About

Canary Commons is an interactive guide to the good around you — many ways to come into contact with the places, people, and projects whose way of living gives back to life instead of depleting it. Every point leads to someone doing the work of creating and nourishing a healthier, more whole world.

Our attention isn't passive. Where it goes, energy flows and action follows. What we give our attention to, we feed — and what we feed becomes the world we live in. Our focus is the most generative resource we have, and most of us are spending it on things we never chose, because there are profits being made by directing our gaze.

Canary Commons is a place to put your attention where it's generative and not extractive: the more visible this work becomes, the more we can turn toward it — and in return, the world we want to live in grows up around us.

What the Commons offers

The Map — Each yellow light is one of these places: somewhere to eat, shop, gather, or build a life that gives back instead of taking. Together they form a constellation of life-supporting work across North America and beyond.

The Stories — Experience a place through the stories told about it. Whether you're traveling, putting down roots somewhere new, or looking closer at where you already live, the stories let you meet the people and places making a difference — and feel a place before you ever arrive.

Online Resources — Online options you can reach from anywhere — for when the light near you isn't on the map yet.

The Greater Constellation — Signals of life-supporting work rising around the world, reminding us that we are not alone, and that there is good to be inspired by everywhere. Visit the Greater Constellation to explore projects happening across the globe.

What does it mean to be life-supporting?

To be life-supporting is to live in relationship with life and what sustains it — not to have power over it, or to extract from it. The ground we stand on, the energy that moves us, the fresh air that restores us, the water that sustains and cleanses. Only a healthy, respectful relationship with these elements can sustain and empower life.