The dream

From DnDWiki

Contents 1 Vision 2 Exercises 3 Personal vision v group Vision 4 Does size matter? 5 To join or to create 6 How to visit an existing community

[edit] Vision

The Dream

A vision is a deeply held picture of where a person or group wants to get to in the future. When everyone in a group thoroughly understands and shares the same vision they become intensely motivated. They will apply their whole selves to achieve their vision. Nick Heap – Management consultant.[1]

To have a vision has always been a bit of a double-edged blessing. On the one hand visions can inspire people to greater things – to try to make the world a better place. But they can also illicit ridicule and sarcasm. Utopian dream can just as easily be a dismissive put down to your aspirations and ideas as it can be a complementary remark (in writing that I even find it hard to believe that it can be a complementary remark.) Visions also border on the edge of sanity, they are what mystics and mental patients have – claiming to have a vision puts one in some odd company. There is also today a lot of mistrust of grand visions, too many bold plans for brave new worlds have either failed to materialise or have turned out to have a lead lining to their silver clouds. Their reality seems always to fail to match up to the initial heady promises, whether it be the cradle-to-grave welfare state or the grand alternative society of the 1970’s. Which is why I have always felt a little uncomfortable with emphatic statements such as “the first major task members of a forming community group is to clarify and write down their vision and make sure they all agree on it.” made by Diana Leafe Christian in Creating a Life Together. Certainly having some sort of agreed aims & objectives is necessary, but I’m not sure everyone has to agree on everything. It is easy for consultants and writers to go on about the necessity of having an agreed community vision – its much simpler to write or run workshops about ‘having a clear vision’ than grappling with the multi-faceted often paradoxical nature of different peoples communal aspirations. The nitty-gritty of community building is all much fuzzier relying on a lot of give and take when it comes to the overall vision of any group and the tension between personal visions and group plans. In balance Christian does go on the quote community activist Tree Bressen “A common vision is neither necessary or sufficient for starting a new community, since many have got on without one and some that had one failed, But a common vision greatly increases the probability of success. If your group is going to all the trouble to start a community, can you afford not to give yourself the best possible chance?”

Dangers of not having a vision

I have looked at the question in all its bearings, I have resolutely attacked it, and by incontrovertible calculations I find that a projectile endowed with an initial velocity of 12,000 yards per second, and aimed at the moon, must necessarily reach it. I have the honor, my brave colleagues, to propose a trial of this little experiment. Impey Barbicane, President of the Gun Club in From the Earth to the Moon (1868), Jules Verne

Back in 1868 Jules Verne had a clear vision of how you might get to the moon. If anyone had actually tried to turn Verne’s science fiction into science fact and attempted the first lunar landing by taking aim with a super-gun and firing a manned-bullet into space they would have discovered that by the time that the lunar bullet reached its target the target would have moved tens of thousands of miles away. Yet by 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped out on the surface of the moon, we had obviously learned a thing or two about taking aim. In reaching the moon the Apollo craft had travelled some 240,000 miles while being off course approximately 80% of the time. And yet it landed within a few feet of its planned target. Constant course correction is almost so commonplace as to be unremarkable in any form of terrestrial, or extra-terrestrial, navigation. It seems obvious that in trying to get from a to b by any means of transport that no-one in reality goes by the proverbial straight line route that the crow flies. (come to think of it I’ve never seen a crow fly in a straight line either.) So it is somewhat surprising to find little or no mention of course correction in any guides to navigating through our personal and collective visions.

In the same way that the Apollo moonshot was off course most of the time, so are we when in pursuit of our dream/vision. Failing to realise that we need to do course correction can not only lead to serious disillusion with the vision, but may well contribute to the failure of the vision itself – continuing in an ‘off-course’ direction for any length of time will inevitably lead us to somewhere we weren’t planning to go. Alternatively we may want to ‘correct’ our vision in the light of the experience of trying to realise it.

A Community Vision Statement

Lancaster Cohousing Group Vision:

We plan to create an intergenerational cohousing community at Halton Gorge that will encourage social interaction and will be built on ecological values. It will include around 25 homes with community facilities and workshop/office space. We will seek to enable sustainable travel to central Lancaster so that residents have easy access to amenities that are not available in Halton village

Time Horizons

Critical to understanding different people’s relationships with any vision is the concept of Time Horizons. Not just the timeframe of the vision itself – will it take two, five, ten, twenty years to realise – but the time periods that the individual members in the group work within. Psychologist Elliot Jaques identified seven different ‘time strata’ that he thought different people operated on – that is the time period that they worked within and thought ahead. These strata went from three months to over twenty years. Jaques also thought that it was very difficult for someone who worked within one timeframe to think any further than the next one. This goes someway to help explain why some people can think that parts of a vision are achievable whilst others look at them and think that they are complete pie in the sky.

Elliot Jaques 7 Time Strata

• Time horizon of three months. • Time horizon of up to one year • Time horizon of up to two years • Time horizon of up to five years • Time horizon of up to ten years • Time horizon of up to twenty years • Time horizon of over twenty years

by Elliot Jaques and Kathryn Cason

Shifting time horizons

To encourage a more forward looking view in vision building activities find ways to get participants to move their perspectives from:

• the old to the new • one answer to many answers • the familiar to the unfamiliar • what they know to what they suspect • the little picture to the big picture • the concrete to the abstract • certainty to doubt • many limits to fewer limits • what they don’t want to what they do • the simple to the more complex • less stress to more stress • less information to more information

Adapted from: Strategy of the Dolphin.

“Unless you achieve some mind-stretching, you are likely to be involved in just rearranging the furniture of the past and present rather than preparing for the future.” D. Lynch/P. Kordis, Strategy of the Dolphin.

“Idle dreamers have given true visionaries a bad name.” Robert Fritz

“Vision building is all good fun but it can get in the way of serious property development………..” David Michael founder member Springhill Cohousing Stroud.

Visions change over time - the elusive nature of vision Community Vision Vision or people first?

[edit] Exercises

Practical methods from Nick Heap[2]

You can use these methods and others for developing groups and individuals. You can also mix elements of the methods to suit the situation and culture.

Pairs and share Ask people to think about how they would like things to be in their work or life. Say to them, for example, "It is two years from now and you think to yourself, this is smashing, this is just the way I always hoped work would be. What would be happening if you felt like that?"

Ask people to take turns listening to each other as they each explore this question. Then ask each person to summarise the main points of their vision to the total group. Encourage the group to listen and avoid criticism. At the end, focus on the common vision. Set up a planning process where people work together to achieve their vision.

Pictures You can use a picture of your vision to make it concrete and attractive. When you describe the picture and what it means to you, you use your imaginative and logical side. You often get surprising insights from your own and other people's pictures. Perhaps we edit our imagination less than our logic. The pictures create the data about how an individual wants things to be. Then share the data in the group, focus it and decide what to do. Pairs and share (above) is one good method. Another is to use the "Verb/Noun" process described below.

Focused brainstorming Here, you ask people to list words on a flip chart that describe how, for example, they would like other departments to see their department. They then stand back from the list and say what these words describe. The answer is in the form "Verb (modifiers) Noun". This might be "Being Professional". They would then work together to clarify what this would mean in all aspects of their work. Finally, they would plan how to achieve their desired vision.

Personal community picture

Non-negotiables

Dots

Lancaster workshop Pics

Ulverston Eco-housing group got £2000 from Community Champions fund to help individual volunteers develop new community projects - funded by the Department for Education and Skills. 28 via Cumbria Community Foundation to produce a Feasibility Study.

“Vision building is all good fun but it can get in the way of serious property development………..” David Michael founder member Springhill Cohousing Stroud.

[edit] Personal vision v group Vision

Your ideal community

The following exercise may assist you to clarify your personal community vision. Take a sheet of paper and some crayons or felt-tipped pens, and draw a simple sketch, map, or diagram of your ideal community. It might be a good idea to represent your personal space as a small square in the center of the page. We’re not concerned here with the details of your house or apartment, but rather with what is around it. Start to put in other houses or buildings, roughly indicating how far apart they are:

• Do you want to see other houses from your own, or do you want to be in a rural setting?

• Do you imagine yourself and others in this setting mostly driving back and forth to home, or do you imagine walking to some places? What would those be-a park, a beach, a church, a movie, a grocery store, a coffee shop? How close would you like these amenities to be?

• If you have children, how close might they like them to be? And what about when they are teenagers: Are you prepared to drive them everywhere they want to go, or would you like them to have the freedom to walk to shops or take the bus to the library?

• How urban-or rural-do you imagine your ideal community to be? Do you want uninterrupted views of farmland or mountains, or do you like to see houses, and people passing by through the filtered greenery of street trees?

What about privacy? Most of us need two kinds of privacy. One is within the house¬; the ability to go into a room, close the door, and be alone; the freedom to decorate a small space that is just ours. But privacy from other community members, neighbors and passersby is equally important. Some people like to be able to avoid others and have time to themselves and their immediate family. Others enjoy seeing people and may seek out situations as an “excuse” to chat with neighbors or passersby. Elderly people living alone, in particular, often like to sit on a porch or balcony within view of the street; to see other people, even if they never speak to them, is to engage in a kind of vicarious socializing.

• What kind of house-world connection appeals to you?

• What level of privacy from the outside world do you require to feel comfortable?

• How far are you willing to commute to work? What about other employed adults in the family? Put an arrow on your drawing to indicate the time it would take you to get to work from this community. If you’d ideally like to walk to work, what are you willing to compromise on in order to do that?

• What kind of exercise or recreation appeals to you? If you like to go to a yoga class or to work out or play squash with a friend, how close to home (or work) would you like this amenity to be? If you like to walk or cycle from home, how close would you like a footpath or cycletrack to be?

Don’t let yourself be sidetracked by a rational judge in your head who says-”Oh come on! You can’t really have everything you want.” Although your ideal community might not exist in all the particulars you have outlined, you may be surprised at how many of the qualities you value can be found in an existing place. Once you have really thought about the kind of setting in which you would feel totally “at home,” go exploring and look for it! Adapted From: House As A Mirror of Self

[edit] Does size matter?

Does the number of people you choose to live with affect the chance of your community being a success? Should you be a small ‘family’ group, a medium sized work orientated set up or a looser large village type community? Are there any magic communal numbers? .................

What is success?

Any attempt to reflect on whether size has any affect on the success of a community venture is bedevilled with the question of how to measure success. Is simple longevity the measure? Should a community be measured by how much it represents the intentions of its founders? Is a small short-lived group that lived by its founding principled any more or less successful than a large long-lived community that has moved far away from its original roots?

Seeing as setting up an intentional community has many parallels with setting up a small business perhaps we could measure ‘success’ in a comparative way. It is general wisdom that most businesses that fail do so in the first two to three years – if they manage to get off the drawing board at all. So too it would appear do a large number of communal groups – for a whole range of reasons. I would say if your group survives its first couple of years of existence as a living-breathing-bricks-and-mortar community then you can quite clearly say that it has successfully established itself – which may well be the hardest part.

Looked at from a sociological perspective perhaps the next measure of social success, rather than any question of numbers or founding intentions, would be if a community is stable enough for a first generation of children to be raised there. Which would roughly mean surviving for somewhere in the region of 18 to 25 years. This would then pretty much put it on par with the family as a social institution. And a final measure of social success would be if a community managed to become multi-generational. When a second generation raises its children and the community deals with the issues of the ageing & death of its members, and thereby works how to sustainably reproduce itself .

From an individual’s point of view much of the above may well be irrelevant. An individual will judge a community by whether it is friendly and welcoming, provides a comfortable home and useful work rather than by some academic measure of how it measures up as a social institution. Maybe the question isn’t about some magic group membership number, but rather are there optimum group sizes that might help us to achieve whatever measure of success it is we choose to use?

Dunbanumbas

Search for information on human group sizes and you will very quickly come across the work of Robin Dunbar, Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool, whose book Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language contains reports of detailed research on primate and human group size from various scientific disciplines. The main thrust of his view is that optimum size of social groups is linked to the size of the neocortex, the newest and so-called ‘’thinking’’ part of the brain. Our closest primate relative the chimpanzee lives in social groups of 30-50 - the human neocortex is four times bigger than that of the chimpanzee. From this information Dunbar predicts that the average/optimum human group should number 147.8, or about 150. He then looked for human social groups that might support his thesis and he found the number reoccurring all over the place.

In a survey of 21 different modern hunter-gatherer tribes around the world, who presumably reflect some elements of our ancestral past, he found that the average number of people in each village was 148.4. A study he came across commissioned by the Church of England had concluded that for a congregation to be large enough to support the activities of a church, yet small enough for everyone to know everyone else suf¬ficiently well to form a close-knit, mutually supportive community the ideal size was 200 or less. He found a similar pattern in military organizations. From the Romans onwards through trial and error, military planners have arrived at a rule of thumb for the size of a functional fighting unit somewhere between 100 - 200 men. Numerous military commanders have come to the conclusion that it becomes increasing difficult to make any group larger than this function as a unit without complicated hierarchies, rules and regulations to insure loyalty and unity within the group – and that coming from somewhere already seemingly hidebound with rules and hierarchy.

More pertinent to the discussion of the size of intentional communities is perhaps the case of the Anabaptist village communities of the Hutterites. the Amish and the Bruderhof in the USA and Britain. Traditional Hutterite colonies average about 90 persons in a colony, Amish church districts have on average about 160 persons while the Bruderhof maintain the largest domestic units of the three, with communities ranging from 160 up to 300 adult residents. All these groups attempt to maximize community harmony by keeping their numbers ‘small’, “small enough so that all of its members are needed for all of its enterprises.”

The Hutterites and the Amish have the most ordered method of community sub-division. Every time community membership approaches 150 or so, it is divided into two separate groups. They have found that once a group becomes larger than that, “people become strangers to one another.” At 150, the Hutterites believe, something happens that somehow changes community dynamics seemingly overnight. At around 150 members communities spontaneously begin dividing into smaller ‘sub-groups’, a process which eventually undermines community harmony. The Amish talk of an optimum community as one where “people can know each other by name, by shared ceremonial activity and convention.”

The Bruderhof, or Society of Brothers, present a slightly more complicated case for the magic Dunbar-number. Although they follow the general rule of dividing communities when they reach a certain size this is usually at a higher level than either the Hutterites or the Amish. This may be why they seem to have had more periods of internal conflict in the recent past than the other two groups (thus supporting the Dunbanumba thesis). However the other strand of Professor Dunbar’s thesis is that our brain size, the roots of human language, human group size and our evolution from apes is all primarily due to our ability to build and maintain relationships through gossip. It may even be possible that 150 is the size of the network that can be maintained by gossiping or informal inter-personal small-talk. The Bruderhof throw a spanner into this theory by having a rule of “no-gossiping” dating from the early history of the group in Germany, has remained a fast rule. There will be no gossip. No talk about others behind their back. Any member who hears gossip must immediately challenge the gossiper to repeat his statements to the subject’s face. Such talk must be reproved as evidence of wrong attitudes. The offender must confess the sin and humbly ask forgiveness. Otherwise he or she may be excluded from worship and group meetings, possibly with the imposition of even greater sanctions.

The Bruderhof aside Robin Dunbar’s conclusions about human group size remain remarkably convincing “ ... human societies con¬tain buried within them a natural grouping of around I50 people ... they are a consequence of the fact that the human brain cannot sustain more than a certain number of relationships of a given strength at any one time. The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar ... it seems that, even in large-scale societies, the extent of our social networks is not much greater than that typical of the hunter-gatherer’s world ...” Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Robin Dunbar

Professor Dunbar also came across other ‘magic’ numbers. From; ‘clan’ sized groups of typically 1500 - 2000 people, through ‘bands’ of 30 – 35 people essentially collaborative groups of families who find it convenient to come together to pool resources, to a cluster of human groups with 10 to 12 members known as sympathy groups. A sympathy group is the number of individuals that it is suggested we are able to maintain very intense relationship with at any one time. Studies asked people to list the names of their intimates - those friends and relations whom they contact at least once a month – the answer being typically 10 to 12. They also asked people to list the names of everyone whose death tomorrow they would find devastating; again the answer is about 10 to 12. Groups in society where very close co-ordination of behav¬iour is required are commonly about this number: juries, the inner cabinets of many governments, the number of apostles, witches covens, the size of many sports teams. (affinity groups?)

Another magic human group number banded about, this time by management gurus and the like, is the ‘action-taking group’, usually having five members. Kirkpatrick Sale in Human Scale makes the case for this being the smallest effective human group – drawing on evidence from far and wide – from the size of hunting bands in early Paleolithic societies (“Usually no more than five”), the size of early Greek ships crews and the number of people it takes to make a conspiracy. More convincing is the evidence he quotes from various management studies. The Handbook of Small Group Research suggests “that the optimal committee size is five, since below that number people tend to feel that getting together is “not worth it” and “won’t prove anything,” whereas much above that people start to participate less and eventually stop paying attention.”

Another study showed that groups between four and seven were “ most successful at solving problems, and that as groups increase in size they tend to take more time to come up with solutions, make less accurate judgments, produce fewer ideas, achieve less communication, and stand less chance of reaching an agreement.” Another researcher observed that most committees “start with; five members-before that there is not enough sense of cohesion for the group to consider itself a committee at all-and after a time, when they grow and become unwieldy with new members, they tend to revert to the original size by establishing an “executive committee” or “board of directors,” or some such ...” “for best participation, for highest all-round involvement, a size between five and seven seems to be optimum.” Charles Handy. Understanding Organisations. Penguin 1976

UK Intentional community size

A quick survey of the sizes of intentional communities in the UK taken from figures in the eight editions of the Diggers & Dreamers Directory covering the years 1990 through to 2004 gives clusters of ‘action taking’ and ‘sympathy’ type groups - Just under a third each of the total communities for which population information is available. With groups having more than 15 members being evenly spread, although of the small number of communities with over 50 members there is a clustering around the figure 150. All of which would seem to give additional weight to Robin Dunbar’s ideas.

But do any of these numbers give any helpful pointers when it comes to trying to sort out what the optimum size for your own community might be? Well ...

• if your looking to be an activist-orientated-action-taking communal house with a quick-creative-decision-making-process, that has high all-round involvement and maximum participation, then you should be aiming for a membership of five to seven to be most effective.

• If you want a community that maintains close interpersonal relationships between all its members then a membership of around twelve would seem to be what you should be looking for.

• Whereas if what you want is to live in a Cohousing type scheme with a collaborative group of families that have to come together to pool resources then you need to get together with thirty odd other people.

• And if what you are really after is an all-together looser network type community, where you can stay in touch with what’s going on by gossiping over the eco-village fence, then when your population nears the magic hundred & fifty consider starting another community!

[edit] To join or to create

This is a stub. What are the pros and cons of trying to set up your own communal group versus joining one that already exists. Please discuss.

[edit] How to visit an existing community

So you’ve surfed the websites, read a few articles on cohousing or low-impact living and flicked through the directories – mentally crossing off half the groups because; they have the wrong diet, don’t or do keep animals, are too spiritual or not spiritual enough, appear far to idealistic or too down-to-earth for you taste. What should you do now?

Arranging your first visit to an intentional community may feel like a big deal ... will they like me? Will I like them? Will it be as good as it sounds? What will I have to do? Am I ready for this?Don’t fret too much. The reality is that at any one time there are a number of communities actively seeking new members and most groups that advertise themselves welcome visitors and are experienced at hosting all sorts of people. The hardest part may be deciding which group(s) you want to visit in the first place – you can try and find out as much as you can about a place before making your mind up, but the information you get may be sketchy and anyway it can be quite hard to judge a place simply from what they write about themselves. If you can’t make up your mind choose two or three that seem close to what you are looking for, or a couple in the area you want to live in.

Where to start?

You could do worse than starting off by asking yourself exactly what it is that you want from visiting a community? Not what you hope to get from communal living in general (thought that’s useful to think about too), but what you hope to get out of visiting this particular community - what is the purpose of your visit?

• Have you picked them out because they look like the best fit with your vision of an ideal community? – be prepared to be disappointed.

• Are you just curious to find out more about communal living? – perhaps you should look out for a community offering a visitor weekend where you may get a broader picture of intentional communities than you would visiting one group in isolation.

• Are you looking for a change in direction of you life? – think about visiting a number of different communities to see a range of possibilities.

• Are you looking for love and expect it will be easier to find in a community? – be prepared to be disappointed.

It may well be worthwhile also asking yourself - Why a particular community is open to visitors? What do they want or need from you as a visitor? In general groups that advertise in directories are looking for people who might join them, maybe not immediately, but perhaps sometime in the future. They may be doing this on an active basis – certainly if they have vacant space to fill at the time or if you have seen an ad in a magazine you can assume that they are positively looking for new members. On the other hand they may be being much more selective and only looking to find someone with a high degree of compatibility and expect to have to host quite a few visitors to find them. Communities may well have various other reasons for having visitors, other than looking for new members. It may be that they simply need help with their work – either on a seasonal basis or ongoing. A number of groups make some of their living from running conferences and seminars and may use this as a way of getting to know visitors who then turn into prospective members.

Some of the more organized groups host visitors because they are interested in spreading their philosophy or religion – don’t be put off by this – especially if you have sympathy with their ideas. Some isolated groups may just welcome the stimulation and company of outsiders ... What is fairly certain is that a community who open their doors to strangers on a regular basis is doing it for it’s own reasons & needs, and only rarely simply out of neighbourly hospitality.

In some instances a group that is undergoing stressful changes, or is simply overloaded with work will continue to host visitors when you might think that what they needed was a break from meeting new people. Often they are doing this due to a sense of mission or obligation, or because they need to get more members to reduce their workload and stress – if you find yourself in this situation – tread carefully – you may find that it is only the visitor coordinator and a few others who are welcoming. Some community members may well appear distant and keep a low profile during your visit - Try not to take it too personally. It is probable that they are quietly getting on with keeping the community together and don’t have any spare energy for new people. Visitor overload and politeness burnout can also happen to some community members at the best of times as well. Coping with a regular stream of strangers visiting your home can just get overwhelming - groups are aware of this and some arrange organised tours and visitor weekends to cope with it.

Arranging to Visit

The two most usual routes to arranging a visit to a community are through personal acquaintance with an existing member, or through a friend-of-a-friend, and by writing. If you are able to arrange a visit through a personal contact then you may find that your initial visit is easy to arrange – though don’t be put off if you are asked to write a ‘formal’ letter to introduce yourself – or are asked to come through the groups usual visitor procedures. If you are writing to a group whose address you have got from an ad in a magazine or directory, or if you are responding via the groups website getting the balance of you letter right can be tricky. You don’t want to write too much or too little. Aim for a maximum of two pages — anything longer and you run the risk of getting put in the needs-to-be-answered-but-requires-a-lot-of-time-and-energy-to-deal-with-pile and seriously reducing the chances of you getting a prompt reply. It is best to try and avoid just writing a long list of questions about the community, and forgetting to include information about who you are and what you’re seeking. Whilst there is no formula that will guarantee that your letter will appeal to any particular group, and you should write in whatever your own personal style is, a good aim would be to give equal emphasis to:

• describing what you’re looking for, how you heard about them, and why they interest you;

• telling them about your history, skills, and special needs

• and posing questions about the community and how to visit.

If you’re writing using snail-mail make sure you enclose a stamp addressed envelope (SAE).

What happens to your letter?

Chances are that your letter will be opened and dealt with by someone whose ‘job’ or role it is to respond to enquiries – a visitor co-ordinator or group secretary. They may be delegated to reply directly, especially if the group runs dedicated visitor weekends for which little or no pre-selection is carried out. In which case you may just get a fairly standard reply and invitation to join in with an organised visitor programme. If the group has a more informal approach to visitors there may well be some approval process that your request has to go through – this could be as simple as being pinned up on a notice board for members to read and comment on before the secretary responds or it may go to a meeting for discussion. Some groups require visitors to be sponsored or hosted by a particular member before a visit can be agreed and you may well get a personal letter from your host if this is the case. These processes can take a while so don’t expect to get a reply by return of post or email. Also in spite of good intentions the sad truth is that many groups don’t respond to letters at all promptly. Living in community can be very demanding—there’s always so much to be done—and answering a stack of correspondence doesn’t usually rank as high on the chore list as milking the cows, supervising the kids, taking out the recycling, or building the new compost loo..

If you don’t get a reply after three or four weeks then try following up with a quick phone call, if you have the groups number. Catching someone on a communal phone can be a somewhat hit and miss affair, early evenings, or right before or after a meal, are good times to try. If you get an answering machine, leave your number, and ask them to call you back at their convenience. Suggest times when you’re most reachable, and explain that when they do get through, you’d be happy to hang up and call them right back at your expense. If you strike it lucky first time and a real live person picks up the phone don’t assume that they will know all about you. Introduce yourself, mention that you’ve already sent a letter, and explain that you’re interested in visiting. Be sure to ask whoever has picked up the phone if they’re a good person to talk with about visiting, and check that this is a good time to talk. If not get a contact name and offer to call back at another time. If you are patient and persistent you should be able to get through in the end.

What to expect on a first visit

So what can you expect when – having packed your sleeping bag, wellies, working clothes and hot water bottle – you find yourself at the door of your chosen community.

The first task that a visitor to a community faces is to find the door that everyone uses; not usually the most obvious-looking entrance, or the first one that you come across. The next is to find a friendly face, or come to that any face. You could find yourself wandering down seemingly endless corridors following the faint sound of distant voices or that singing that seems to be coming from just the other side of the wall. Don’t Panic. Whether members work in the community or in outside jobs, chances are they are busy and it is only the bigger groups that are able to have someone dedicated to welcoming visitors.

Persevere, try the back door. In ‘Big House’ communities people tend to gravitate towards the smaller-scale service or old servant quarters that are generally easier to heat and more human-scale. Leaving the large rooms that you have just wandered through for use for meetings, dining rooms or as spaces for courses and the odd party. Still no Luck? Then head for the kitchen. Like any home, much social life in an intentional community revolves around the kitchen. Communal meals, as much as formal meetings, are where ideas and decisions are thrashed out and mass catering a skill much appreciated. Still found no one? Then put the kettle on and wait for someone to turn up. Of course if you’ve booked into an organised visitor weekend you can expect a friendly face to greet you and a hot cup of something when you arrive.

Groups often have spare rooms for visitors and guests, these can range from fairly basic hostel style to quite nice hotel standard accommodation. But if they are pushed for space you may find yourself in a member who is away’s personal room – so it’s best to be prepared and to treat the spaces with respect. Most groups make a modest charge to cover food and accommodation on your initial visit; if there is an organised visitor programme the cost may be slightly higher. On subsequent and longer visits charges may well be negotiable.

Making yourself useful on your visit can be done in a whole variety of ways. Pitch in with everyday chores such as gardening, farm work, construction projects, cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, childcare. You may gain “Much Appreciated Guest” status if you have special skills to offer: layout or graphic design , DIY and building skills, computer skills, furniture repairs, storytelling, music, massage……..Often, however, the most appreciated contribution is your willingness to pitch in to help with whatever boring chore needs doing at the moment. Sometimes though groups are not organised in a way that lets visitors join in easily and your desire to pitch in can actually become more of a headache for them than a help. Use your intuition in such situations. Make suggestions, but be open—offer, but don’t push too hard. If they aren’t able to involve you in the work and don’t have much time to spend with you, be prepared to entertain yourself: bring books, tapes, musical instruments, etc.

Visiting communities can be a bit like dating—people on both sides can have a tendency to put their best foot forward and try to hide what they consider to be weaknesses. You are also unlikely to get to know all aspects of a community on a ‘first-date’. Try and be aware of what you may have missed. Did you get to see the group at a meeting? Were there members that you didn’t meet? Did you only visit during the week when everyone was working or vice versa? Did you see how they deal with a challenging issue?

To dig deeper, learn how to ask friendly but penetrating questions. After you’ve gotten to know a new group well enough to get more personal, try posing such open-ended queries as:

• What are some of the things you like best about living here? The least?

• What’s the most difficult issue your community has had to deal with in the last year, or in the last five years?

• How many members have left in the past year or two, and why did they leave?

• How has the community changed over the years? What changes would you like to see in the future?

• What are some of the big challenges your community is facing now?

• How has living here contributed to your personal growth and happiness?

If the community members perceive you as being sincere, interested, and open minded, most will be willing to engage with you in a thoughtful dialogue. However, if they sense that you’ve already made up your mind about what’s right—and are likely to pass judgment on them when they fall short of your expectations—not much information will be forthcoming. You can learn a lot from talking with other visitors they may have picked up on things that you have missed, and those living in other communities can give a different perspective as well. Which is one of the advantages of visiting more than one group.

Ten tips to help your visit go smoothly

1 Always remember: the community you’re visiting is also somebody’s home, so plan on using the same standards you’d use if you were visiting friends or relatives you see only occasionally

2 Avoid treating communities like some sort of theme park put there for the interest of the public. For the most part, intentional communities are not showcases and are not kept up to impress outsiders.

3 Nothing opens doors better, nothing generates more trust and mutual understanding, than simply working together.

4 Try to develop a nose for “landmines” you are liable to put your foot into in the course of a projects daily life and try to avoid them. But if you do tread on one, don’t take it too personally – it happens to everyone.

5 If you have a dog (or other pet for that matter) don’t assume that it’s OK just to turn up with it – check it out beforehand.

6 Observe written or oral instructions, even when their meaning is not immediately apparent (but if in doubt feel free to ask why things are done in the way they are).

7 Nothing is more obnoxious than the visitor who defies the important traditions of a community – A certain amount of “When in Rome do as the Romans do,” is usually appropriate.

8 The community you see during any one visit is not the whole community What happens after I’ve visited

Once you’ve got through your first visit you’ll probably have a better idea of what you’re looking for. It’s often good to spend some time away from the group after a first visit just to see if your initial impressions hold up. It can be particularly interesting and informative to listen to yourself answer questions about the community posed by your pre-community friends and acquaintances.

If you decide that you want to visit again the process will vary from place to place so make sure you have asked what happens next before you leave. Usually the group will want to discuss it amongst themselves. You have every right to demand clarity, but try to be understanding of any difficulties that a group may have in coming to a decision about you. Your impression, as an outsider, may well be of a unified “them” against you. The reality is much more likely to be that there is a spread of views within the group; and the thing that takes time is the group trying to come to a consensus.

When you become a member you will appreciate what they went through!

If some members are unsure about you it will probably not enhance their opinion of you to be put under pressure. Its all much more complicated than going for a job interview – these people are going to have to share their lives with you and you with them. So allow time for the process. Some communities will offer a probationary period (perhaps 3 or 6 months.) Others will require you to make more and longer visits but (If and when they decide positively) may give full membership straight away. There are good and bad sides to both systems. If a community doesn’t want you to return it could be for any number of reasons – try not to take it too personally and keep on looking for one where you will fit in. What if a community I like is full? There is no definite answer on this one as attitudes will vary. Hosting visitors can be tiring and energy consuming and consequently some communities put up the barricades when they’re full because there seems no immediate need to find new members. Others will continue to host visitors in the hope of building up a pool of people who know what their place is like and “might move in some day.” In an ideal world perhaps all would do the latter but you shouldn’t pressurise a place that doesn’t offer this service.

If they say "no thanks!"

If this is the response from a community you have been approaching, then just accept it gracefully and move on.

The Communal Back Door

Having outlined the various ‘official’ ways to go about visiting and joining a community it has to be said that it is highly likely that most groups have had one or more members who have managed to bypass some of or even the entire official route and got in through the back door. There is not necessarily anything wrong going on here – and from the communities point of view letting new members in through the ‘back door’ can turn out to be just as successful as those coming through the front. The sort of ‘off-road’ routes that some people find lead them to an intentional community include; having a relationship with an community member, being family, being a neighbour, working with a community member, meeting community members in a different context say at an evening class and getting to know them first that way, coming from another community ...