trying to think of a weaker and more contemptible response than this and failing

Housing organising involves sensitive data. When it’s mishandled, tenants take the risk, not institutions. Together with Shared Assets, we made a GDPR guide for housing justice groups that’s about care, not compliance. Get it here: drive.google.com/file/d/1DQO-...

Today I publish Who Owns Scotland 2025, an annual analysis of landownership across rural Scotland. The most significant finding is the continuing trend over past 15 years of fewer and fewer owners owning more and more of rural Scotland. andywightman.scot/2026/02/who-...

Read more in our article for the Winter issue of STIR, exploring inspiration & how-tos, from Leicester & London to Bristol & Sheffield: #CommunityAssets #MycelialNetwork #StirToAction www.stirtoaction.com/articles/pla... 3/ 🧵

A common fictional narrative shows people with nonconforming identities finding self-acceptance in towns and cities. This #LGBTQHistoryMonth, archivist Lottie Wood explores how author E. M. Barraud found the opposite, through rural work and the Women’s Land Army. merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

✨ We’ve just launched a new open source contributor space for people who want to support tech for good. If you’re a developer, researcher, designer, or data person, you can now see what we’re working on and where support is needed. 🙏 github.com/orgs/Digital...

I Never Thought The Leopards Would Eat My Face, sobs woman who wrote innumerable opinion columns about how there were reasonable concerns about how regulations banning leopards eating people’s faces endangered women

✉️ We just sent our monthly newsletter! It covered... 💚 A new GDPR handbook for housing justice groups 🛠️ A new open source contributor space that's now live And more! Subscribe for future updates: digitalcommons.coop/contact/

I bumped into a very sweaty agitated man on the towpath in an affluent part of London once. It was Boris Johnson out for a jog. Terrifying. It’s true … you really don’t feel safe in London sometimes.

Ban on Palestine Action ruled unlawful by High Court! Palestine Action should never have been proscribed as a 'terrorist organisation' - Cooper's doing so was massive overreach, setting a dangerous precedent for the banning of non-violent direct action groups www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live...

We now know how the rich live.

What could help make more Nudges possible? Community businesses often struggle to get money quickly, to buy properties when they become available. Pre-agreed financing has been essential for Nudge but a more agile facility to fund community buyouts is needed.

Mpox diagnoses in the UK increased in January 2026. Vaccination is available through routine NHS sexual health appointments for eligible groups. @bashhuk.bsky.social @ukhsa.bsky.social @england.nhs.uk www.thelovetank.info/news/mpoxfeb26

Campaigning is more effective when the system is visible. Groups use Land Explorer to: 🔦 find who owns land & buildings 💪 spot unregistered or hidden land & more.. We run 1-hour onboarding calls for orgs who want to use it in their campaigns. ✉️ Email: [email protected]

Exciting news: this May sees the national release of OUR LAND. A beautiful documentary feature film about the @righttoroam.bsky.social campaign, directed by Orban Wallace. Trailer here 👇 www.youtube.com/watch?v=est-...

☎️ We now offer 1-hour Land Explorer onboarding / training calls for your group or org Groups use the tool to find out who owns land, investigate sites, & connect local issues to wider ownership patterns, especially when info is hard to access or fragmented. Email [email protected] !

The UK housing crisis has a hidden layer: the info organisers need to build campaigns is paywalled & fragmented. That's why we’re working with Shared Assets to build tools shaped by organisers themselves. Uncover who owns what by using Land Explorer (it's free) digitalcommons.coop/land-explorer/

We just sent out our last newsletter of 2025. Highlights include... 💻 We’re hiring a part-time full stack developer (21 hrs/week): deadline 10 Jan 2026 🗺 The Co-operative World Map just passed 84,000 co-ops, with major new data added And more.. ✉️ subscribe here: digitalcommons.coop/contact/

We’ve been working on a big update to the Co-operative World Map this month 🌍 It’s built with our tool Mykomaps & will soon show >84,000 co-ops worldwide, giving a much clearer picture of the scale and diversity of the global co-op movement. If your co-op isn’t on it yet, get in touch!

We just sent out our last newsletter of 2025. Here's a preview... 💻 We’re hiring a part-time full stack developer (21 hrs/week): deadline 10 Jan 2026 🗺 The Co-operative World Map just passed 84,000 co-ops, with major new data added And more... Subscribe here: digitalcommons.coop/contact/

As Big Local comes to an end after 15 years & £200m+ invested, @londonfunders.bsky.social and @localtrust.org.uk are launching a new learning series to explore what happened. The series will draw out lessons to apply to future place-based funding. Learn more:

💻 We’re hiring a Full Stack Developer! This is a fully remote, flexible role (~3 days / 21 h/week). You'll be contributing to the delivery pipeline across our open source tools. Come help make the digital commons a reality! 🔗 👉 for more info + application form: digitalcommons.coop/we-are-recru...

🌱 The Powys Food Map is live! Built with Mykomaps + launched by the coop Cultivate. It brings together farms, food projects, hubs + community groups across Powys, Wales so people can actually see their local food system in one place. Take a look 👇 www.cultivate.uk.com/bwyd-powys-f...

The Countryside Right of Way (CRoW) Act succeeded in giving partial access across the nation.

New analysis of 1960s land use maps, many created by schoolchildren and students, reveals fresh insights on the timing and extent of habitat losses caused by post-war agricultural intensification and urban growth in England and Wales. www.ceh.ac.uk/press/maps-c... 🧪 1/ #maps #LandUse

Swore you’d finish that project by the end of 2025? I can help.

Please support this! It's not just about rivers/woods/moors. It's also about communities being able to refer to 'environmental' interests in towns/cities, things like buying a building with plans to retrofit it, or create habitats in & around a building...

James Dyson owns more UK land than the actual KING. But he pays an effective tax rate of LESS THAN 1%* on his total wealth. Here’s a novel idea @keirstarmer: to fund schools and hospitals, TAX THE BILLIONAIRES. 📍Station Lane, Bristol - near James Dyson’s £20m country estate Dodington Park

Food for thought: hosting HIV PrEP research dinners. "Hosting dinners like this for Black queer men is a valuable way of including perspectives & creating spaces for us to freely talk about sexual health." @idiosyncraticxl.bsky.social @benvyle.bsky.social www.thelovetank.info/news/bqmdin

"CyanLines is the bold plan to link & transform Manchester’s green and blue spaces...The vision is to develop a network of over 100 miles of...routes over ten years, starting with the city centres of Manchester & Salford...& linking to the rest of Greater Manchester’s boroughs" Link: cyanlines.com

Access to green and blue spaces shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for the few. It should be something everyone can enjoy, explore, and connect with. Why do you support a Right to Roam, and what does it mean to you? Tell us here -> forms.gle/zCmuYkevUAov...

Some end of year projects have pushed to 2026, so I’ve got time and space for new ones! DM or @ko-fi.com link in bio! #writing #editing

Questionable safety advice from @themerl.bsky.social on bonfire night

thank you for the outpouring of support! those of us laid off from Teen Vogue yesterday are now sharing our GoFundMe to help us cover our emergency expenses now that we've lost our incomes, as we get back on our feet.

'Communities must have the right to own environmental assets' Great letter from @tomchance.bsky.social of the Community Land Trust Network to @miattafahnbulleh.bsky.social, asking her to amend the Devolution Bill to strengthen Community Right to Buy: www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/news-and-eve...

The Love Tank urges continued mpox vaccination uptake as new European cases identified. www.thelovetank.info/news/mpox

🐏 New Absolute Units 🐏 Same-sex relationships have always been part of rural England, but they've been underrepresented in our collections. In the first of 2 episodes, @timjerrome.bsky.social shares his work tracing queer rural lives in The MERL archives. merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/abso...

Could We End Corporate Money In Politics? open.substack.com/pub/thinkbig...

15 years ago the Supreme Court decided corporations are people under the First Amendment. Today, sold-out politicians block progress on all fronts to appease their corporate donors. Citizens United is among the worst decisions in history. It corrupts our system every day.

In our latest blog, Kathie Pollard explores how Scotland’s next Land Use Strategy could play a vital role in bringing coherence across government policies that set the direction how land is used and managed in the years ahead. Read more: buff.ly/DwBwqZt

This is a really welcome development - IPPR called for land to be included in the government's plans for a Community Right to Buy, to facilitate more community ownership of environmental assets at a time when nature is in managed decline See our full report here: www.ippr.org/articles/dri...

England's Community Right to Buy must enable communities to own environmental assets. Excellent to see this cross-party amendment to the English Devolution Bill tabled by @vikkislademp.bsky.social @simonforstroud.bsky.social @sianberry.bsky.social: publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbi...

As land ownership becomes increasingly concentrated, real freedom to access and enjoy nature is at risk. That’s why it’s more important than ever to keep pushing to protect and extend our right to roam. What does a Right to Roam mean to you? Tell us here - forms.gle/X6FnwL82paNg...

“Scotland’s land is owned by the few—and the Government is letting it happen…. “And why? Because land is power.” www.heraldscotland.com/politics/hol...

100s of groups use Land Explorer to uncover who owns the land around them & improve their communities. Community groups & campaigners should not be priced out of this data. Here are our recommendations to the Land Registry 👇 digitalcommons.coop/community-ac...

For a high profile politician to be speaking to the nuance and truth of queer history, and to be making full throated policy promises in support of trans rights, shouldn’t feel this important or rare. But it does and it is.

"Make ownership of large landholdings public" Great report from the @digitalcommons.bsky.social with key recommendation that HM Land Registry should make the ownership of landholdings above a certain area threshold publicly available: digitalcommons.coop/content/file...

Last week the Digital Commons team (minus the wonderful Lynne) met in Birmingham for our away day 🌱 It gave us a chance to step back and plan what’s next for our tools and partnerships and to reconnect on what drives our work. 👇

Hello! We’re Digital Commons Co-op. We build tech for social change. We’ve built: 🌱 Land Explorer: a tool for finding & evaluating land for community projects landexplorer.coop 📍 Mykomaps: a platform for connecting & collaborating with co-ops worldwide digitalcommons.coop/mykomaps/

Who owns land is one of the most opaque & important questions in the UK today. Communities cannot tackle the housing crises, respond to environmental changes, or protect local green spaces w/o this info. That’s why we built a tool that makes it simple to see who owns what. 👉 landexplorer.coop