Our communities are engaged in intentional and deliberate assertion of our power.
We are designing alternative practices, building institutions and infrastructure, imagining and changing our neighborhoods.
We are centering people and spaces that traditional investment or development lenses do not want to see.
We are facilitating our wild and beautiful ambitions.
We are doing us, uninterrupted.
Photo Archive Practioner’s Lab Public Assembly Day 1 Public Assembly Day 2
The Practitioner’s Lab opened the Assembly as a working day for those shaping collective ownership on the ground. Rather than panels or performances, the Lab was designed as a space of practice: a day of study, exchange, and troubleshooting where practitioners could test strategies, sharpen tools, and deepen relationships.
In the morning, participants spread across sessions that dug into the mechanics of the work. Alicia DeLia and Jessica Norwood (Runway Roots) led a conversation on financing collective ownership, weighing grants, debt, and equity across projects of different scales. Jasmin Velez and Tayyib Smith (Kensington Corridor Trust) facilitated a session on governance, examining how to design democratic structures that can grow without losing accountability. Carl Valenstein (Morgan Lewis) walked participants through the legal complexities of collective ownership models, offering guidance and fielding live questions. Meanwhile, Nia Evans and Cierra Peters (Boston Ujima Project) led a workshop on impact measurement and storytelling, exploring how to pair metrics with narratives that reflect lived experience.
After a shared meal and a performance by Erthe Saint James, the afternoon sessions invited even deeper exchange. Noni Session (East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative) hosted a peer-to-peer troubleshooting clinic, where participants brought their toughest challenges and worked through them in collective problem-solving. Adriana Abizadeh (KCT) convened a session of case studies, highlighting real-world lessons from projects already underway. The Guild guided a discussion on scaling and replication, looking closely at what is gained and what can be lost when projects expand beyond their origins. Finally, Nia Evans and James Vamboi (Boston Ujima Project) convened a session on building cross-movement relationships, sketching strategies for sustaining networks of trust and collaboration across cities and sectors.