Common Treasures develops and implements practical working methods to produce better shared outcomes for rural communities, economies and environments.

To think ambitiously about the future of rural places, we have to connect things that are normally thought about in silos: architecture and agriculture, planning law and land workers’ livelihoods, food systems and local economies, community resilience and land ownership, house building and land-use change.

The project began as a series of conversations between architecture collective Assemble, community wealth builders Wessex Community Assets, and arts organisation Common Ground, exploring alternative approaches to rural housing — how it might be organised, designed and built differently.