WeCanMake Meet Up – September

 Mushrooms for Good: exploring the community organising power of mycelium 

For our first autumn meet up, we are digging into the world of mycelium and exploring what our human world can learn from it.  

Mycelium is the root system of fungi (mushrooms). Imagine a vast, underground network of tiny threads that spread out and act like an invisible superhighway connecting fungi, plants, and trees; sharing out nutrients including water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals.  

But what does this have to do with communities and neighbourhoods?!?!? Well maybe quite a lot. There is growing interest in how ‘thinking’ and behaving like mycelium could hold the recipe for self-organising and self-regenerating neighbourhood. Design principles such as decentralisation, cooperative relationships and reciprocal interconnections all show up in mycelium ecosystems and are applicable to creating healthy community.   

The meet-up will include some short talks:  

• Cam Smith Hastings Commons) will share his Mycelium Badge project and discovering the different humankinds that can be found within mycelium networks – from “Mother Trees” to “Super Connectors” to “Fungal Innovators”.  

• Jas Tippett (We Are More and Springfield Allotment) will share some of her adventures using mycelium principles to organise and create with people and nature in Knowle West.  

• Melissa Mean (WeCanMake) will share a new “Mycelium Network” that is linking community asset developers across the UK and trying new models for collective resourcing and risk sharing.  

We’ll be chatting about which mycelium principles resonate with us – in our work, our lives, and our neighbourhoods; thinking about what kinds of nutrients we are putting out into the world, and what kinds of nutrients we are looking for; and if there are ways we can connect and help each other out.  

And – most importantly – we’ll be making together: Mycelium Badges to represent our favourite mycelium principles. We’ll be using a mix of mycelium materials – including off-cuts of insulation board, other biomaterials, and up-cycled plastics.    

Further reading 

• New Constellations sets out these mycelium design principles beautifully here.  
• Bristol Fungarium 

We'll be hosting regular community meetups every 3rd Thursday of the month! Come along and meet your neighbours, take part in some crafting and let us know what you'd like to see at future Community Meetups. Refreshments will be provided.

About WeCanMake

WeCanMake is a neighbourhood test-space for imagining and making new ways to create homes that build social infrastructure and community wealth. Rooted in the council-built estate of Knowle West, Bristol, we are a Community Interest Company, operate as a community land trust, and are part of art and tech collective Knowle West Media Centre.

WeCanMake has developed a new model to do housing differently, and through creative community-driven innovation. This includes creating a new supply of land for community-led homes, charting a new route through the planning system, using Modern Methods of Construction to diversify and localise the production of new homes, and creating a bottom-up approach to tracking impact and social value.

Over the coming months, WeCanMake will be running a series of workshops for other communities, neighbourhoods, and local authorities interested in adapting and adopting the model to their own context.

Interested in attending an upcoming workshop? .

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