Vision

  We use a co-housing model where all community members jointly own a company, and that company owns the property. This means we are able to include people both with and without capital. 

We aim for the cost of each individual housing unit to be less than local market rates; so, whatever size unit you opt for, we expect your costs would be less than other comparable options open to you. 

Mutual ownership also means we have equality of ownership, rights and responsibilities - it is up to us as a community to ensure ongoing financial viability, to maintain our premises, to create a good living environment etc.

 We are currently looking for property within about 1/2 drive of Totnes, Devon

  We invite people interested in overseeing and helping develop this aspect of our vision.

Permaculture and biodynamic principles inspire us. 

We look to partner with Nature to nurture ecosystems restoring health to the Earth and increasing the nutritional content and the flavour of the food we grow. 

There's a lot of variety in the different ways co-housing communities arrange to use their spaces and facilities.

Optimising affordability and looking at practical ways to use these buildings, and live together, has informed the decision to focus on giving people use of extensive communal facilities with most of us sharing kitchens, lounges, gardens, workshops, land etc.

We presume people with a variety of financial positions will form this community. 

Some people will be able to pay their buy-in cost in full as we purchase a property, some will make part payment with the rest being covered by a loan that we arrange on behalf of the community, repaid in monthly instalments.

We have been working with Triodos who are keen to loan to us. Their interest rate is likely to be 9% so we are also exploring options for financing at lower interest rates, including the option for people arranging personal loans from friends or family at mutually beneficial interest rates, eg 5%.

At 9% for every £10,000 of your buy-in cost not covered by your deposit, a monthly payment of £82 would be due. For £50,000 that would amount to £410, for £100,000 it would be £820.

Sharing utility, council tax and insurance costs together looks like being under £300 / person / month.

  We observe that people mean and envisage very different things from the word ‘community’, and it is challenging to ensure that a group that forms has compatible wishes. 

Ultimately psychological and emotional maturity prove invaluable for navigating community living. 

We appreciate learnings from sociocracy and non-violent communication for enabling people and enterprise to thrive.

We will need to have many agreements for how we live together. Some decisions have already been made eg which property we opt for, and others are open for us to shape together as we form.

  We’re including another element in how we work and live -

reverence, or heart. 

It is being conscious that who we’re being as we go about our days, and as we attend to the land and plants impacts everything. 

We plan to produce some pretty special food in a really nourishing environment and we’d love some partners who share these 

intentions and abilities.

You will see from our purpose statement that our focus is to inspire and facilitate cultural change through co-creating ecologically conscious, spiritful, joyful community living.

And our aims include supporting and encouraging us all in bringing our gifts to the world and contributing to wider cultural change work. 

One such method for cultural change is to create attractive, eco-oriented, collaborative ways of living, to live together well, to be visible, and to make good community-forming information available to others with the hope that opting for this way of living will impact people's finances, health, and interpersonal skills, thus affecting what they are able to focus on in their lives and work.

And we observe that having a vision beyond our own comfortable housing is key to our moving through the inevitable challenges of co-living.

Some people reading this may presume our lives through the coming decades will continue much as they are now, and some may presume that the impacts of climate change will soon bring significant challenges. 

We’re concerned enough to include in our plans off grid infrastructure for power, water and waste.

We’re aware that we cannot know the future, but one of the values of this vision is that it can be resilient whether we are in times of stability, or change or as crises intensify, where knowing how to grow food and work as a community will be greatly valued.