Strengthening local communities will be crucial in the years ahead, to help us all to live with increasing levels of disruption, e.g. to food supplies, utilities, weather patterns, and probably social cohesion. SoF can offer a range of insights and processes, drawn from our pilot projects and research, to help communities: these are summarised lower down this page. Our current focus is a major new project led by the Network for Social change, in which Alan is one of the core team.
Community Climate Resilience Project
This project aims to increase substantially the capacity of local communities across the UK to sustain themselves and adapt in the face of mounting disruption from climate change and other sources. Our plan is designed to achieve proof of concept for a number of initiatives early on, and to share them on a much wider scale in Years 2 and 3, helped by other funders. Strengthening social infrastructure can make a huge difference in times of crisis, as documented in Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell and Adam Greenfield’s more recent Lifehouse.
We recognise that the scale of the climate crisis, and other systemic issues such as social and economic injustice, cannot be rectified by any project, but it looks clear that strengthening the social infrastructure of local communities is one of the most effective interventions which is realistically achievable.
For a project summary click here.
Resources
- Future Risks Review 2030: In 2023, Seeding our Future commissioned desk research from Schumacher Institute exploring the major challenges likely to hit communities in the UK over the next 10 years. This gives a useful indication of some of the key issues, and resource gaps in responding to them: see report here.
- Future Conversations: This is a set of workshops which SoF has successfully piloted, to help communities build resilience skills. See more here.
- Deep Adaptation: This approach, originated by Professor Jem Bendell, offers a range of processes for practical and emotional adaptation to climate change and other major disruptions. SoF has led a variety of workshops helping community groups and others to explore and apply Deep Adaptation approaches. See more here.
- Intentional communities: Cohousing neighbourhoods and similar projects have evolved good processes for group-forming, decisions, resource-sharing, etc., which can be useful for communities of all kinds. Alan Heeks co-founded and lived in a cohousing community for 5 years, and has also taught on the Eco-village Training at Findhorn Foundation. See more insights here.
- Eco-hamlets: this recent blog gives an overview of Alan’s ideas on two of the main ways to evolve Adaptive Communities: click here.
- Natural Happiness: this is Alan’s model of learning about human resilience and wellbeing from natural ecosystems. For the overall Seven Seeds model, see here. To see how community qualities in ecosystems can help you, see here.
- Community resilience: In 2015-17, Alan ran a project, Facing The 2020’s, exploring how local communities can grow their resilience and their capacity for positive collective action. For an overview of his conclusions, see here.
- Cohousing: this is a community which combines some shared resources (e.g. market garden, dining/group room, guest bedrooms, pool cars) with private dwellings, each with their own front door. Alan has started two cohousing projects, and lived in one for five years. Creating a new bricks-and-mortar cohousing project can take many years, but there may be quicker ways to do this using Tiny Homes or converting existing buildings. For a case study and resources, see here.
- Seven kinds of community: you may get confused because the term community is used in different ways. For a simple guide, see here.
- Ecovillages: these are larger, low-impact communities where people live, work, and play, in harmony with the Earth. Learn more via the Global Ecovillage Network: www.ecovillage.org. For a briefing on the Dorset Ecovillage project which Alan explored in 2003-2007, see here. Such a project could be a brilliant catalyst for positive change: Alan stopped his work on it because the planning authorities at the time were unsympathetic, and the project did not have access to the scale of funds needed.