Hi All. This is a quick post to share this link for an interesting podcast I've just listened to on the state of intentional community in North America. It's made me reflect that here at the Bubble we tend to focus on regenerative land-work as our response to modernity, perhaps because the Land Workers Alliance has been so important to some of us. And yet at the Bubble we stand with one foot in land work and another foot in intentional community. I feel that the skills and sensibilities contained in both are part of a much larger collage of responses to what has been going wrong in our world.
The incredible recent growth and glorious culture of the LWA highlights that we don't have an equivalent in the communities sector: Diggers and Dreamers have done a part of bringing us together and providing information, and there are other bits and pieces online and in person, but there could be more. I'm looking for something which can catalyse our energy and engagement in a similar way to what I see in the LWA, and have also just experienced with the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Something which can build coherence and engagement, build power, and leverage that to support both communities and wider societal shifts.
We will be having another Communities Conference again this summer, at Braziers Park in July, where some of these conversations can happen. We're currently putting together the call for submissions, and hope to be able increase our attendance from last year. There is a sense of something growing here, but also a sense (in me) of not yet knowing how to situate ourselves as intentional community as a political, social, justice & equity movement. There is work to be done, as the podcast discusses.