Frances Northrop and Amica Dall: Commons and cooperative practice.

About this episode

Amica Dall and Frances Northrop discuss the challenges and solutions for rural communities as explored in their book 'Common Treasures'.

For this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Amica Dall , co-founder of Assemble, writer and researcher, and Frances Northrop , head of community economic power at the New Economics Foundation and a director of Totnes Community Development Society discuss Common Treasures (Vol. 1 & 2), published by Little Toller Books in 2025. Common Treasures was founded in 2025 by members & collaborators of Assemble to explore challenges in rural communities through practical, grassroots responses. Its aim is to enable rural communities, landowners, housing providers, and local authorities to achieve better shared outcomes for the people living and working there, and the land they live on. The books documents emerging conversations exploring alternative approaches to rural housing, land, food systems, and livelihoods. It’s spatial, programmatic, projective, social and organisational, and as such it’s designerly. So we talk about some of that. Socially, Amica can be gotten on LinkedIn and via Assemble . Frances is more distributed, electronically, and can be found on the NEF site , on LinkedIn and Instagram . + Music credit: ⁠Bruno Gillick Image credit: ⁠Kaye Song⁠…

People in this episode

Host: Ambrose Gillick

Guests: Amica Dall, Frances Northrop

Topics covered

• rural communities
• cooperative practice
• alternative housing
• community development
• grassroots responses

Keywords

• rural housing
• community-led design
• land systems
• food systems
• livelihoods

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Assemble, New Economics Foundation, Totnes Community Development Society, Little Toller Books

Books & works: Common Treasures (Vol. 1 & 2)

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