Life at Findhorn

We held an ‘internal conference’ recently on the theme of climate change. These internal conferences give us an opportunity to meet together for three or four days a couple of times a year to consider matters of importance that face us.

During this most recent conference, it felt like the scale and urgency of the climate change crisis really landed within the community. In particular, a film of George Monbiot’s ... read more

Freshly back in Findhorn after a couple of weeks of gatherings of the European ecovillage family in Italy. Still getting used to the heavy, grey-green light and the leaden skies after the light, blue airiness of the Mediterranean.

Every year at our General Assembly, GEN-Europe (the Global Ecovillage Network) presents the Ecovillage Excellence Award to one of our members on the basis of specific achievements over the previous 12 ... read more

Once a year, the European ecovillage family meets for a week of networking, policy discussions and fun – this is the GEN-Europe annual General Assembly. This years’ GA, to be held next week, will take place in a small community in the mountains to the east of Rome. We are expecting somewhere in the region of 100 representatives of ecovillage initiatives and other interested individuals from over 20 countries across ... read more

In response to those who felt offended at my last blog, I send unreserved apologies. No disrespect was intended to any living or working at the RAF Kinloss airbase.

When we heard of the death of the Nimrod crew in the Middle-East, we were devastated. There was an outpouring of grief and sympathy here in the community. Insofar as we can, we share the grief and feel for those – ... read more

Very exciting developments in the ecovillage movement in Brasil. As part of an Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) course I am here in Sao Paolo teaching sustainable economy to around one hundred eager participants. This is a programme of Gaia Education, whose director, May East, herself a Brazilian, lives in Findhorn.

It is already very encouraging that 100 urbanites from one of the world’s great megacities should be so interested ... read more

Londoners say there is no need to travel - just sit at the foot of the statue of Eros in Trafalgar Square and sooner or later, the whole world will come to you. Findhorn sometimes feels like the Eros of the eco-spiritual world.

The latest traveller to wash up on these shores – literally – is Mukti Mitchell. Mukti is sailing round Britain in a self-built yacht on a six-month ... read more

Two things caught my eye in the New Statesman over the last week. The first was the emphatic thumbs-down by Sian Berry, UK Green Party speaker, to Gordon Brown’s new ‘ecovillages’ idea – the proposed pilot projects that will inform the design of five new ‘eco-towns’. She imagined they would “end up as sought-after, trendy developments whose residents, in practice, commute miles to work, shop in supermarkets and rarely walk ... read more

There is a vibrant good news story doing the rounds this week, in the shape of 24 school kids from the Rokeby School in Newham, East London and their deputy-head teacher, Willie Deighan. The story has its roots in a conference we hosted here in September last year with the title (appropriately given the solutions-based nature of what we are about), What Schools are Doing Right. Willie was a participant ... read more

There are few surer ways to understand how a culture ticks than to look how it deals with death. In Africa, where I spent much time in the 20 years before coming to live here in Findhorn, the veils that separate the realms of the living and of the ancestors are thin and people pass easily between them.

New-borns are often recognised as re-incarnations of recently deceased elders. While ... read more

A mid-week meeting is called. The subject is planning – specifically, how we are going to develop the new stretch of land in behind the Universal Hall that is likely to gain planning permission in the next year.

On the surface, hardly the stuff that wild nights out are made of!

In the event, 70 people cram into the community centre – before the meeting has begun, there is ... read more

We have an estate agent’s ‘For Sale’ notice up next to one of the big eco-houses here in the community. Big deal, you might say, isn’t this the normal way people sell houses? Well, in intentional communities, in fact it is not.

Think about it. An intentional community is a place where people with a shared base of values or common commitment to a project or ideology choose to live ... read more

This last week, there has been much media interest in the community. This follows the official launch of the results of our ecological footprint study – the lowest ever recorded in the industrialised world at a little over half the UK national average.

This does not mean that we are lowest-impact community – even within the ecovillage network, there are certainly other communities with a lower footprint.

Take the ... read more