Generative Commons (gE.CO) is a Horizon 2020 Coordination and support action aimed at creating a platform for bringing together and supporting formal groups or informal communities of citizens who manage fab-lab, hubs, incubators, co-creation spaces, social centres. These innovative practices are considered generative commons, because they are based on sharing and collaboration between citizens. They also establish a new partnership between Public Institutions and local communities, setting forth new models of governance based on solidarity, inclusion, participation, economic and environmental sustainability.

gE.CO built a consortium of experts to support these experiences in the scalability of their models across their diverse legal and economic frameworks and in generating a dialogue with public administrations. The project objectives are to: i) bring together generative commons using a digital platform for collaboration that will map citizens’ initiatives as well as those Public Institutions engaged in new forms of partnership with local communities. This way, generative commons and Public Administrations can finally be connected in a new network able to promote the exchange of good practices and legal solutions; ii) evaluate a group of pilot cases in order to understand which socio-economic, cultural and legal factors make self-organised experiences sustainable and Public Institutions helpful for their development; iii) use the results of the evaluation for scaling up sustainable generative commons and innovative local policies: best practices, recommendations as well as legal solutions will be developed for supporting the emergence of new generative commons through shared, public and open access contents.