SPIRIT Programs create living pathways into bioregional participation.
Commons Teach-Ins
What is it to be in the context of “the Commons”? Before we can build a commons, we need to understand what they are and what they have been. Commons Teach-Ins are open, public sessions that educate our wider community on the historical, social, ecological, and cultural roots of the Commons.
We trace the arc from when all peoples were indigenous to a place, through the enclosures that privatized shared land and alienated labor from ecology, through the cooperatives and resistance movements that kept commons consciousness alive, to the emerging digital commons and bioregional governance experiments of today. We draw on Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning research, Indigenous stewardship traditions, and the practical wisdom of communities that never stopped commoning. Essential education.
Open Sessions, Open Discussions
Sessions run once per month and are open to all — no prerequisites, no jargon, no gatekeeping. Each session produces shared artifacts: resource lists, course content, and material that will be a published ebook and web resource for anyone curious about commons consciousness and governance.
Solidarity Suppers
Solidarity Suppers are long-table dinners where we nourish our community leaders and elders — particularly our Indigenous relatives — and host Listeners' Councils and storytellings that weave deeper sensings of this time we are in now, and how we can care for each other through it.
Solidarity Suppers are how we practice the Commons before we formalize them. We break bread together, and meet the world as it is shown to each of our different eyes. We catch stories, take hands, and learn how to stand together again.
Be fed with intention.
These are not networking events. They are invitational spaces where people show up on behalf of their communities, organizations, neighborhoods, and ecologies. The shared meal opens the door to honest conversation, we pray. We take the pulse of the ecology together — learning more about what people are working on, what they need, and where the threads of connection want to be woven.
Neighborhood Resiliency Programs
The Neighborhood Resiliency Program provides free training to community members who are ready to organize their own neighborhoods for real solidarity and emergency preparedness. Because there is no more going it alone.
This is a 12-session curriculum designed to move participants from awareness to action:
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We begin with why: the values and energetics of confidence, preparedness, competence, and care. Participants form accountability groups of three and receive risk assessment templates to begin evaluating their own neighborhoods
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Sheltering in place, communication pathways, the art of the knock on the door. Who in your neighborhood needs checking on? Who has durable medical equipment, large animals, particular vulnerabilities? We learn from the Neighborhood Villaging Project and community partners about what it takes to actually know the people on your block.
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Participants bring their neighborhood risk assessments to the group. We plan and conduct site visits — walking someone's actual neighborhood to identify industrial risks, evacuation routes, and resources.
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Dedicated sessions on water systems, power and electricity resilience, and building practical first aid kits. We cover psychological first aid, hygiene, and the often-overlooked realities of maintaining wellbeing during sustained disruption.
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What does recovery actually look like? How do you work with government agencies, NGOs, and the Commons to get back on your feet? We run a full scenario drill, then harvest the insights, learnings, and gaps.
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Each participant presents their completed Community Resiliency Plan, ideally alongside a neighbor. We celebrate with a Resiliency Dinner — because the relationships built in this program are the resilience.
The SPIRIT paths all interconnect.
Each program weaves with the others. Solidarity Suppers builds relationships, the Commons Teach-Ins build understanding, the Neighborhood Resiliency Program builds capacity, and they all weave with the strategies and theories we are working for.
Connect With Us
We are in the early days of this work, and it is growing like something real and resilient, not like a viral flash in the pan.
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Check our events calendar for upcoming community gatherings and programs like Commons Teach-Ins and Solidarity Suppers.
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Take a moment and send us a message in the form below, or email us at hello@SPIRITofthefrontrange.org
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When the threshold opens, become a founding member of the Front Range Commons and help shape what bioregional coordination looks like in practice.
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Your contribution supports programming, community-led allocation rounds, and the shared infrastructure that makes a flourishing bioregion possible. Learn more.
Feeling inspired? let’s talk.
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