On May 8th, 2025, our partners Creare Social and BSB organized a training and open day in Turin together with Sciences Po. The event aimed to explore the latest research for GLAMMONS, bringing together researchers, young scholars and practitioners. They were hosted in one of the cultural spaces that best represents the city’s ecosystem of cultural commons: the Off Topic. On behalf of CREARE Social, Lyudmila Petrova and Arjo Klamer shared their expertise on the topic.
The day was opened by Marilena Vecco (Burgundy School of Business and Sciences) who invited the participants to an engaging conversation on different findings and tools of GLAMMONS. Further, Marilena Vecco presented the GLAMMONS to the audience and discussed how co-curation practices—particularly those supported through forms of patronage—as a central strategy for commons-based innovation and collective governance. These approaches actively involve communities, foster meaningful relationships, and contribute to wider processes of social development. Enrico Bertacchini, who, although not a member of the GLAMMONS project, but a key researcher on cultural commons from the Turin University reflected on the independent cultural scene in Turin and Italy, framing it through the lens of the commons. His analysis focused on how these spaces emerge in response to urban transformations and, in turn, shape those processes. He identified four typologies of independent cultural spaces, highlighting their relational fluidity and the often non-reciprocal, temporary nature of their collaborations.
Arjo Klamer (CREARE Social) offered an intervention on value – how it is generated, shared and managed in commons practices. Commons, he argued, are intentionally open, fluid, and even chaotic. Their actions and motivations do not always conform to external frameworks or political agendas. For example, when commons-based initiatives occupy an abandoned urban space, their presence is not necessarily driven by a goal of urban regeneration, but simply by the fact that the space is available and meaningful to them. This narrative introduces a new perspective that he defines as personal economy. Building on this, Lyudmila Petrova (CREARE Social) presented findings from research developed within the GLAMMONS framework and introduced some of the tools developed during the three years of the HorizonEurope supported project. More particularly, she introduced the Quality Evaluator and its application to various commons orientated case studies In this context, the value-based approach (VBA) helps to examine how commons-based practices emerge, evolve, and adapt. The VBA identifies personal, social, societal, and transcendent values as core elements that shape the commons. These values shift over time and context, influencing how commons-based initiatives balance sustainability, autonomy, and adaptability, as the analysis of seven case studies has revealed.
During different interactions, the audience engaged in inspiring conversations about the importance of support to the grass roots initiatives and commons-orientated organisations across Europe.
