Children’s Book | Once Upon the Future: Everyday Adventures that Change the World

Can an academic research project be turned into a children’s story? Yes, it can! With great enthusiasm and dedication, a team of six SUSPLACE fellows (Anastasia, Alessandro, Angela, Kelli, Lorena and Marta) has been engaged in an experimental co-creation effort to translate their research insights into a Children’s Book. After two years of work, the … Read more

Children’s Book | Once Upon the Future | Foreword by Susanne Moser

About two years ago we embarked on a mission to transform our research learnings into children’s stories. We wanted to write a book about hope and leadership that could inspire readers to bring positive change in their surroundings, reconnect with their environment and bond with their communities.

After a couple of training events, various rounds of writing and re-writing, dozens of meetings and fruitful collaborations with writing coaches, editors, an illustrator and a graphic designer, as well as lots of teamwork, mutual support, and hope, the book is almost finished.

How to become an everyday superhero

everyday superhero (noun) :
1) a person that develops superpowers in order to bring change in the places she cares about
2) [becoming an ~] : the desired outcome of reading the anthology “Once Upon the Future. Everyday Adventures that Change the World”

Once out in the world, we hope that our book will inspire its young and not-so-young readers to develop and exercise the everyday superpowers needed to change their little corners of the world for the better. If, in the meantime, you want to start changing the world by making a children’s book on sustainability, here are a couple of superpowers we found useful:

New publication: Historical commons as sites of transformation. A critical research agenda to study human and more-than-human communities by Marta Nieto Romero et al.

Marta Nieto Romero is an external PhD-candidate at the Rural Sociology Group of Wageningen University. From April 1, 2016, until March 31, 2019, she was appointed as Early Stage Researcher at the University of Aveiro at the research project Managing the Commons of the MSCA ITN programme SUSPLACE.

Documentary: Sitting on Marão Mountains

This video-documentary is the result of the project Marão Minha Serra, an action-research project aiming at promoting  more sustainable human-nature relations (see facebook page). The project aimed at re-connecting people to each other and to their forested common land to re-build communities (human and more-than-human). For that, the project recorded residents telling stories about their common land and asked them to choose a meaningful place for their life telling the story behind it. Thus, this video is an affective map of the baldio of Ansiães, a map that tells the past and current resident’s affects towards their common land.

Video: Rebuilding the Commons

What are commonlands? And how can commoning help to revitalise rural communities? In this video, we follow SUSPLACE researcher Marta Nieto Romero to one of her case studies – a small community in Galicia, Spain that’s seeking new ways to take care of their communal forest lands and, through that, rebuild community life.

Once Upon the Future: Everyday Adventures that Change the World

Can you produce a children’s book as part of an academic research project? Yes, you can! With great enthusiasm and dedication, a team of six SUSPLACE fellows (Anastasia, Alessandro, Angela, Kelli, Lorena and Marta) has been engaged in the writing of children’s stories inspired by their research projects. After more than a year of work, they are happy to announce that they are almost done! Preliminary title of the book: Once Upon the Future: Everyday Adventures that Change the World.

Overcoming the fear of the page: the SUSPLACE Children Book’s learning journey continues.

Written by Angela Moriggi Editing and inspiration: Kelli Rose Pearson, Lorena Axinte, Alessandro Vasta, Anastasia Papangelou, Marta Nieto Romero. How can we convey the value of interdependence without falling into cheesiness? How do we advocate for re-appreciation of traditional textiles without being overly didactic? How can we talk about urban regeneration with a hint of … Read more

Cheap land available in Portugal: commoning or exclusion?

By Marta Nieto Romero (in collaboration with Alessandro Vasta) The other day I had an interesting conversation with my colleague Alessandro Vasta touching on the issue of Northern Europeans buying land in Portugal to set up sustainable projects. It made me think a lot on why am I suspicious about it, and we made interesting … Read more

Learning the Language of Story

The Call for Adventure Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away… Actually in this galaxy. On this planet, in fact. Right over in a picturesque Dutch city called Utrecht… A gang of six intrepid wannabe earth warriors/ sustainability researchers*, gathered to learn how to wield a secret power (well, maybe not … Read more