SHOULDERS, BRIDGES, GATES

New roles for Community

by Alan Heeks

What do these four have in common: the growth of the Web, the success of the Eden Project, 11 September, and the backlash to globalisation? They are four of the factors which make the world of 2002 very different from a few years ago. And so too are the needs and possibilities for community. This word is so widely used that it may help to define two main types of community:

Everyday community: people in mainstream society with shared needs and activities such as neighbourhoods or work organisations.

Intentional community: a group with some shared aims or values, who are sharing resources and living together to some degree: most often people have their own domestic space, plus shared space for eating and recreation.

It is a year since the first piece in this series: Tango for Tigers. Since then, I have done a lot of active research and networking on this theme and am now working with others in the early stages of creating a major new intentional community and woodland eco-village, provisional name The Village Forest. So this piece is an update from the frontline, not a dispassionate thinks piece.

Shoulder Communities

Intentional, residential communities are like deep-rooted trees: they take years to establish and are slow to change. So there is a need for new and different types of community today, alongside established ones. One of the major needs for new community is on the shoulder, in the gap, between two of the common kinds of community (see diagram)

Spiritual communities, such as The Findhorn Foundation, monasteries, or ashrams, have high ideals and focus on a spiritual path and practice. They are usually remote and secluded from the everyday world. You need to be quite well-advanced on your own spiritual path to access such places. The average Caduceus reader may be able to do this, but even the average Guardian reader, probably not.

Going up the mountain physically or symbolically has long been one of the paths to find insight. Spending time in a peak community can bring new healing and spiritual alignment. However, coming down from the mountain and returning to your everyday life, may not be easy. The seclusion and strong spiritual focus of such places makes it hard to learn the skills of bridging between the spiritual and the mundane.

At the other end of spectrum, we have everyday community. Whilst these might seem to be about purely material needs, they really are not. Everyone has some need of companionship and support. More and more people want a spiritual dimension in their daily life and work: they may call it desire for meaning, fulfilment, being of service. But it’s hard to find places to learn this in mainstream society.

The need for more shoulder communities is about bridging this gap. We need places that embody spiritual values in the everyday, in ways that are accessible to the mainstream. We need businesses and neighbourhoods which people can understand and relate to because they are kind of familiar, but yet they lead us up the slope of the mountain. Up the slope means growing beyond meeting basic needs like money or shelter: bringing higher values into our life and work, like creative fulfilment, serving the greater good, and restoring the ecosystems of the planet.

Function follows form: social enterprise

As new needs for community emerge, new legal and organisational forms must evolve to enable them. Most spiritual communities are registered charities. The organisations in everyday communities are mostly pure for-profit (shops, offices factories) or non-profit (eg schools). Social enterprise is a name for various ways to bridge this gap: to engage the disciplines, drive and resources of business in fulfilling a social aim to combine profit and service.

So what is social enterprise? It takes many forms, but usually someone has invested or loaned the capital it uses. The investors don’t expect massive profits, but do want some long-term return on their capital. They also want to see some social benefits achieved by the organisation, since this will be one of its main aims. The investors will want to be involved and informed of progress on both fronts. This creates a different dynamic from charities, where money is given outright, with no ongoing involvement, and no financial return expected.

Social enterprise companies and co-operatives can be found in sectors like organic food, alternative energy, and green building. They often have more drive and focus than charities, because there is a business discipline linked to a social aim.

Two examples of emerging social enterprise are the new eco-social housing developments described in my previous piece (Caduceus Issue 55). Another is the Eden Project, whose financial and organisation structure are innovative and clearly successful. The underlying framework is a registered charity that obtained a large grant from the Millennium Commission. However, the project is operated by a trading company: this is a limited company, a social business, which covenants all profits to the charity, and which raised substantial loans to help match the millennium grant.

Building on Eden

Having recently spent two days on a research visit to Eden, what I found was an operation that does not feel quite like a charity or a straight business, but combines the best of both. People are enjoying their work, they share the project’s higher purpose, yet they also know that it has to make money, and they have to welcome their huge visitor numbers efficiently as well as warmly.

One of the roles for shoulder communities is to build on the precedent that Eden has created, and explore how a whole community can bridge and combine social enterprise and spiritual purpose. How could this work? Here is one scenario which we are researching for The Village Forest. The whole site is owned by a registered charity, so that everyone, including local authorities, funders and residents, are clear that the project is fundamentally for service not personal profit.

Within this framework, part of the site is organised as a social business park, ie the major projects are each set up and run as a social enterprise: this could include eco-social housing, a visitor centre/inn, health centre, market garden and so on. Rents and dividends from all this would flow to the charity, to pay for the site purchase and non-profit activities, such as support for projects in the developing world. Membership of the spiritual community at the site would be open to those who live and work there, but not obligatory, so that the spiritual community and its values would weave through the everyday activities without dominating them.

Resilience through diversity

We recently had a permaculture design workshop at Hazel Hill, the woodland retreat centre I run near Salisbury. Most trees take from 60-150 years to grow from planting to maturity, so we created a 100-year vision and plan for the wood. This raised major questions of climate and other major changes the wood may face. We concluded that there was too much uncertainty to forecast actual changes: the best response was to increase the diversity of trees and other plant species throughout the wood. Curiously, several large companies such as BP, have reached a similar conclusion about their recruitment of people, and are hiring a wider range of age, education and ethnic backgrounds, simply to handle the unexpected.

But handling diversity, building on it, is not easy. Learning to do this is a desperate need of our times: we can see so many searing conflicts between groups who differ in race, creed or resources. Since many spiritual communities follow one defined path, they are not the best place to learn about handling diversity and sharing this with the mainstream.

Here we have another pressing need for shoulder communities to meet the gap. To learn about diversity in a community, you need quite a large one. Many intentional communities involve 10-50 people, and the age, income and cultural profiles can be fairly narrow. If you have one or two single parents, or elderly people, or Hindus, they are likely to be just individuals, not a sub-group with enough scale to find its voice. Whereas a large community like Findhorn, with over 300 people, does have substantial diversity on several counts.

There are plenty of good processes to help handle diversity and resolve conflicts, once shoulder communities are available in which to apply them. For example, Scilla Elworthy, through the Oxford Research Group, has both researched and developed processes for international and local peace work. Another powerful process is the Zegg-Tamera Forum, developed by two European intentional communities, which Scilla and I are now trialling in England. Embodying these processes in a residential community would provide a place for those in conflict to come for both support and learning.

Another bridge to build is mixed-income communities. Many groups use the name community for enclaves of the uniformly rich or poor. Mixing income groups is not simple, but it is valuable pioneering, and there are precedents to learn from. This is another part of the research for The Village Forest, and another reason for exploring social enterprise structures. The registered charity, non-profit form of most intentional communities makes it hard for them to attract capital and entrepreneurs, and thus reduces the diversity of people involved.

Creative Ageing

There seems a surprising lack of intentional communities pioneering new approaches to ageing. Although Britain has a fast-growing ageing population, care provision seems to treat elders as passive recipients, kept segregated either as individuals or same-age groups. The idea of mixed-age communities where elders can fulfil themselves, with mutual support and enjoyment across the generations, would surely be a better way.

Most care provision and most research on ageing seems to focus on physical health and material care. How can elders express and fulfil themselves emotionally, spiritually and artistically? What facilities and support would this require? How can care for the elderly give fulfilment and growth to those who provide it, instead of being a boring job in a typical care home?

If new shoulder communities can pioneer new approaches to creative ageing, and show how to apply them in mainstream society, it would be a great service. This is also an opening for social enterprise. Current ways of caring for the elderly consume a lot of money: a shoulder community should be able to provide a better service with such funds, and achieve other benefits, such as income for single parents involved in the care provision.

The Process is the Product

Here’s another gap to bridge: how can the way more products and services are produced be ethical and sustainable, aligned with the values of the consumers? An example of this issue is the boom in sales of organic food, even at high premiums. One reason is that the way it’s grown affects people’s experience of the product itself. When food is produced in a way which respects instead of stressing the land, animals and people involved, it affects the satisfaction the consumer feels and maybe the taste too.

We can see this concern for the methods of production spreading to all sorts of areas: coffee, charcoal and trainers are three examples which have received a lot of publicity. But let’s get real: for every scandal of ravaged land or sweated labour we hear and respond to, there are hundreds more which continue unknown to us. This is simply globalisation at work. It will keep growing like a cancer until:

• Environmental and other consequences get so bad that electorates in the rich west respond to them
• Sustainable local supply systems are strong enough to offer alternatives
• Governments introduce resource taxes which transform business into an agent for renewal, not exploitation. For more on this, read The Ecology of Commerce.

Organic growth is for people too

"Think global, act local" is now a recipe for human survival, not just an aspiration. Basic to achieving this is meeting human needs by natural, organic principles. This means approaches which respect and renew resources, instead of current ones which still largely exploit and deplete them. Most businesses deplete the people who work there, as well as the planet. Surveys show record levels of stress and absenteeism, and a widespread desire to work fewer hours and improve quality of life.

Sustainable growth is needed for human resources as much as environmental ones, and organic farming is a powerful model for both. My book, The Natural Advantage, shows how the principles and processes of organic farming can be translated to the way people and organisations live and work.

The response to these ideas from many businesses has been that they like the idea, they would love to renew their people instead of exhausting them, but they can do nothing which would put their short term profits at risk. Here again, we see a need for shoulder communities: as semi-sheltered seedbeds for cultivating new ways of working until they are robust enough to transplant to the mainstream.

Social enterprises which combine staff from mainstream society and members of an intentional community are a great seedbed for experiment. Can a business combine social benefit and profit, and fun and fulfilment? There are a few already doing it, and we need a wider mix of examples and experiments to learn from.

There is a lot about the present state of the world which tempts me to despair. I see the best antidote, the best channel for action, as a network of light: people working through community, and a network of links which slowly gives critical mass to new solutions and the will to change.

Organic Building

If the section above sounds grandiose, here’s a tangible way to ground it. The way buildings are constructed offers great potential to embody these ideals, as well as great challenges. This is another of the pioneering roles which shoulder communities could play.

In both the land-based, non-profit ventures I have founded, the major buildings were built organically. A community of people worked for their own growth, and to serve an inspiring vision, as well as to earn money. Some had limited vocational and life skills. Some were young men on Community Service Orders, on the edge of deeper trouble. Many had difficult family backgrounds.

The experience of working in a community, with fellowship, support, learning and a sense of meaning, brought major benefits to many of these people. The organic approach also meant that this community could shape and create aspects of the design as the building grew. Some of the most pleasing details came from them. Both buildings showed how the process is the product. They were built with love, and years later visitors still feel this in the atmosphere.

There is also a tough side to the picture with these projects. They were a major nightmare to manage. There were many interpersonal conflicts which we lacked the skills to handle, and both projects went seriously over plan on money and time. More management skills and support are needed to fulfil the huge potential of this approach without the drawbacks. If this can be done and spread to mainstream society, it is a wonderful way to address several needs of our time, such as disaffected groups and sub-standard housing.

Sailing on Fun

Many organisations and communities with worthy aims are grim to work in. They have a martyr culture, meaning you should take life seriously and exhaust yourself for the worthy cause. But many for-profit businesses are also grim to work for: the pressures will exhaust you, unless you’re very astute. So how can work be light-hearted, renewing and effective?

An organisation with worthwhile aims, which tries to embody sound, natural, ethical principles, can also be fun to work for. Fun, humour, delight, are like the wind: an abundant, elusive natural energy, which we can harness if we invest some time and ingenuity. Social enterprises like the Eden Project or Ben & Jerry’s have learned to sail on fun, and it uplifts both their staff and clients. It would be great to see shoulder communities emerge which have this quality as part of their social enterprise approach.

Intentional communities often bog down on personal conflict, money worries or philosophy, yet they are a great place to learn new approaches. How could a community learn to sail on fun? Here are some ideas:

• Offset the constant pull towards physical tasks and mental debate: engage the senses and imagination, the heart and the soul
• Weave creative arts into the daily rhythm. Song, dance and art are wonderful ways to lift the mood and unify a group
• To address issues in a group, use processes which are constructive, effective and fun. The Zegg-Tamera Forum, and composting (see The Natural Advantage) are two examples.
• Use social enterprise structures to handle money and ownership issues which are muddy and emotive in many intentional communities.

Summing up

• Imagine a place where people gather to live together because they share many values, and want to benefit from each other’s strength in order to serve the greater good more powerfully
• Imagine a group of people, 100 or more, with such commitment and processes that there is honesty, safety and trust among them
• Imagine a community where the process is part of the product: the way people live and work, the way the place is built and operates, is part of the learning and service it can offer the world.

In his superb book on the Eden Project, Tim Smit gives a crucial role to the Tinkerbell Effect. If enough people believe it, it will happen. As I have talked to many people about The Village Forest, I have been struck by how wide and strong is the desire for community. If stirs you, I urge you to believe in it and act on it, whether through the Village Forest or another project. The more shoulder communities evolve, the sooner we give critical mass to the network of light.

For more information about The Village Forest, see www.living-organically.com. Alan Heeks can be contacted at or 01747-835835.

References:
The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, Harper 0-88730-704-3
Zegg-Tamera Forum see www.tamera.org/english
The Natural Advantage by Alan Heeks ISBN 185788261 X
Eden by Tim Smit, Bantam Press ISBN 0-593-04883-0