Infinitesque

Subjects:

Some ecovillage brainstorming

Principal author:
John L. Clark

Abstract

Early into this year, several friends and I met to brainstorm about goals and concerns surrounding an ecovillage project that we are actively imagining. I took pictures of our notes, and I transcribe them here for reference, sharing, and further reflection.

On January 4th, several friends and I met to brainstorm about goals and concerns surrounding an ecovillage project that we are actively imagining. I've been interested in (and experimenting with) living in intentional community for a little while now, and when I talked about my visit last fall to two intentional communities in Missouri (Stillwater Sanctuary and Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage), it triggered one of my friends to reveal that she has wanted to live in something like an ecovillage for a long time. So that's certainly exciting! I mean, really, how nice is shared reality?

So we've been having an ongoing conversation about the idea of establishing an ecovillage in our local geographic area (the Cuyahoga River watershed, or thereabouts), and as I mentioned we had a more intentional meeting around the idea on January 4th. I was very glad for the different yet beautiful ways that everyone ended up contributing to that meeting. Martha and Chuck brought an enormous reserve of excited energy and very immediate visioning, and Greg did a great job of facilitating the meeting towards brainstorming about goals and concerns we have for the project. He recorded our responses on a sheet of paper, and I provide my transcription of that artifact here:

Ecovillage Goals
Group Goals Personal Goals Concerns

  • Reducing carbon footprint

  • Simplicity and elegance in lifestyles/structures

  • Consentual view of responsibility

  • Compassionate and empathic community

  • Setting an example

  • Community supportive of families/children

  • Allowing partial involvement

  • Establishing roles and identifying needs

  • Respectful relationship of world/community around us

  • Living in the country

  • Separation from a negative world

  • Building a positive world

  • Comfort of living

  • Learning ancillary/practical skills

  • Identifying our role and identity

  • Financial reimbursement

  • Loss of current lifestyle/necessary sacrifices

  • Maintaining careers/current relationships

  • Maintaining connections through geographic distance

  • Access to medical care/needs

  • Meeting the needs of the community

Table 1 — Ecovillage Goals

This page was first published on 2015-01-24 13:08:00-05:00.

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