Misty Krueger

This blog post celebrates two things: Austen (of course) and UMF’s New Commons Project. The initiative is funded by a Mellon grant and asks a community to “build a cultural commons” full of great art, literature, and ideas. The image above opens the project’s webpage.

Here’s a blurb from the site that explains what the project is:

Commons [noun, sing.]: land or resources belonging to or affecting the whole of a community.

A commons is something that belongs to all of us, a communally held resource from which no one can be excluded and for which we are all responsible. At the New Commons Project, we believe that art, literature, and ideas are a commons.

The goal of the New Commons Project is to build a cultural commons for our community at University of Maine at Farmington and for the state of Maine: a collection of 24 cultural works* chosen by our community, for our community. Once the works are selected, we’ll come together in a variety of ways, on-line and in-person, to study, discuss, and create around these works.

The instructions for participants who want to make a contribution are as follows:

Here’s how it works: submit a short video nominating a work for inclusion. Give us the title and the author, as well as your name, and tell us why we need this work now.

Below I have inserted a video I created for the project.

Enjoy!