{"id":22836,"date":"2017-09-07T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22836"},"modified":"2017-09-07T06:00:27","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T10:00:27","slug":"the-new-commons-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22836","title":{"rendered":"The New Commons Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nSomething great has come to Farmington and its name is The New Commons Project<\/a>. What is the New Commons Project, you ask, and what makes it better than the old commons? First let’s check on the Project’s definition of commons.
\n” A commons is something that belongs to all of us, a communally held resource from which no one can be excluded and for which we are all responsible. At the New Commons Project, we believe that art, literature, and ideas are a commons.”
\nFair enough but what is the New Commons Project exactly?
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\n“The goal of the New Commons Project is to build a cultural\u00a0commons for our community at University of Maine at Farmington and for the state of Maine: a collection of 24\u00a0cultural works*\u00a0chosen by our community, for our community. Once the works are selected, we\u2019ll come together in a variety of ways, on-line and in-person, to study, discuss, and create around these works.”
\n\"\"<\/a>Now if you are a sheep or a cow you might be prone to thinking that the old commons, which were literally a shared parcel of grazing and farming land, were more to the point, but community minded booksellers will be quick to grasp the great value of this new kind.
\nThe New Commons Project is the brainchild of poet, UMF Professor, and friend of the store Kristen Case.**\u00a0 Kristen’s idea of building community by engaging together with one creative work each month has now, due to successful grant writing, become a robustly funded reality. \u00a0Chosen works will be widely distributed, and every effort to have multiple means of interaction within the community, and with its creator will be arranged. A fun thing about the Project is that submissions are being taken strictly by videos made by community members. Knowing DDG’s penchant for video making, Kristen asked us to make a New Commons Project video submission to help get the ball rolling. We actually pitched two books at once. Here it is!
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