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User:Ausmisterfrank

2013-06-19T09:41:24Z

/* '''ausmisterfrank - about me:''' */

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	[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism Anarcho-communist.]		[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism Anarcho-communist.]

-	Born in the fifties and educated in the clearly not United Kingdom and Ulster - we heard news even as kids and I loved short wave on a beautiful old wooden-cased valve radio in our bedroom. (Learned what propaganda sounded like pretty quickly and listened to Radio Tirana as satire.) Precocious readers both, me and my little brother in school uniforms from about 4 years of age living with mum and dad in a semi-detached front and back garden house with a sports field behind it. Dad had an allotment too. School- Boys Grammar, quite good- when I wanted to be. A teenager with a Che poster on my bedroom wall - painted it my self in art class. A year in-between, with me working and being on the dole before uni. - BA. Literature, Essex - a very small 2200 student early-60s campus grouping of six fifteen storey tower-blocks for us and a central block with piazzas for them. Met lots of nice people in the park! and lived and took part in post-68 rearguard actions of rebellion and resistance. Student life and student politics a decade after Paris, wishing we'd been there. Hearing almost daily the shooting exercises of the second biggest garrison of british soldiers in England just across the river from our student accommodation in the towers. Knowing that the troops would be shooting for real in Northern Ireland.	+	Born in the fifties and educated in the clearly not United Kingdom and Ulster - we heard news even as kids and I loved short wave on a beautiful old wooden-cased valve radio in our bedroom. (Learned what propaganda sounded like pretty quickly and listened to Radio Tirana as satire.) Precocious readers both, me and my little brother in school uniforms from about 4 years of age living with mum and dad in a semi-detached front and back garden house with a sports field behind it. Dad had an allotment too. School- Boys Grammar, quite good- when I wanted to be. A teenager with a Che poster on my bedroom wall - painted it my self in art class. A year in-between, with me working and being on the dole before uni. - BA. Literature, Essex - a very small 2200 student early-60s campus grouping of six fifteen storey tower-blocks for us and a central block with piazzas for them. Met lots of nice people in the park! and lived and took part in post-68 rearguard actions of rebellion and resistance. Student life and student politics a decade after Paris, wishing we'd been there. Hearing almost daily the shooting exercises of the second biggest garrison of british soldiers in England just across the river from our student accommodation in the towers. Knowing that the troops would be shooting for real in Northern Ireland. For part of one year I lived off campus and had my first experience of living in a commune. see: [[Rodwell House 1977 -1978]].

	I have been influenced by the Beatles, Pink Floyd “'''Soft Machine'''” and “'''Gong'''”, the counter-culture of the early- and mid-1970s,and also by the writings of [[Peter Kropotkin]] and of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Ward Colin Ward] (Anarchy in Action), [[Gerrard Winstanley]] and the [[Diggers]], the anarchist collectives in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution Spanish revolution], New Musical Express, [[Undercurrents]] magazine, and by the late Stephen Housego, B.A., M.A..		I have been influenced by the Beatles, Pink Floyd “'''Soft Machine'''” and “'''Gong'''”, the counter-culture of the early- and mid-1970s,and also by the writings of [[Peter Kropotkin]] and of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Ward Colin Ward] (Anarchy in Action), [[Gerrard Winstanley]] and the [[Diggers]], the anarchist collectives in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution Spanish revolution], New Musical Express, [[Undercurrents]] magazine, and by the late Stephen Housego, B.A., M.A..

Community networks

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	===Italy===		===Italy===
-	*[http://www.mappaecovillaggi.it/level198.htm RIVE - Italian Ecovillage Network]	+	*[http://www.ecovillaggi.it/ RIVE - Italian Ecovillage Network]
-		+

	==Regional/Local Community Networks==		==Regional/Local Community Networks==

Rodwell House 1977 -1978

2013-06-14T15:01:38Z

New page

''We sat by the last hearth in the world''

''With the first force which blew there''

''Gusting still beyond the doors and shutters,''

''Whilst we within revolved around some newer magic.''

Rodwell House, Suffolk 04.11.1977.

I don't know whether we ever seriously said to people that we were a [[commune]], but certainly I felt at the time that we were at least a 1970s counter-cultural student version of one. It was my first experience of living in [[Intentional Communities]], and it was very different from the decade old student housing that I had experienced previously in my year on campus. For a start, we lived a good twenty five miles from the campus, well away from big towns on a B-Road in the next county. And it was a smaller mixed group of friends and acquaintances which had chosen to live together in this lovely historic red brick house in the suffolk countryside rather than the large group of over a dozen guys which had had a whole storey of one of the six modern tower blocks at the university park but which had been random in its make up of occupants.

We were six young men and two young women, nearly all of us undergraduates. Four of the guys were computer studies students, which dictated some of the character of the house, at least to what stuff was left lying around. (I have never lived with so many bits of computer hardware - and the hardware of the late nineteen seventies was fairly big.) Otherwise three others were humanities students, one of them a graduate doing a post-grad course, and there was a friend who wasn't a student. Most of us had made friends during the previous year living on campus where, even if the student flats were large and thrown together by chance, there had also been a sense of community. In that year, we had formed a campus student clique that called itself "the anarcho-frivolists", inspired partly by the Gong band and their ideas of floating anarchy, partly by the Merry Pranksters.

The house belonged to the family of one of the computer students, and the elder members of his family had had connections to many members of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsbury_Group Bloomsbury Group]. It was wonderful to live in a house where many of them had been and there was some sort of guest book in the house where many Bloomsbury people had written things. Around the fireplace there was a beautiful mosaic done, I believe, by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Anrep Boris Anrep].
In addition, there were a number of other smaller works by members of the Bloomsbury group, and a wonderful, old clockwork gramophone. It was definitely a good place to start my experience of living in groups. It was a real gift to have the chance to live in this amazing place and pick up the vibrations and see some of the things left by previous occupants.

Most of us moved in at the start of the autumn semester 1977 and I lived in a attic with sloping sides directly under the roof. It was more or less undecorated and unfurnished. It was cold, and there was a gap under the window where the wind blew in. I blocked it up and plastered it over, but the result was neither very professional, nor particularly beautiful. It bulged like a grey beer-gut. The wind no longer blew through it, but the room was still very cold. Indeed, it was only possible to sleep there in winter if you had your clothes on inside a sleeping bag inside the bed clothes. I think that the only heating in the house was the open fire in the sitting room and an AGA cooker in the kitchen. I decorated the plain white plaster in my room with moon, stars and flying saucers executed in lamp black using a lighted candle as my paint brush. When my friend's mother discovered my attic artistic experiment in a house full of "real art" she was not amused. My friend's father was rather more relaxed, although maybe he just did not show his irritation. On the other hand, I believe that he had grown up with some contact to the left-liberal, lively and sometimes scandalous folk of the later Bloomsburies.

Although I liked our "landlady", she was, like Queen Victoria, "not amused" a number of times while we lived there. I don't think she entirely trusted us not to completely muck up the house or break things. And it is true that we were not always very caring towards this wonderful house. One night we nearly burnt it down when embers from the fire set the antique hearth rug alight - ruining what I imagine was a valuable heirloom. And we were not very good at cleaning, which meant that one weekend, when most of the others were away and my friend's parents came to visit, I spent quite a long time on my hands and knees with his father scrubbing the brick tiled kitchen floor which we had managed to turn black with the mud of the autumn and winter. However, it must really have been clear to her that a bunch of people in their late teens and early twenties were not going to be particularly house trained.

(Not really an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_Saga AGA saga])
{{stub}}

[[Category: Personal stories]]

Krinitza

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/* The first years */ corrected spelling

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	The communards at Krinitza put physical work on the land as their basis for communal life.		The communards at Krinitza put physical work on the land as their basis for communal life.
-	At a meeting at the start of 1889, they set three main goals: communal property and work, self-managed work and communal child-care and education. From the start, the aimed for self-sufficiency and a minimum of luxury, concentrating on the satisfaction of basic needs. On the other hand, it was not their intention to be and “ivory tower” or an isle of happiness outside the existing society. They were open to guests, and, at the same time, saw themselves as being part of a radical movement to change Russian society through the creation of autonomous rural communes. They distanced themselves from the hegemony of the Russian Orthodox Church but believed that without a spiritual aspect real change was impossible and that communal life would fail. Simply changing the organisation and economy of society would not succeed without a renewal of the human spirit. The commune had no statute at the beginning as they believed that this would only regulate outer things. On the other hand, they saw the future of the Russian peasantry as lying in the formation of well organised agricultural cooperatives, a step that they were themselves later to take in 1909.	+	At a meeting at the start of 1889, they set three main goals: communal property and work, self-managed work and communal child-care and education. From the start, the aimed for self-sufficiency and a minimum of luxury, concentrating on the satisfaction of basic needs. On the other hand, it was not their intention to be an “ivory tower” or an isle of happiness outside the existing society. They were open to guests, and, at the same time, saw themselves as being part of a radical movement to change Russian society through the creation of autonomous rural communes. They distanced themselves from the hegemony of the Russian Orthodox Church but believed that without a spiritual aspect real change was impossible and that communal life would fail. Simply changing the organisation and economy of society would not succeed without a renewal of the human spirit. The commune had no statute at the beginning as they believed that this would only regulate outer things. On the other hand, they saw the future of the Russian peasantry as lying in the formation of well organised agricultural cooperatives, a step that they were themselves later to take in 1909.
	In the first two years, they were able to cultivate only 40 of the 250 hectares, and indeed, in this period lost two harvests of wheat. Attempts to cultivate maize and medicinal herbs also failed. It took some time before they had gathered enough experience to successfully cultivate their land. During these first years, they lived mostly on beetroot and potatoes. Other foodstuff was a luxury they could seldom afford: the health of the communards suffered accordingly.		In the first two years, they were able to cultivate only 40 of the 250 hectares, and indeed, in this period lost two harvests of wheat. Attempts to cultivate maize and medicinal herbs also failed. It took some time before they had gathered enough experience to successfully cultivate their land. During these first years, they lived mostly on beetroot and potatoes. Other foodstuff was a luxury they could seldom afford: the health of the communards suffered accordingly.
	Originally, the founders did not intend to find new members. However, they did plan growth through the adoption of orphans and through fostering peasant children. Nonetheless, people came from all over Russia to join the commune, some remaining for longer or shorter periods and contributing little to the economy of the commune – an experienced shared by many intentional communities in the past.		Originally, the founders did not intend to find new members. However, they did plan growth through the adoption of orphans and through fostering peasant children. Nonetheless, people came from all over Russia to join the commune, some remaining for longer or shorter periods and contributing little to the economy of the commune – an experienced shared by many intentional communities in the past.

Wheathill Bruderhof

2013-06-03T08:50:41Z

/* Sources */

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Wheathill Bruderhof was a Christian [[commune]] which existed in England from 1942 until 1960.

==Origins==
The first [http://directory.ic.org/23803/Bruderhof Bruderhof] was founded by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberhard_Arnold Eberhard Arnold] in a house in Sannerz, Hesse, Germany in 1920. When the house got too small for the group, they moved to the Rhön Mountains nearby. In 1930, Arnold was ordained as a Hutterian minister. After the Nazis came to power, the Rhön community moved its draft-age men and children to Liechtenstein because of their conscientious refusal to serve in the armed forces and to accept Nazi teachers. Continuing pressure from the Nazi government caused others to move to England and found the Cotswold Bruderhof. On April 14, 1937, secret police surrounded the Rhön Bruderhof, confiscated the property, and gave the remaining community members forty-eight hours to flee the country. By 1938, all the Bruderhof members had reassembled in England. While in England, the population grew to over 350 members, largely through the addition of young English members seeking an alternative to war. Even before the outbreak of the second world war, the community’s German members and its belief in [[Non-violence]] attracted deep suspicion locally resulting in economic boycotts. When confronted with the choice of either having all German members interned, or leaving England as a group, the Bruderhof choose the latter, and began to look for refuge abroad. In 1940, following the outbreak of war and under threat of internment of many of the male members of the group, the Bruderhof sold up and relocated to Paraguay. A few members left behind to sort out the final sale of the farms in the Cotswold hills became the nucleus of a new community. During this time they were still attracting pacifists visitors and by Christmas 1941 a group of nineteen, including two families, had gathered together.

==Wheathill - A communal village in the Clee Hills==
The representatives who remained in England were able in 1942 to start a new Bruderhof in Shropshire, at Bromdon, near Bridgnorth. One member, Charles Headland, came across a remote farm that turned out to be for sale. Lower Bromdon Farm, set at nearly 1,000 feet high in the Clee Hills, consisted of 182 acres of mostly old pasture land suffering from neglect and officially classified as grade ‘C’ agricultural land. By March 1942 the group were able to move in and by the end of the year the group, now numbering 33, was confident enough to give itself a name, The Wheathill Bruderhof, and to issue a report entitled ‘The Founding of the Wheathill Bruderhof’ setting out their aims and philosophy. In April 1944 they took over the neighbouring Upper Bromdon farm of 165 acres, which, as well as increasing the viability of the farm, gave them extra accommodation and enabled a deep bore-hole to be drilled and an extensive water supply to both farms to be installed. In 1945 the community extended further still, moving in to Cleeton Court Farm at the foot of Titterstone Clee Hill. This brought the total size of the three ‘Wheathill’ farms to 532 acres. They became a focus for the small communities movement that existed in Britain at the time. As well as printing and publishing their own books and pamphlets, they printed a number of issues of a newsletter called The Community Broadsheet which kept groups in touch with each other. The Shropshire community was seen as an example of what successful communal living could be like. In 1959 Pathé Newsreel produced a short film item featuring the Wheathill community under the title [http://www.britishpathe.com/video/communal-village ‘Communal Village’]. In 1959 Wheathill had a population of 110. A second Bruderhof was founded in Bulstrode, Gerrards Cross, Bucks, in 1958, which had a population of about 100 in 1959. However, in a turbulent period which the Bruderhof Movement went through in the following years, the community at Wheathill was wound up and the farms were sold.

==Sources==
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruderhof_Communities Bruderhof Communities in Wikipedia]

[http://blog.utopia-britannica.org.uk/117 Communal Family Trees (Part 2)] by Chris Coates at his [[Communes Britannica]] Blog.

[http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/society_of_brothers History of the Society of Brothers]

==External Links==

[http://www.bruderhof.com/ Bruderhof Homepage]

[http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/cotswold_bruderhof_ashton_keynes_wiltshire_england History of the Cotswold Bruderhof]

{{stub}}

[[Category: Historical Communities]]

Communities of performers and musicians

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/* Dial House */

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	From the end of 1968, most of the British psychedelic folk band, The Incredible Sting Band, lived communally at a farmhouse near Newport in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in the same area as the farm of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seymour_%28author%29 John Seymour], an influential figure in the self-sufficiency movement, and the current community of [http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/index.php?fld=super_region&val=Wales&one=dat&two=det&sel=brithdir Brithdir Mawr]. There they developed ideas for mixed media experiments with Malcolm Le Maistre and other members of David Medalla's Exploding Galaxy troupe and the Leonard Halliwell Quartet. By late 1969, they had established a communal base at Glen Row near Innerleithen in Scotland.		From the end of 1968, most of the British psychedelic folk band, The Incredible Sting Band, lived communally at a farmhouse near Newport in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in the same area as the farm of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seymour_%28author%29 John Seymour], an influential figure in the self-sufficiency movement, and the current community of [http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/index.php?fld=super_region&val=Wales&one=dat&two=det&sel=brithdir Brithdir Mawr]. There they developed ideas for mixed media experiments with Malcolm Le Maistre and other members of David Medalla's Exploding Galaxy troupe and the Leonard Halliwell Quartet. By late 1969, they had established a communal base at Glen Row near Innerleithen in Scotland.
	The anglo-french band, Gong, formed somewhat of an anarchist commune in rural France between 1972 and 1974, and later in the seventies, the founder of the band, Daevid Allen, lived in a hippie collective in the village of Deià (Majorca).		The anglo-french band, Gong, formed somewhat of an anarchist commune in rural France between 1972 and 1974, and later in the seventies, the founder of the band, Daevid Allen, lived in a hippie collective in the village of Deià (Majorca).
-	Also in the early 1970s, the Global Village Trucking Company, known to its fans as "The Glob's", together with their road crew and their families all lived together in a Norfolk commune, and undertook numerous benefit concerts and free festivals.	+	Also in the early 1970s, the Global Village Trucking Company, known to its fans as "The Glob's", together with their road crew and their families all lived together in a Norfolk commune, and undertook numerous benefit concerts and free festivals. (See documentary film: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VClrTDeYSg8 What happened next - The Global Village Trucking Company?]).

	In mainland Europe, the german band, "Ton Steine Scherben" lived communally for most of their existance, first in West Berlin, then in [[Fresenhagen]] in norther West Germany.		In mainland Europe, the german band, "Ton Steine Scherben" lived communally for most of their existance, first in West Berlin, then in [[Fresenhagen]] in norther West Germany.
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	[[Category: Community music]]		[[Category: Community music]]
		+
		+	[[Category: Historical Communities]]

Governance in Kommune Niederkaufungen

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/* Preamble */

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	== Preamble==		== Preamble==
-	The commune in Niederkaufungen, founded in 1986, is a left-wing, income-sharing, intentional community of 60 adults and 20 children in eleven small living groups and mostly working in communally owned collective businesses. It has consensus decision-making and the collective ownership of land, buildings and the means of production and transport.(See : www.kommune-niederkaufungen.de ).	+	The commune in Niederkaufungen, founded in 1986, is a left-wing, income-sharing, intentional community of 60 adults and 20 children in eleven small living groups and mostly working in communally owned collective businesses. It has consensus decision-making and the collective ownership of land, buildings and the means of production and transport.(See : [http://www.kommune-niederkaufungen.de Kommune Niederkaufungen Homepage] ).
	By taking measures to live as “ecologically” as possible, such as use of rainwater and renewable resources, insulation of buildings, car sharing, practicing organic agriculture, etc., we have a low “ecological footprint” compared to the german average. (See : www.usf.uni-kassel.de/glww/ ). Although we are as large as some ecovillages and have some similarities to some of them, we do not see ourselves as an ecovillage, as ecovillages usually have other forms of ownership of land and buildings and other socio-economic structures. Thus our internal rules and regulations are fitted to other requirements and necessities than those of most ecovillages.		By taking measures to live as “ecologically” as possible, such as use of rainwater and renewable resources, insulation of buildings, car sharing, practicing organic agriculture, etc., we have a low “ecological footprint” compared to the german average. (See : www.usf.uni-kassel.de/glww/ ). Although we are as large as some ecovillages and have some similarities to some of them, we do not see ourselves as an ecovillage, as ecovillages usually have other forms of ownership of land and buildings and other socio-economic structures. Thus our internal rules and regulations are fitted to other requirements and necessities than those of most ecovillages.
-

	==Rules==		==Rules==

Historical communities

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/* Alphabetical List of Historical Intentional Communities */

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	*[[wikipedia:Fruitlands_%28transcendental_center%29\|wikipedia:Fruitlands]]		*[[wikipedia:Fruitlands_%28transcendental_center%29\|wikipedia:Fruitlands]]
	*[[wikipedia:Gandalf%27s_Garden]]		*[[wikipedia:Gandalf%27s_Garden]]
-	*[http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2008green-mountain-communes Green Mountain Communes (infoshop.org)]	+	*[http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2008green-mountain-communes Green Mountain Communes (infoshop.org)] see also [http://www.7dvt.com/2008hippie-havens Total Loss Farm / Red Clover Collective]
	*[[wikipedia:Harmony_Society]]		*[[wikipedia:Harmony_Society]]
	*[[wikipedia:Hog_Farm]]		*[[wikipedia:Hog_Farm]]