Field-Stations for the Future

Community spaces for regenerative action and connection: building an new facet of civic infrastructure.

Field-stations for the Future are community places that emerge, or are intentionally created for the invention and testing of new models and new systems for regenerative futures. They exhibit an openness to collaboration, generating the vital social energy and agency that springs from collective experimentation, learning and creative production.

Some Field-stations grow from grassroots responses to the deterioration of local ecosystems or from opportunities to restore degraded land, or waterways, or food and energy production. Others express more of an entrepreneurial spirit, a determination to reshape or redesign systems of production that do not contribute to the erosion of our more-than-human world. Many are inspired by indigenous knowledge systems and practice.

Field-stations may be small, remaining novel or niche experiments outside the mainstream economy. Some grow to regional or national significance, as their stories and visions offer hope in a world of growing cynicism and anxiety about the future of the planet’s life-systems.

ROLE OF THE FSF NETWORK

The role of the FSF network is to:

encourage and support the establishment of Field-stations and to promote and expand the concept
draw universities (and other education and research institutions) into an active role in Field-stations, forming collaborative partnerships with communities for research and experimentation
create a platform for a global Field-station network for knowledge exchange
Hope

The FSF network currently represents design and related schools of universities across multiple countries. Community field-stations are becoming part of the network as they develop.