If this is your first time here…

…or if you want more information about this site:  On the upper right corner are three lines that connect you to the blog’s sidebar.  Click on it and on the top is a sign that says PAGES and underneath that is a link labeled “Welcome!”  There’s a lot of information about this blog on that page.

And under the sign PAGES is a list of CATEGORIES which you can use to find more information on a particular community, project (under the heading Projects), or subject (at the end of the list, under the heading, What Else).

Advertisements

Building Urban Communes

by Raven Cotyledon

The Federation of Egalitarian Communities (the commune people) have had rural communes in Virginia and Missouri for decades. Which is great, except, as someone pointed out, most people live in the cities these days in the United States.

Building a commune in the city is a little different than starting a rural commune. It’s harder to grow food in the city.  It’s harder to create cottage industries in the city. It’s harder to find land/property/places in the city. People are less trusting in the city. People have less time in the city. People are more distracted in the city.

 

Co-ops and cohousing communities have flourished in urban areas. Ganas, on Staten Island, New York, has been going strong for nearly forty years. But these communities require less commitment than egalitarian, income-sharing communities–that is, communes.

I helped build a commune in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1990s.  I am currently helping to create one in Queens, New York. I can tell you that it isn’t easy, for all the reasons that I listed above and more.

But it is possible. Our Cambridge community lasted five years. There have been FEC related communities (or attempts at communities) in Seattle and Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia,  and Columbus, Ohio, and there are currently (besides Cotyledon, our commune in Queens) communes in Washington, DC, and Portland, Oregon. I have been particularly watching Compersia, the commune in DC.  They seem to have a bunch of members and look like they are going strong.

But cities are hard on communes. I don’t know of any that have lasted longer than ten years. Yet.

We’re working to change that.  Hopefully you can check this space in ten years to find out how we did it.  I’m certainly curious. But I think that urban communes are the leading edge of the communities movement.

____________________________________________________________________________

Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!

Deep gratitude to all of our patrons:  

• Acorn Community
• Compersia Community
• Cotyledon Community
• East Brook Community Farm
• The Federation of Egalitarian Communities
• Twin Oaks Community
• Sumner Nichols

 

Thanks!

 

Communities Conference Workshops

Here is the workshop and partial presentation schedule for the upcoming Twin Oaks Communities Conference.  The below links are to blog posts on these elements.  There is a posted full program (with short descriptions for every workshop are in the newly published program).  

Cambia lunch

Saturday September 1st

9:30 to noon

• Meet the Communities

1:30 to 3 PM

• FEC Panel
• Holistic Planning and Decision Making
• Could your community be 100% energy self sufficient
• Art as Strategy for Creating Community – Damanhur approach
• Creating Unity in the Communities Movement

4 to 5:30 PM

• POC Panel
• Why are you fundraising?
• Building Community thru Song
• Designing Community for Seniors
• Communities building cooperatives

Sunday September 2

9:30 to 11

• Diversity in Recruiting
• Ecovillage Design
• Consciousness in Community
• Surviving Exodus in Community
• Nomadic Communitarians

There is still time to register for this amazing event.  Twin Oaks Community is hosting this event in central Virginia Aug 31st thru Sept 2.  There is also great Labor Day (Sept 3) program at Cambia Community, less than one mile from the Twin Oaks Conference site.

Twin Oaks 50th Anniversary – Circa 2017

Will your community survive an Exodus?

By Paxus of Cambia Community

One of the interesting new workshop topics for this years Twin Oaks communities conference (over Labor Day Weekend) is the Exodus Panel, which will be moderated by Taylor Kinniburgh, a member of the Baltimore Free Farm:

Panel Discussion on Surviving Exodus
Sunday, 9:30-11:00am, Registration Tarp

How can intentional communities survive a membership exodus? This workshop will carve out space for community members to share their experiences, learn from other communities, and develop strategies to overcome the challenges of member- ship overhaul. The panel will consist of experienced community leaders that have dealt with exodus to varying levels of success. Failure to deal with member exodus can lead to the collapse of a community, but it take more than recruiting new
members to take on this problem. Communities need to be self reflective about why the exodus took place and this panel hopes to guide participants in how to do that analysis.

Come with me on a thought experiment.

You knew it might happen.  In the worst case the conflict within your community could blow things up seriously.  Now several of your members are leaving and the future of your community is in doubt.  Often people within the communities movement say “No one is indispensable” as a secular mantra for communities shifting to cover important jobs left vacant when an important member leaves.  But when several people leave?  Well, this is likely no longer a true maxim when the number departing is larger than one.

When people leave en mass, the group changes and perhaps dies

Certainly, some part of the response of the group left behind must be soul searching.  “What did we do that was wrong?  Could we have taken better care of the group?  What have we learned from difficult circumstance and can we create new policies and practices to avoid it happening again?”

But after this important self reflection is completed, there will likely be a need to re-assess if the mission of the community is still the same after the exodus.  It is possible that the new group of members have a somewhat (and potentially quite) different vision of the future community.  While difficult work, this can be very satisfying and healing to the group remaining.

The Baltimore Free Farm, Acorn Community and Twin Oaks have all experienced an exodus of members and survived.  Other communities we will discuss did not survive.

There is still time to register for the Twin Oaks Communities Conference over the labor day weekend (Aug 31 thru Sept 2) in central Virginia, 45 minutes from Charlottesville and 55 minutes to central Richmond or RSVP on Facebook

Meet the Communities

The most important part of the Twin Oaks Communities Conference is not the incredible collection of workshops.  It is not the rich Open Space offerings.  It is not even the Saturday night dance, which is reliably one of the best dances of the year at Twin Oaks.

The most important part is Meet the Communities.

The FECs newest member – East Brook Community Farm 2017

For the first couple of hours of Saturday’s program, each of the communities present send up a representative or three to introduce their community to the whole group for 1 minute.  There is a script of questions which representatives can answer, but there is a strong anarchist streak among many of these people and they often freestyle.

Nope – but we are still looking hard for it

Then participants of the event mill around the collection of picnic tables where representatives of the different communities are present longer and more personal presentations.  It is like speed dating, except it is better in every way.  People can meet people who live in these 40 or 50 different communities and try to figure out if any of them are a good match.

Conversation is the Key – Sky and Victor circa 2016

I have no idea how many people precisely found the community they want to live in at each years Meet the Communities. What i do know is that some of the most important community recruitment each year happens at this conference and this is one of our better tools.  If you have a community which is seeking new members, even if you can’t make the entire event, it makes sense to be there Saturday morning.

It might be just the most important place to meet new members for your community or your new home.

 

Art and Creating Community

Many artists – no signatures

 

This post is one in a series on workshops being offered at this years Twin Oaks Communities Conference. Betsy Pool and Formica Coriandolo of Damanhur Federation of Communities will be presenting on the critical role of art in creating community.  

 

I had the great good fortune to visit Damanhur in 2015.  It changed my thinking about esoteric and spiritual communities.  Particularly, it broadened my belief that these are powerful and appropriate living solutions for a number of people.  Damanhur specifically gave me insight into how a community which puts art and the creation of art in the center are important.

 

One of the interesting things about the Damanhur approach is that there is art everywhere and people creating it all the time.  But none of it is signed. It is a collective effort, it is not important to celebrate a single artist. One of Damanhur’s missions is to bring out the artist in every citizen.

 

Temple of Mirrors

 

Here is the description of the workshop they are offering at the Twin Oaks Communities Conference.  

 

Why art is strategic in creating community:  The Damanhur approach.

 

This is a brief journey into how we have created Damanhur and why art is so strategic.  We share how we have used art at the foundation of our community creation, and continually utilize art in order to increase community well-being, embrace diversity as resource and potential as well as to process conflict. Our community has created The Temples of Humankind, heralded in the press as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” Our extraordinary subterranean eight chamber temple complex features remarkable paintings, mosaics, sculpture and glass art—all created to celebrate universal spirituality. The Temples were created within the solidarity of a community who were not artists. Yet, within a field of trust and non-judgment, the miracle of the Temples grows and every individual has the opportunity to create and discover the artist within.

 

FORMICA CORIANDOLO has lived at the Damanhur Federation for over 34 years.  Initially she sculpted, painted and crafted stained glass in Damanhur’s underground temples.  She then moved into various leadership positions including development of the Federation and coordination of outside researchers, sociologists and filmmakers.

 

BETSY POOLis the co-founder of The Institute for the Mythology of Humanity, an organization that works with researchers and storytellers worldwide to elucidate a history of humanity that was previously reserved in esoteric archives. She is a film and television writer/director and producer.  She hosts and produces the YouTube series “Confessions of a Time Monk,” which tells personal stories of world renowned activists, physicists, researchers, mediums,and relationship anarchists. She lives at Damanhur and organizers these and other activities from there.

Ecovillage Design – An experts perspective

We are lucky to have some very talented folks presenting at this years Communities Conference.  In the coming days there will be several workshop highlighted on this blog.

If we are going to change the way relate to our environment, we are going to need to build new types of buildings and entire ecovillages.  Fred Oesch has been doing exactly this for years now.

Charlottesville Ecovillage Design Proposal

 

Acorn/SESE Seed Office design

This is the workshop Fred is offering at this years Communities Conference.

Ecovillage Design – Principles and Practices

Presented by Fred Oesch of Oesch Environmental Designs and Openworld Villages

We now have significant experience designing ecovillages both in rural and urban settings and this workshop will take stock of what has been learned over the last 30 years.  There are sustainability elements, aesthetic aspects and design components connected with high degrees of sharing which all go into making a high functioning ecovillage. In many cases these are not elements which are taught in architecture school.  We will explore conversions of existing non-ecovillages as well as designed from scratch solutions. The workshop will start with presentation and then go into question and answer.

Fred Oesch – Architect/Ecovillage Designer

Fred Oesch is a licensed architect who designed the seed building at Acorn and lives in Schuyler VA.  He has also been involved in several ecovillage projects, both urban and rural as well as new builds and conversions.  He serves on the Ecovillage Charlottesville Board and throws a mean quarry party.

Site of ecological design and excellent parties

Some of what is covered in the workshop is Principles of Regenerative Environmental Design:

1] Design as a Way of Life.

2] Reflection of Evolving Regional Society, Tradition, Culture, and Religion

3] Utilization of Indigenous Technology, Materials, and Labor Skills

4] Direct Response to Microclimate / Seamless Site Integration

5] Minimum Inventory / Maximum Diversity Systems

6] Direct Designer / Builder / Inhabitant Participation

7] Net Resource and Energy Production

8] Self-Regenerating ‘Living’ Systems

 

It is still possible to come and participate in the Twin Oaks Communities Conference on August 31st thru Sept 2.  You can RSVP here in Facebook.  Or simply register for the Communities Conference

Acorn/SESE Seed Office Actual

 

What it’s Like to Organize All Three Twin Oaks Conferences

By Julia Onedia

“Ask me again in September.” This phrase is my shield against requests of all kinds—everything from friendly hangouts to an offer to join the tofu management team. I say it so often now that I’m just waiting for the moment when someone asks me “what’s your name?” and all that I can say is a dreamy “September…”.

I was the Twin Oaks Women’s Gathering intern in 2016, which is why I decided to join Twin Oaks [you can read more about my protracted membership process in a future post]. Therefore, it was only logical that I would become a Women’s Gathering organizer this year. I’ve been attending the planning meetings since I was a visitor in January; I traveled to the farm from Baltimore for every meeting but one between then and when I became a member on May 26^th.

Twin Oaks Conference Site Pavilion Roof

At some point this spring, I joined the Queer Gathering team thanks to some friendly pestering from the original organizers. From there it became a slippery slope: I was just dipping my toes into Communities Conference work when someone who had agreed to bottom-line the whole conference suddenly left the community to take care of a family member. At that point, I decided to stop fighting it, and I allowed the conference beast to consume my being in its entirety.

As July inches in, everything is eerily calm. The conference site is slowly becoming habitable after its long winter hiatus. I usually have no more than twenty unread emails in my inbox at any given time. I still have time for tofu shifts, cooking, and childcare. But I know that’s all about to change.

Come find me at the Queer Gathering on August 3^rd—only slightly deranged—as I lead a workshop on using glitter to battle gender dysphoria and body hate. Then, join me again at the Women’s Gathering on August 17^th, slipping into full lunacy as I fittingly lead a group of women to howl and scream at the moon and the sky (it’s healing, I swear). Finally, you might recognize me as hot pink hair on a human-potato hybrid at the Communities Conference from August 31^st to September 2^nd  as I coordinate childcare and put out (hopefully metaphorical) fires all over the conference site.

Portrait of the communard as a conference-induced human/potato hybrid

On September 3^rd, I sleep. Then you can ask me your questions.

If you want to follow developments of the events on Facebook, here are the pages for these events:

• Queer Gathering
• Women’s Gathering
• Communities Conference