Enabling and empowering communities, landowners, housing providers and Local Authorities to realise better shared outcomes for rural places and the people that live and work in them.

Common Treasures explores the challenges faced by rural communities by bringing together people with a broad range of different skills and experiences who are committed to a form of rural development that prioritises communities over profit, promotes sustainable agriculture and land stewardship, and combines lasting economic impact with ecological and social values. The project has emerged from ongoing conversations between members of the architecture collective Assemble and Common Ground, which focussed on alternative approaches to rural housing — rethinking how it is developed, designed and built — and emerged through the Raise the Roof project.

Ambitious thinking about the future of rural places requires connecting traditionally separate disciplines: architecture with agriculture; planning law with land workers’ livelihoods; food systems with local economies; community resilience with land ownership; and housing development with regenerative land use. The first phase of Common Treasures is the publication of a series of books, with a wide range of essays considering a variety of ideas and themes, from the reintroduction of British wool and flax, more sustainable ways to produce food, to the issues caused by second home ownership and the setting up of community land trusts. The books are a practical and inspirational blueprint created by those whose lives and work is engaged with the countryside every day. Each volume gathers the very best essays about climate adaptation, food production and land use, and presents them as alternatives to the prevailing political discourse.

Visit the project website: Common Treasures