From Caravan Park to Ecovillage

Michael White interviews John Talbott

Since not all of our readers will be familiar with the Field of Dreams as part of the Ecovillage Project, would you give us some of its history, and the vision for it.

I’ll start by giving a context for the Ecovillage Project itself. It’s simply trying to redevelop our site, the caravan park and immediately adjacent land, into a model for sustainable living. On a physical level it means replacing caravans with houses; building new houses; providing energy from renewable resources like wind and solar energy; treating all of our own waste water, which we’re doing with the Living Machine; and growing as much food as we can. All this is about providing for our physical needs in a sustainable way, working with what nature gives us to meet our needs.

The Ecovillage concept also includes aspects of sustainability which are about community, creating home, creating social cohesion, a sense of belonging. Creating an economic base within the community which can help support people. And finally, some might say the most important aspect, there is also an element of what I call ?spiritual sustainability?. That’s about nurturing our sense of the larger purpose, something bigger than ourselves, and helping that to inform what we’re doing in the more mundane or ordinary aspects of our lives.

So the Field of Dreams is like the next step in our Ecovillage development. We’ve built about twenty five buildings over the last ten years in The Park, on land owned by the Foundation. It’s been a very slow process because the site itself is pretty well already occupied with something. Every square inch seems to have several different future visions for it depending on who you are talking to! In a practical way most sites have caravans on them, which have people living in them, and so the replacing of the caravans is slower than we first thought it would be because of all the complications of moving things and people. About half of the caravans are owned privately, for which people have paid considerable sums, and we can’t just say, ?Ok, we’re going to develop this area so can you please move your caravan off.?

The other side of replacing caravans is that all the pipes, electric cables, telephone lines, sewage and so on, are all not right for houses. They’re fine for caravans, but as we redevelop we also have to replace all of the infrastructure. That’s expensive!
The Field really came along about nine years ago when the Bichan family, who own the adjacent farm, applied for planning permission for this triangle of land adjacent to the Foundation. Initially it wasn’t our vision to see the farmland turned into housing. But they were successful in their application and with the planning consent the value of the land went up dramatically, and then buying it for farmland wasn’t economically feasible. Later on we found that the agricultural viability of that particular part of the farm was not as good as we had imagined anyway. It’s very dry, the top soil was quite thin and it is mostly shingle underneath.

We also realised that once planning permission for housing had been granted somebody was going to build on it, and we hoped it would be us. But we couldn’t afford the price being asked and were forced to sit and watch as the parade of developers came to look at the site. But no one bid, and finally in1995 we found a win-win price with the owners and concluded a sale.

During the waiting time we had meditated about this land and it felt like this was a piece of the puzzle in our own long-term development of The Park that was falling into place, though at the time we didn’t know how it would ever happen. Building on the Field would take the pressure off the Foundation’s land and allow people to have houses without dislocating caravans and people in the process, and without having to up-grade all the existing infrastructure. So it feels like this is a momentous opportunity in terms of creating a critical mass of good quality ecological houses, and in taking on this forty-plus houses development, we’re going to make the jump to being more of an Ecovillage and less of a caravan park.

It’s my understanding that there is no master plan for development, though there is a planning group.

Yes. A long time ago we thought about doing a big master plan, which is how a normal developer would do it. They would control the design for every site. But I think we realised very early on that it wasn’t going to work like that here. What we needed was a structure plan, something that someone coming along in five or ten years time would still be able to make sense of, but without dictating too much detail. I think the only thing we’re trying to achieve, quite informally, and as individual projects come along, is finding a balance of individual creativity and collective harmony. Trying to choose materials and forms that harmonise with and complement each other.

The barrels form one harmonious little cluster, though individually they are very different in design and layout. And Bag End has another particular style that has harmony within it, and it doesn’t clash with the barrels either. So we try to tie things in without being too controlling. We want people to be creative and have the freedom to build their dream.

Ecovillage Ltd is a company that was formed five years ago specifically to do this project. We had imagined doing it with the Foundation as it was doing all the other building projects at the time. But due to lots of circumstances we realised it wouldn’t work. So with the Foundation’s blessing, and their offer of access and moral support, Ecovillage Ltd raised the funds to buy the land and to develop it from within the community. Much of the finance came from the people that will eventually be building on the individual sites.

The company has four directors; Simon Richards, Carmella Sutherland, David Dittman and myself. There are about twenty shareholders, and we expect to broaden this to include others who eventually build. We’re seeing it very much as a community business. I should also mention Patrick Nash who helped us in the past, and Tom Clarke who was a director and is now involved in designing the infrastructure for the Field.

In light of the work at the Foundation with nature spirits, has that relationship been consciously continued in this process?

Yes, I think in our design process we try to tune into the nature kingdoms; again finding a balance between our human needs for housing but not forgetting nature’s needs. Experiencing that real sense of co-creation with nature is really important to me personally and I think to all of us here. If that can’t be honoured here, at Findhorn, then we have a problem! For me co-creation and cooperation with nature is still a key element in everything we do.

One manifestation of that is when a design is brought to the Park Planning Group for consideration. We discuss the plan and look at its siting, layout and technical merits, the architectural style and so on. But we also always go out to the actual site and meditate. We find the exact place it will be and see how it feels, try to get a sense of what the natural energies would like, and then share our impressions, and include these in our decision-making.

We’ve had one or two fun experiences recently. Like having the horses that were grazing in the field coming up to us during the meditation and nudging into the circle. Once one even tried to eat the house plans! So the nature kingdom had joined us literally in physical form on that occasion. How you might interpret these little interventions is another matter! Often we have a range of impressions within the group, and we try to balance them and find the ?right? way forward if there are apparent conflicts. The intention is to always bring this other element of attunement into our decisions, as well as looking at the practical.

You’ve just come back from two months away, and before you left, the Field was still a meadow, with horses grazing in it. Now it’s bare earth and huge piles of dirt, with diggers and bulldozers all over. How did you feel when you saw it ?

Well, I’m an engineer so it certainly wasn’t a surprise. I knew what to expect. But I think it’s also true to say that it’s such a relief to have a site like this to develop, after all the struggles we’ve had working with land that’s already occupied, and already planted and landscaped — to have a bit of a blank slate to work with. It was really just grass and weeds.

It feels exciting. I mean, nature spirits are builders. I always use the metaphor that the devas are like architects: angelic forces that have to create a pattern. And that’s what we’ve been working with up to this point, a sense of angelic connection in planning for The Park, and now suddenly we’re into a nature spirit energy that says, ?Go, go, go! Build, build, build!? It feels to me this is the kind of energy there now. It’s chaos, too; total chaos! But all our building projects have been like this. This is just on a larger scale. You have to clear the earth, and move things around, decide where to dig holes. And then you bring the earth back, plant it, soften it. And then nature takes over again!

So finally, what about the future?

I think may be it's important to talk about why we are doing this. There is such a demand in the wider Foundation Commumnity to come and live here in the Park, and be part of the core community. Make it part of their everyday experience. I think, metaphorically but also physically, we 're helping the community here to get grounded. They're not just living in temporary caravans, which most of us can tolorate for a little while , maybe even longer. But ultimately they're temporary. I think, as a community, we're becoming more grounded, and people that are coming to stay for a while, putting down roots, building their lives here. Up to now places to build have been very limited. This project is giving a lot more people the opportunity to do that. The field of Dreams is actually building community.

Michael White

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