The project – which is collaboration and experimentation (read: trial and error) focussed – actively locates, creates, and implements direct, workable alternatives to the exploitative, extractivist systems, structures, and imaginaries we face under late-Capitalist policies, politics, and realities. Realities that both publishing as a practice, and commoning as an organisational framework, are embedded within.
As a commons-informed publisher we hold a deep-rooted desire to radically depart from aggressive-and-oppressive funding regulations which demand for fast-paced, output-focused publishing trajectories, alongside product-focussed knowledge circulation, led by a culture of burnout (of ourselves, our relations, our environments) built on the conditions of overwork and under-resourcing. In turn, leading to the erosion of community structures and mutual support systems, whilst contributing to environmental destruction, and increased dependence upon structurally oppressive systems.
Expansive Publishing Strategies experiments with what an inter-dependent, inter-connected, sustainable, durable financial, production, dissemination, and relational model and network for ‘publishing’ (in its absolute most expanded form) could be, could behave like, and could offer as a working practice.
This project responds to the corrosive impacts of the patriarchal, colonial, capitalist systems we are implicated in, through three distinct yet interconnected research trajectories:
(1) Ecological Cycles
(2) Economic Cycles
(3) Interrelational Knowledge Cycles
Each ‘cycle’ (‘cycle’ here is important, as we do not view knowledge and experience as linear, but more cyclical in nature – both in emergence and dissemination) is led by a research cluster of collaborators from across the fields of education, research, art, community organising, activism, and design, who will guide us in long-term, hands-on, research and development around our central research questions.
The results of these clusters produce sustainable, durable, and, most importantly, usable, strategies for practising and producing more ethically and sustainably across the expanded field of publishing.
These processes will be shared and activated through in-person, in-process ‘Open Book’ event formats, and publishing instances which will be shared digitally via our P.A.P. ‘Publishing as Practice’ series, website, newsletter, and dedicated Signal channel.
The project will culminate in the publishing of an open-source almanac print-publication in July 2026 that translates the outputs of the project as a whole into a workbook format that will be activated across multiple event structures within the Netherlands and Germany (where most of our collaborators are based), as well as online.
Find out more about our dedicated research cycles:
(1) Ecological Cycles
(2) Economic Cycles
(3) Interrelational Knowledge Cycles