WELLSPRING COMMONS
Weaving a holistic understanding of what it means to live in place self-sufficiently and regeneratively within the carrying capacities of the ecosystems that all life depends on.
Mission & Purpose
Our vision is to create land-based bioregional hub in the mycelial network of demonstration and education centers for responsible and regenerative ways of living specifically in connection to place.
Our current work is towards weaving a holistic understanding of what it means to live in place self-sufficiently and regeneratively within the carrying capacities of the ecosystems that all life depends on.
Activities:
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Cross-collaborations among multiparty stakeholders to develop and strengthen the foodsheds, materialsheds, and knowledgesheds of the Northeastern USA
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Educational working groups, workshops, classes, collaboratives
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Bioregional mapping
Our work focuses within the Housatonic River Valley Watershed of Western MA, Eastern NY, and Western CT, expanding through nested scales across New England and the Forests of the Northeast (US and Canada).
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism takes a view of a landscape, its communities and culture, as shaped by topographic and biological characteristics rather than by man-made divisions. It connects people to place, supporting the thriving of the entire life community, and linking the local to the larger context. Bioregionalism puts into place a values base that is life-enhancing regenerative rather than destructive and exploitative, and that celebrates diversity.
“The term [bioregion] refers both to geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness — to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place.”
— Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann
Keetu Winter and Cherry Liley of Wellspring Commons are coordinators of the Forests of the Northeast Bioregional Group born in the Design School for Regenerating Earth.
Wellspring Commons is part of the Forests of the Northeast Bioregional Organizing Team developing a Bioregional Financing Facility for the Northeast U.S.A. as part of the development of Bioregional Funding Ecosystems, and in collaboration with the BioFi Project. This organizing team also includes representatives from the Mashantucket Pequot and Eastern Pequot Tribal Nations, the Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed, Bio-Based Materials Collective (BBMC), Center for an Ecology-Based Economy (CEBE), Connecticut River Valley Bioregioning Collaborative, Design School for Regenerating Earth, Northeast Healthy Soils Network (NEHSN), Sirius Ecovillage, Bloom Network, Capital Institute, Co-creating Funding Ecosystems for Regeneration (CoFundEco), r3.0, AND Regen Network.
Wellspring Commons
Climate change and ecological degradation render the future highly uncertain. Natural systems are approaching or past tipping points. Protecting key local landscapes, everywhere possible, is crucial for navigating this crisis and providing the best defense against future unknowns. Intact ecosystems, clean water, healthy soil, and biodiversity are the foundation for long-term resilience. Keeping older growth forests standing, protecting habitat for biodiversity, preserving remaining agricultural land and developing local food production helps build community resilience and wellbeing.
In the face of present and future climate challenges, more place-based models are needed of the practical possibilities that make sustainability achievable on a local scale. The vision for Wellspring Commons was born in response to this need. Initially a project launched in 2020, The Wellspring Commons Stewards, Inc, was founded as a nonprofit in 2022.
Our name: A wellspring is a source of abundant and continual supply; commoning is a worldview and also a regenerative social system that tends to the wellbeing of the whole - the rest of the natural world as well as humans.
