Over the last few years, I have worked on a project that has been one of the most intriguing and inspiring things I have ever been a part of: the creation and emergence of a community fund, from an idea to what became Kingston Common Futures. Looking back, I think about those long-ago moments when we mapped it out, a map of a place we had never visited and could only imagine. As the multi-year process unfurled, we moved towards the vision of a fund that would answer the big questions ringing in our work: What does “democratizing wealth” mean? What might it look like if it were realized in our communities? How could we better share resources to shift from individual survival to collective thriving? Is money the only kind of wealth?
These questions arose from a desire to focus our efforts on tangible ways we could move from the sweeping theoretical orientation of Just Transition – the change framework we had adopted as an organization – to manifesting a project that focused on that most taboo and fraught of subjects: money. How could we use the principles of “relocalizing economic power” and “democratizing communities, wealth and work” as dual compasses to create something new, a fund? Not a fund we would design, but rather that was designed by the people of Kingston, for the benefit of the people of Kingston. To us, this was unknown territory, a real challenge, but it clearly represented Just Transition in action.
Relocalizing economic power is about building self-reliance, trust, and local resilience, so that our land, life, and labor are part of a balanced web of stable, interdependent relationships focused on taking care of our places and each other.
– Excerpt from GWI’s statement on Just Transition
We started off committing to the idea of this being new for all of us – and that models didn’t really exist for what we were imagining – and so we embraced being beginners and that we would need to gather many people’s ideas to create it. We committed to being open to emergence, listening for what needed to emerge, while providing essential structure, using the skills we had accumulated over years of working in groups and designing programs. Over and over, this creative tension, of structure and emergence, influenced our every move; it allowed us to remain responsive and flexible while, at the same time, staying focused on the very concrete goal of launching a fund. We could never have envisioned the full scope of the adventure that awaited!
First we curated and hosted the Rooted Resources Festival, a series of events that played with the myriad definitions of “democratizing wealth”. This was back in May 2022, just as we were emerging from the enforced isolation and virtual worlds we had inhabited for so long during the peak of the COVID19 pandemic. It was joyful and energizing to host an in-person, concentrated weekend that brought together practitioners, activists, and community members who were motivated to learn from each other’s work and make connections, while engaging in healing practices and creative imagining together.
Then we turned to community engagement and listening, to eventually recruit the community members who would commit the significant time and energy it would require to experiment with collaborative, community-driven design, in a context of shared power and decision-making. Inventing and then facilitating the nine-month community fund design program for the 18 Kingston residents who volunteered for this challenge was pure joy. What an incredible group of people! And they did it – they created a fund design together.
The last two years have been all about figuring out how to implement the vision the community fund design group created. At each step, we would ask ourselves: what is needed next? We would check our answers against the clear mission and stated process designed by community members, and then find solutions. Kingston Common Futures, a grant fund for community projects, was announced in the fall of 2024, and Clay and Amanda, two design group members, stepped up to lead the pilot year; Angélica joined the team a few months later. Then, through a highly transparent and democratic process, KCF offered grants to the community in 2025, along with a staggering amount of engagement and support for community members to apply, volunteer, mentor, and act as decision-makers on grants. GWI has acted as fiscal sponsor and also as incubation partner, helping at every step of the way, and cheering on what has been the remarkable and heart-led emergence of a unique answer to our original questions. I feel so lucky to be woven into this evolving project.
There is so much more I want to share about this: the friendships that have been forged, the new projects that have been launched, the tough choices that were made, the deep learning we have undertaken. It is hard to overstate how impactful this has been on me personally, allowing me to be right in the middle of a profound and moving example of what happens when people collaborate with wisdom, tenacity, creativity, and yes, love, to build something wholly new, to build something that feels like part of the future we want to live in. Words don’t do it justice.
But luckily we have film. Two films actually! We have been collaborating with the team at Northguild to document all of this; Kashka, Chris and Devin are the leads for this local production company dedicated to telling stories like these. We invited them into the process from the start: they filmed the first series of events we hosted back in 2022, accompanied us as we embarked on facilitating the design group, and came with us for the most intense work during our design retreat. The sequences, conversations, and interviews they captured tell the story much better than I could here. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry. It is magical to see it!
We will be showing our documentary film for the first time on August 6th, at the riverside event space of the Maritime Museum in Kingston. This beautiful film allows us to finally share what it was like to go through this journey together. We will also be sharing the evening with another short film, created and directed by Sarah Carlson, that picks up where we leave off: it tells the story of KCF’s first year, providing a moving portrait of this pilot, this experiment when over 200 people came together to make the vision a living, breathing reality. Many of the people who made all of this possible will be there! We’ll have a Q&A after the screening. For those that can’t make it that day, we will be looking for other opportunities to share these films, whether in-person or on-line.
It feels like a milestone this summer. Every day, we continue to work on this vision of a fund, led by the community, for the benefit of the community. We keep learning, experimenting, listening, problem-solving, working hard, laughing, connecting, and I am so grateful for all of it.
To dive deeper into our chronicle of this journey, check out the Rooted Resources series of posts.
Fundamentally changing the dynamics of power means changing the way we engage with one another, to shift from a top down system where we hoard power out of a fear of scarcity to an open system where we share power because we believe in the potential of abundance. Acting from our interdependence, we will transform our relationships with one another and celebrate our work collectively.
– Excerpt from GWI’s statement on Just Transition
