.1, 4.4.5
Case study of a living commons
Investigate a real commons near you or online, such as a housing or farming cooperative, local park group, or a digital community. Use a variety of secondary and (if you can) primary research strategies to gather information and analyse the commons using the three elements (resource, community, rules) and Ostrom’s design principles.
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.1.4, 4.2 (all sections)
Threats to the commons analysis
Choose one commons (e.g. forests, fisheries, digital knowledge) and use secondary research (and/or primary research if you can) strategies to identify the main threats it faces from human-nature dualism, enclosure, economic narratives, or geopolitics. Suggest strategies to protect it.
Sections: 4.3.1–4.3.4, 4.4.1–4.4.4
Financing the commons mini-report
Research a local cooperative, credit union, or crowdfunding platform that supports shared projects using secondary and primary research strategies. Explain how its financing structure aligns with regenerative commoning principles.
Sections: 4.4.4, 4.2.4
There are many primary research techniques you can use to investigate commons and commoning:
Interviews, possibly with prompts
Warm data lab - Note: a warm data lab should have a trained host.
You should always try to get consent from participants in research.
Commons city of 2050
Imagine your city or region in 2050 where commons shape daily life: community energy systems, open-source education, shared housing, digital learning commons. Create a story map or illustrated vision of how these systems work together.
Sections: 4.2 (all sections), 4.4.2–4.4.5
Manifesto for the commons
Write a class or group manifesto expressing the values, principles, and rights that should guide commoning. Include commitments to care, fairness, and ecological balance. Present it as posters or a zine.
Sections: 4.1.5, 4.3.3, 4.4.5
Reclaim the commons visual essay
Design a series of posters or digital images showing how communities could transform privatised resources such as energy, housing, or data back into commons. Use captions to explain how rules, communities, and care relationships would change.
Sections: 4.3.2, 4.3.3, 4.4 (all sections)
Volunteering in a local commoning initiative
Identify a local organisation or project that practises commoning such as a community garden, food cooperative, repair café, tool library, open-source coding group, or neighbourhood energy cooperative. Arrange to volunteer or complete a short internship there. During your time, observe how people share responsibility, make decisions, and care for resources together. Keep a short journal or photo log of what you learn about cooperation, trust, and the challenges of maintaining a commons.
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.1.4, 4.2.1–4.2.5, 4.4.5
Commons advocacy project
Design a campaign urging your school, community, or local government to adopt one commons-supporting policy—such as open-access learning materials or community-owned solar energy.
Sections: 4.4.1–4.4.3, 4.4.5
School commons initiative
Start a small commons within your school: a seed library, repair shelf, tool-sharing cupboard, or digital resource bank. Develop community rules and assign care roles. Reflect on how the three parts of the commons model appear in your project.
Sections: 4.1.1, 4.1.4–4.1.5, 4.2 (all sections), 4.4.5