This paper considers the art-based practice, the Urban Dream Brokerage (UDB) which actively sought to produce spatial commons in New Zealand between 2013-2018. this paper will present three findings for practice following a brief description of the practice. Working with Michael Serres’ ideas of pollution, I recognise the UDB as an ultimately temporary resistance to the forces of business, in a post 2008-GFC period.

The Urban Dream Brokerage ran as a municipally-funded service for five years in New Zealand levering creators into temporary empty spaces at little or no financial cost, for public-facing projects in five towns and cities in New Zealand. 120 projects were ‘brokered’, lasting between two weeks and five years; with some of the projects and project-makers feeding into new and longer-term commoning projects. A range of creators operated with UDB:- community makers and artists whose work bordered with other practices – sci-art makers, theatre and performance makers, and designers. Projects were often framed as both artistic and social projects; they included a Citizen Water Lab, a Mood Bank, and a Hawaii Culture Centre.

This paper is an overview to explore the mechanisms of the brokerage as well as offer what I hope are useful reflections for other urban activists and academics. I present three findings of the practice drawn from two sources: a focus group of UDB project makers, and written reflection on practice as the co-founder of the UDB. These findings, ascertained through a grounded theory analysis, work across three fields of political action within commoning practice: an economic examination of scarcity and commons in the city; a transactional analysis of the brokerage’s negotiation with private property owners; and an emergence of death as that which afforded these common spaces.