Statement
Commoning asks what it means for cultural works to be held in common rather than owned, and it demonstrates one answer by building the register in practice.
Commoning is a cluster stewarded by Amy Kellam. The research it holds — the premises, claims, argument map, and monograph proposal — informed her work on the Eo1 register: the architecture, the schema, and the cluster model. In return, the collective's thinking shaped the research, and the register it produced reflects both. Eo1 does not govern the cluster, and the cluster does not speak for Eo1. What connects them is a derivation (recorded on-chain) and a shared commitment to the commons as the common good. More on her wider work at amykellam.com.
The register records works and their relations. It does not host them, rank them, gate their admission, or issue anything transferable in recognition of them. What it holds is the trace of a work's life: what it derives from, who contributed to it, and when. These are public, attributable statements. Anyone can inspect what was recorded and by which signing address.
The cluster exists to test that design against the friction of use — the questions that arise when a schema meets a real work, when a grant of access meets a legal frame, when a promise of governance meets a group of people with competing instincts. The register's principles are stated elsewhere on this site. This page is what the cluster is, and who is behind it.
Conveners
- Gavin Keeney Convener
- Amy Kellam Convener · Steward
The cluster is convened by both, and stewarded by Amy Kellam, who maintains the site, the schema, and the records. The register's architecture — its schema, its attestation layer, and its cluster model — was designed and built by Amy Kellam as part of the wider Eo1 infrastructure.
Contributions
- Amy Kellam Register architecture · Site · Schema · Attestations
The cluster's works are listed on the register page. Every contribution is recorded, and any contributor may add to the record — the cluster's own rules for recognition and participation are set out on the schema page. The register records references; the cluster separately preserves selected files.
Lineage from Eo1
Commoning is registered as a derivation of the Eo1 collective. The derivation is recorded on-chain via a reference in the cluster's schema, which points back to Eo1's own record.
Commoning explores whether the Eo1 recording pattern can support a separately maintained research cluster, with its own schema extensions, records, and documented relationship to the parent project.
refUIDHow the cluster governs itself
The cluster sets its own rules for admission, recognition, and dispute — the same way any cluster does. The register records what happens; it does not decide what matters. This distinction is the whole architecture, and it is what makes a cluster possible in the first place: the substrate stays thin, so groups can form and dissolve without having to renegotiate the ground beneath them.
The cluster's specific rules — how works are admitted, who may attest to what, what counts as a contribution — are documented on the schema page. They are provisional, and the record of any change is preserved in the changelog.