by Raven
After a two year absence, the Communities Conference was held again this year.
I have tried to go to the Conference every year, because it is such a great networking event for anyone interested in intentional communities. I have met lots of interesting folks and it’s often a chance to catch up with other communards.
I missed not going the last couple of years. This year’s conference was jammed with activities. They had so many workshops that they had workshops on Sunday morning, which I don’t ever remember them doing before. They also had a lot of folks attending.
Of course, it was pandemic affected. Similar to what we did at the Queer Gathering, we all had to wear rainbow bracelets to show that we had taken a covid test and had tested negative. But aside from the testing stations, and bracelets, and the sign above, we basically acted like things were ‘normal’ again.
One of the earliest things that happens at the conference, and one of the most important for me, is the Meet the Communities event that happens on Saturday morning. Folks from a couple of dozen communities had a minute each to describe their community and, after everyone presented, sat holding a sign with the name of their community, and people came by to talk with them about their communities. This is a major recruiting event. Folks often come to the Communities Conference either to look for a community to join or to find folks to join their community.
Of course, since I’m now trying to start a community, I stood up and gave my quick speech about what I was looking for. I did talk with a couple of folks who said they were interested. (We will see what happens.)
On Saturday afternoon, there were workshops on Quilombos Culture for Community, Transforming Founder’s Syndrome (I went to it and it was useful), Renewable Energy: Power Your Community, starting a Commune in Costa Rica, a Legal Clinic for ICs, Authentic Relating, Biophilic Ecovillage Design (I also went to this and learned a bit), Aging in Community, Starting POC Communities: Panel Discussion, Travelers in Community: Hitching to ICs, Life at Twin Oaks: Q&A Panel (I went to and enjoyed), Apocalyptic Wakanda: Building a new world, “I didn’t mean it that way!?”: Identity related harm in ICs, Community Business: Making Money Together!, and LARP Game: International Solidarity against Oppression. (I attended only three workshops because there were only three afternoon slots and each workshop had four others running at the same time–you can’t be everywhere at once. I know couples and community mates that deliberately took different workshops so that they could report back to each other.)
On Sunday morning there were even more workshops, and I ran one, on Collaborative Community Design. That meant that I couldn’t attend any of the others, on Community Singing, Rentals & Retreats for IC Funding, Polyamory in Community, and an Alleged Urban Squatting workshop. I will talk about the contents of my workshop in a future post.
In the afternoon they did “Open Space” workshops, which meant that these were impromptu workshops that folks came up with at the conference and organized. I attended one on dealing with feelings using DBT. I also skipped one of the open space sessions to take a needed nap. Taking care of yourself at the conference is very important.
Besides the workshops, the conference started with an introduction to Transparency Tools and a Talent Show, on Saturday night there was a dessert and dance party at the Twin Oaks dining hall (with a mandatory consent workshop beforehand, for anyone who wanted to attend), on Sunday night there were tours of Cambia, Living Energy Farm, and Acorn with each of the communities providing dinner for the folks who went there (I went over to Acorn, since I had been there for a month in February and wanted to catch up with life there). There were also Monday programs at Acorn (on Making Communities accessible for marginalized people, the Seed Saving Garden, Screen Printing, and Automation in Community) and Cambia (on Samba and Capoeira, Cob and Rocket Stove Building, and How we destroy relationships), but I didn’t go to any of these.
I’m so glad the Conference was back and I’m so glad I went. I hope it’s around next year, and if it is, I’ll suggest that you might want to go.
commune life 
[…] list. I went to the Collaborative Living Conference in Maine, and the Queer Gathering and the Communities Conference at Twin Oaks in Virginia. I gave a workshop on Collaborative Community Design at the […]
LikeLike