About the Community
Introduction

We are currently a group of nine individuals, ranging in age from 4 to 70, with a common interest in all aspects of sustainable/holistic living in the widest sense, from the practical eco-approach to everyday living to deepening our self-awareness. We bought Cole Street Farm in November 2004 with the aim of creating a small, informal community, ultimately of 12-14 people, with shared values, linked to the wider community around us.

Currently we share morning meditation, around two evening meals per week, some outings, and the gardening, maintenance and administration work. We are learning a lot about the benefits and responsibilities of informal community and share a lot of laughter, as well as being supported in dealing with our personal challenges. Our inter-personal communication skills are growing along with the respect we all have for each other.

Vision and
Values

An informal community, living more sustainably in the full sense: personally, as a group, and ecologically. We want to embody sustainable living to nourish our lives and the wider community, and to show it can be done. Important qualities of community for us are:

  • Serving something greater than our own needs
  • Mutual support
  • Shared values and commitments
  • Clarity and integrity in how we communicate and relate to each other
  • Respect for each other's autonomy
  • Wanting to deepen our awareness in everyday life and work, for example by embodying mindfulness, integrity, right livelihood, care for each other, serving the highest good, joyfulness and gratitude.
  • Simple, non-doctrinal, shared practices such as meditation.
  • Acceptance and support for each other's individual life path.
Shared
Delights
  • living in a quiet, attractive, rural location accessible to nearby town
  • having a shared market garden
  • a community which offers support and companionship and enables each household to maintain a good degree of independence.
  • scope to work on site, with shared and individual workspaces
  • being part of the wider community, with people visiting us and vice versa
  • good listening and expression
  • safety and support to grow in a non-judgmental environment
  • a nurturing and supportive context, both emotionally and practically
Shared
Desires
(Membership Criteria)

Shared values: Mutual support, appreciation, mutual respect. Service to the highest good; simple awareness practices such as attunement, shared silence. Sustainability; human and environmental.
Process skills: Willingness to handle any disagreements and negative feelings clearly, openly, and constructively, evolving shared processes to do so.
Diversity: A mix of ages; couples and singles, and a mix of income levels/ capital as far as possible.
Finance: For most members, enough capital or borrowing capacity to purchase their property and contribute to the whole. Ability to sustain own income.
Community participation: Willing to join in eg 2 meetings per month, and to gift half a day per week to the running/maintenance of the project (this could be market garden, admin, cleaning shared areas etc).
Willing to join in community-shared meals - up to 2-3 per week, or as many as prove practical. Shared meals will be vegetarian.
Delight: A shared desire to create an informal community which is enjoyable and supportive, where we like working and playing together.

 
Legal Structure We are in the process of converting the Company limited by shares, which owns the site, into a Community Interest Company. This will make clear that we are a not for profit organisation as all assets will be locked and any profits re-used for the benefit of the community. Most of the finance is structured as loans from the prospective residents. We also have loan facilities available from the Co-operative Bank to top this up as necessary. Once the planning permission is received and conversion work completed, the company will sell long leases on residential units, repaying the loans, and will retain ownership of the shared facilities. The company will be controlled by the residents and the housing association responsible for managing 7 of the 14 properties. We already have group agreements both for the purchase/development and the residency phases.

Owners of individual units will be free to sell their dwelling. However, it will also be essential that purchasers are acceptable to the rest of the group and accept the group's shared values and commitments.

 
 
Community
Members

Alan Heeks:  One of the UK experts on cohousing and sustainable living.  Has created two successful sustainable education centres:  the Magdalen Project in West Dorset, and Hazel Hill Wood near Salisbury.  Author of ‘The Natural Advantage’, which applies organic growth principles to people and organisations.

Caroline Sharman:  Professionally trained complementary health and healing therapist:  adult education teacher.  Long association with organic farming.

Gay Ellis:  For many years a member/director of Arjuna Wholefoods in Cambridge. She also helped to set up and run their complementary health centre and is a long-term green gardener and Master Composter.

Jane Stott:  Jane has an MBA and was a founding partner in a successful small training business which started in 1998 and is still flourishing.  She was a manager at a retreat centre in East Dorset and a community member
there.  She has a diploma in Adult Education and has been teaching adults for over 25 years.

Michael Giddings:  Many years of experience living and working in communities, originally as a social worker, most recently in the core group at Othona ecumenical Christian community near Bridport.

Nancy Winfield and her daugher Vita(4): 

Amanda Pearson: 

Peter: