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Since the spring of 2021, the UMass Mutual Aid Project has hosted weekly "Thing Swap" events, where participants can take items they need and leave items they don't. In addition to providing for real needs of increasingly precarious students, staff, and faculty through sustainable exchange, the Thing Swap cultivates relationships between campus community members and operates as a “third space” that provides a place of relaxation and interrupts market imperatives and demands for student success.
Alongside our thing swaps, we also include skill shares at most events. Past skill shares have included plant propagation, beekeeping, crochet and more.
We are also involved in research that examines the limitations and possibilities related to student well being and communities of care within our neoliberal university. Check out the article we published in the Amherst Indy about this work: In Search of Post-Capitalist Belonging at the University.
Map is currently involved in the following effort to help cultivate and expand non-capitalist desires, practices and relations on campus including:
Establishing MAP Minutes, a time bank at UMass and the broader community
Creating a Library of Things on campus where people can rent out items of need
Producing zines to circulate on UMass’s campus and beyond
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