Introduction
Welcome back to Community Resilience, a podcast created in collaboration with the EcoVillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project, facilitated by the Global EcoVillage Network. I’m your host, Eva Goldfarb, inviting you to gather around the fire as we explore resilience, adaptation, and transformation in our time of deepening polycrisis.
Meet Robin, the visionary behind Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood, nestled in suburban Auckland, New Zealand. As the founder and development coordinator, Robin spearheaded the creation of this innovative cohousing development project, consisting of 32 homes and shared facilities. Earthsong isn’t just a housing project, it’s a commitment to environmentally sustainable design and deep community engagement. And Robin’s story doesn’t end there.
Today, she’s a beacon of inspiration, dedicating her time to writing, teaching, and consulting to empower thriving connected communities. Through seminars, lectures, and workshops, Robin ignites the flames of the cohousing and community-led housing movement in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Robin continues to innovate, planning an eco-friendly social enterprise hub called Walk to Work Eco-Developments at the forefront of Earthsong’s land, weaving sustainability and community into the fabrics of everyday life.
If you’re eager to learn more about cohousing and sustainable living, be sure to check out Robin’s book, Cohousing for Life. Within its pages, she shares not only the structural elements of cohousing, but also the heartfelt narrative of Earthsong’s collective journey. Join us as we delve into Robin’s remarkable story, a testament to the power of community, sustainability, and the human spirit.
Interview
Eva: Welcome, Robin. It is so nice to have you here today, all the way from New Zealand. I always want to start just by allowing our audience to get to know you a bit better. How did you become involved with the Ecovillage movement? How did you become involved with Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood?
Robin: Well, it’s been a long journey for me. Actually, I almost went to the first meeting in Findhorn when GEN was established. I thought really, really hard about it, about whether I should go or not, but decided I had things that I needed to be doing at home at that time. But I trained as an architect in Auckland and had my own practice designing eco-houses for a number of years, and also had two small children, and lived in the suburbs, and found that life just felt so much harder than it should, really, and really yearned for a bunch of people that I could live amongst and we could share our daily lives. I had an earlier experience of living in a little village where we did a lot of things together. We established a community garden and had a sort of community shop and all sorts of things. So I had that little experience of community early in my life, and I really yearned to get back to it. And as an architect, I felt like I was doing useful work designing eco-houses, but it was just one house at a time for one household. And I really had a wondering about how we could design sustainable housing if I was the client, really, if I was making the decisions, the final decisions about what to value and what the priorities were. So I just started talking to people, seeing who else was interested in community, and I came across the cohousing book. So there’s this wonderful book called Cohousing by McCamantt and Durett that I found in a bookshop, and it just described the life that I was absolutely yearning for. And so from that moment, I really started quite seriously putting my energies into finding other people who felt similarly and really putting a project together. So I was the one that kicked off the project that became Earthsong back in 1995. I called a public meeting and quite a number of people came and I described the cohousing model and a few people joined us and we started meeting and it all grew from there. Very slowly, I might add, it took us several years to get to the point where we had enough sort of foundational agreements in place and enough relationship between us and our decision-making system well-developed, and a clarity about what we wanted in terms of design and financing and all of those things before we actually found the land that we bought and then really seriously moved into the development phase. So it was a very, very long journey. It’s just the most amazing thing I’ve been part of. I wouldn’t have missed any of it, and it was tough as well. It was really, really tough at times, but just so rewarding to be part of a group of people who are clear about what it is that we want, a vision of a better way of living, and just working, working, working, putting that in place to build that. It was an amazing journey.
Eva: Thank you very much for all of those in that journey. It’s always personally consoling to me to hear the length of the process and really give that its time.
Robin: And I think that was important actually. It really built an incredibly strong foundation that has just stood us in really good stead through, you know, the ups and downs of development and community living.
Eva: Thank you for sharing. In this podcast, we’re talking to ecovillages all around the world, and I’m wondering if you can orient us a bit where Earthsong is in this great globe. If we were a bird flying over, what would we be seeing? What are some of the features? What is the bioregion like?
Robin:We are a suburban community on the outer edges of Auckland City in New Zealand. Auckland is the largest city. It’s quite well to the north. It’s actually on a very interesting landform because there’s only three kilometres between the west coast and the east coast where Auckland is situated. So we’re surrounded by water, by harbours, a harbour coming in from each side. There’s a range of hills or low mountains between where Earthsong is and the west coast. We’re just on the outer edge of the suburban area, so another five minutes drive, I guess, further west, and we’re out in the more rural area. So we have that advantage of both being part of the city but also very close to other more natural areas. If you were flying over Earthsong itself, you would see a very interesting shape of our community. We have a figure eight path running through the centre of our community and our houses are arranged in smaller paths coming off that main path. It flows, very much houses in a garden integrated with the trees and the gardens and the natural areas. Then right around our outside, we only have three acres, 32 houses on three acres. So we are a medium density suburban eco-village, eco-neighbourhood. Right around us is the rest of the standard suburban area that looks, you know, single houses on their own lots. I mean, we consciously chose to stay in the city. It was a choice that we made right at the beginning that was tempting to leave the city behind and find a larger piece of natural ground. But there are lots of reasons people live in cities together for school, for social events, for work, etc. And we just really felt like we wanted to stay connected with our other neighbours in Auckland and that actually it felt more important to work out how to live sustainably within the city. That was perhaps more of a challenge but also of more value and benefit to our society.
Eva: Yeah, it’s been very interesting hearing from many different forms of eco-villages, from intentional communities in a more rural setting to more Indigenous or traditional communities. So I’m hoping we can hear a bit more of that later when we start to talk through the different dimensions that ecovillages use. But for now, I want to really frame us within the resilience project and mindset, starting by hearing what personal and interpersonal resilience means to you.
Robin: Well, I mean, the word resilience is about being able to cope well, being flexible, I think, and cope with the challenges that come along. And that’s something that we are increasingly having to learn as things change, the crises are increasing. Like, I just feel so grateful that I am living in a community of people while these challenges are increasing because we can talk about it, we can share stories, we can help each other out. It doesn’t feel nearly so daunting as I imagine it would, being just one household in a sea of other single households. There’s a sense of belonging, a sense of caring about each other and that we each matter. That gives me a great sense of security, of resilience.
Eva: Would you say that sense of belonging kind of creates a communal understanding of resilience within Earthsong? Or do you have the culture of resilience already built into your community?
Robin: So Earthsong was established, we got very clear about our vision right at the beginning. And I think that’s something that I advocate to people who are sorting out their own community, because we got very clear about what mattered, why we were doing it and what it was that we were really trying to put into place. And for us, it was environmental sustainability. So how can we design houses and layout and services that were sustainable? Also, social sustainability. So how can a group of people live well together and make decisions together and still maintain our own individual lives, but in the context of connected community? And the third part of our vision actually was about education. So it was never about just creating a lovely place for us to live in. There was always a huge commitment to sharing what we learnt, so that we could be part of us as a species, learning to be more sustainable. So I think having that original vision kept us on track. And it’s been inspiring and very connecting, actually. So yes, we always did have those values as our sort of founding values that have informed everything we’ve done since. And I think now we’re at the point where we’ve been around for 20 years or more. It actually took us eight years to build, so I never quite know how old to say we are. Is it when the first people moved in? That’s 22 years ago. Is it when we completed construction? Well, that’s 16 years ago. However, we’ve been around for a very long time, and I think we’re at a transition point, really. And part of that is thinking about our vision, and our vision is still completely relevant. However, life in 2024 is different than it was in the year 2000. And what more do we need to stretch into, really? So we are doing a bit of revisioning and thinking about what more do we need to be doing? What’s our kind of wider vision for how we relate to our wider neighbours and the Earth as a whole, in order to be most resilient for us, but also most useful and contributing to a flourishing environment in which humans are an asset, not a terrible, you know, scourge.
Eva: That is the goal. I’d love to dig in there a bit more in terms of these differences, how 2024 is different, and what systemic challenges you have seen over the last 20 years to this vision of environmental, social sustainability and education.
Robin: It’s challenging living with a bunch of people. You know, we always said we wanted as much diversity as possible, and that means that people have different attitudes, they come from different backgrounds. There’s a lot of diversity that we have to, in some way, also weave into a whole that works well together. Yeah, I think that those challenges never go away. You know, it’s never like with, okay, we’ve solved that now, now we’re socially sustainable. You know, we’d never, never be able to say that. But it’s a goal that we’re aiming towards. And one of the sayings is that cohousing is one of the most intense personal growth courses you will ever do. And I think any kind of intentional community really requires each of us to become more aware, to face those challenges, to front up to people and have direct conversations, etc. So in that sense, I’m not sure that that aspect has changed in 24 years. In terms of the physical sustainability, I mean, it’s got worse, obviously. But gosh, we’ve known for decades how to build passive solar houses so that they don’t require a lot of heating. And some of the problems that there are with some modern building materials, etc, that are off-gassing and creating ill health, and all of those things have been around, and we’ve known for a very long time, but I think have continued to get more and more intense. And I don’t think we would make any different choices now in terms of our design or materials, etc. I think what might be different now is the economic climate is a lot more challenging now than it was when we were building. I’m in touch with a lot of other groups around New Zealand trying to build cohousing communities.
And I know at least six groups who were very well advanced but have just faced insurmountable difficulties and they’ve had to wrap up since COVID. The climate for developing any kind of housing has got a lot more difficult.
Eva: Thank you very much. I was wanting to widen that a bit. I know, at least in every community I’ve been in, it is kind of a microcosm. It is a mirror of the wider systems that we are all a part of, even if we’re trying to create alternatives. But hearing you talk a bit more about the other projects within New Zealand kind of does touch upon these wider systemic challenges as well, the economic pressure, I hear you saying. I don’t know if you have anything else to add there. Otherwise, I will transition.
Robin: A huge awareness of what’s happening in other countries, but I think it’s probably very similar around the world, the difficulties that people face.
Eva: It is where I am as well.
Robin: And I guess what I could say is I think that’s the death throes of capitalism, actually. It’s going to create a lot of hardship and trauma on its way down, unfortunately. Yeah.
Eva: There we go. I’m glad I held on to that. Continuing to look at this progression of the Life of Earthsong, during the Resilience Project, each community was invited to create a historical timeline. And I’m very curious what you learned in this process about your community and how you’ve been able to respond to change over the years.
Robin: Yeah. So the timeline process was really, really interesting and very helpful for us. In fact, the whole Gen Resilience Project has been, I think, come at a really great time for our community, when we’ve been in a bit of a sort of transitional phase anyway. It’s just given us lots of ways of looking at ourselves and contemplating how we work and what’s important. So the timeline process, it was just wonderful to revisit that whole period of time, which really was about 27 years from 1995, and just realise the differences really. So the founding phase, the sort of manifesting the buildings had its own flavour and was very intense and very difficult, but formed a strong community. So after we actually finished our construction, finally, after eight years, we settled more into living and took a number of years to recover, I think, from the demands of that phase. But then there was quite a settled period for about 10 years, which we think of it, well, through that timeline process, we’ve identified as a kind of slow open group. So people left occasionally, people came along occasionally, but there was only ever one at a time. And then we hit the pandemic. And that was, I mean, New Zealand did really well coping with that. But how we did well was by closing ourselves down. And there was a long time of sort of isolating ourselves in our houses, etc. And that period really quite shook up our people. I think it’s partly because we were already 20 years old or so, and we’d all aged that amount. And so there was quite a number of older people who moved off after COVID because they just wanted to be more secure, more sort of held, I guess. So we had a lot of turnover in the couple of two years after all those lockdowns, which meant that our community has been in quite a turmoil, I guess, when there’s a big change of people in a short time, sort of disturbing to the energy of the place, a lot of turbulence. So I think we were really ripe for looking at ourselves, reweaving, rethinking about, you know, what are we doing here? You know, what do we value? How do we kind of value what we’ve got as well as look at how we might evolve? I think we’re a strong community, you know, like when you’re in the middle of conflicts or difficulties, it can be easy to think that there’s a lot going on. But given that chance to step back from ourselves and really look, we could see it in context, I think, and really value what it is that we do have that’s firm and a good foundation, while also being remaining flexible and moving and reknitting together.
Eva: I’m very curious how you as a community have responded to that big change. Were there any practices or tools that emerged during this time of great turnover?
Robin: Well, I think what has helped us is going through the GEN resilience process, as I said. But also, as well as that being a turbulent time, it did bring in new people who tended to be a bit younger coming because they really saw that Earthsong had what they were looking for. In the last couple of years, we’ve been reviewing some of our systems. And I think that’s perhaps the way I could describe that we’re coping with that change, is reviewing our membership systems and decision making, not to change it entirely, but just to say, okay, this works pretty well, how can we tune it up, you know, to really be singing? That’s our decision making and revisioning. We’ve also been looking at our energy systems. So 20, 24 years later, technologies changed, we’ve put in some photovoltaic panels to generate electricity. Some of us have got electric cars now, so there’s a lot bigger demand for our electricity. Our solar water heaters are 20 years old, and they’re coming to the end of their life. So there was a lot of things that really, it was time that we re-looked at some of our systems and, you know, just make decisions about how we can best fulfil the needs of our 32 households and use all of the elements of our system to make it as good as possible. So it’s been a real opportunity, actually, and inspired people to rethink things. Some of the newer people have realised that actually we can rethink our systems, and in a way that single households can’t, you know, like, well, they can, but it’s limited to one household. And we’re looking at 32 households and how we can really leverage that to sort of do something out of the norm, perhaps a bit ahead of the norm. And in the process, we build our community connections, because we’re spending a lot of effort and time sitting together rethinking things. And that’s exciting, you know, that fulfills that part of that pioneering spirit that the more recent people didn’t get to use before.
Eva: That was going to be my next question. Thank you very much for touching on it, how this social sustainability has been impacted by the system changing and re-evaluating your economic sustainability. I don’t know if you have any other tools or customs, it could be a dance, a potluck, a community meeting that has really helped in this transition of income, new input, new energy.
Robin: Well, we have a number of things that we’ve been doing for quite a while, actually, but they are really important. So we have one weekend in the middle of winter, where we do a range of activities together, we call it our winter hui, hui is a Māori word for gathering. And more lately, it is to do with Matariki. So Matariki is the Pleiades stars, we call them the Pleiades, that little group of seven sister stars. When that comes above the horizon at dawn, it signals the Māori new year in the middle of winter, and the Māori name for them is Matariki. So we’ve been incorporating all of that cultural expression into our winter hui as well. And it’s just so important, it’s really a great weekend, we have fun, we have process workshops as part of it, we do a little boat race on our pond, we have film night, you know, a really funny sort of, you know, like a baby photo film night, and a performance night. It’s just very connecting, and lots of fun, and the kids are involved, the adults, those sorts of things are quite a lot of work, but they really pay off. So that’s one thing that is part of our calendar, I guess, a very important part. And we also have regular things like we have a circle night once a month, our Earthsong circle, and that’s just like a sharing circle. We sit in a circle and there’s time for people to share about what’s going on in their lives, or how it is to live at Earthsong, what needs addressing, what needs talking about. Yeah, just lots of regular dinners, meals twice a week, common meals, and lots of meetings. One of the really important things I think that we have always done, and we still do, is at the beginning of every meeting, we check in. So we just do a round with quite a simple little check-in of each of us to the group. And I think that is just one of the really important connecting things that we continue to do, because when you start knowing a little bit about other people and what’s going on for them in their lives, you can’t help but feel more connected, more compassionate, more tolerant, perhaps, of their diverse views or more understanding. So there’s some quite simple things, I think, that really help to keep our community connection going. And if our community connection feels strong, then the decision-making is so much easier, it works so much better, and feels good.
Eva: I’ve been really impressed and excited to see check-in culture leaking beyond the ecovillage movement. I have friends in very urban settings that are also implementing this now in their work, and it’s a celebration. I also really appreciate you bringing the importance of celebration as a coping mechanism. I think that’s a very important lesson now. There are a lot of overwhelming events happening around the world, and it’s challenging to let yourself celebrate, but it’s very important. So I just want to emphasize that, and thank you for bringing it into our conversation.
Robin: And actually, one thing that we’ve done for the first time, just about three weeks ago, is we had a festival, a one-day festival of sustainable living. And that really did grow out of the GEN Resilience project as well, as a way of welcoming in our wider neighbours, just to see, you know, so they could see what we do, how we do it, of creating an event where there was music, there were workshops, there were tours around the site, there was a kid’s zone and food, and you know, just a whole event that allowed people to hang out together and feel the vibe, I guess, you know, be curious, see who we are and what we do. It was such a celebration. So there were some people living at Earthsong who were quite nervous about it to start with. They just thought that strangers were going to come in and, you know, case the joint and see what they could steal, and there was a bit of fear around it. But pretty much everyone I talked to at or after the event, they just said, oh, just so great, you know, I’d say yes in an instant next time, which was really wonderful. And again, it was joyful, it was connecting, it was something that helped us feel really good about ourselves and each other.
Eva: I also think that is very important to realize how deep the systemic challenges live within ourselves, and then to prove ourselves wrong, say there was nothing to be afraid of here, this was such a beautiful thing, how wonderful it is to open.
Robin: Yeah, that’s right. We’ve done quite a lot of talking about that, actually, through the Resilience Project. Because we’re a suburban community, we’re very, we’re never going to be self-sufficient, and we never set out to be self-sufficient. We always imagined being very connected with our, in our suburb, with our wider neighbours. However, you know, there is still that sort of fear of difference. And we are in a low-income suburb, there are people walking down the street who have fairly deprived lives. But one of the interesting things that came up is: so do we want a fear-based response or a love-based response? And the feeling in the room was very much, yeah, you know, yeah, let’s look at this from a love-based response and be so connected into our wider neighbourhood and seen as a positive influence and of service, really, so that in a way that’s our safety, as if our wider neighbours value us, you know, because we’re sharing and being of service to the wider neighbourhood. So that was interesting to get to that place.
Eva: Absolutely, I’m very interested to see if that mindset shift has shifted anything else, if it has affected any of the other dimensions that ecovillages focus around, your ecological footprint, your economic stability, your overall culture as a community.
Robin: One of the main lessons from the Resilience Project for us was how connected or how dependent in a way we are on our whole neighbourhood, our whole suburb, being healthy and flourishing, and how important it was that we recognized that and valued that and actually put more effort into integrating with our wider neighbourhood. So that was one of the prompts to have the festival in the first place. That’s sort of the first way, really, that we thought we would invite our neighbours in. I also want to tell you about, we have a site at the front of our, between Earthsong and the main road. There’s a one acre site that is not specifically part of Earthsong, but a lot of us formed another company and bought that site. So we call it Walk to Work Eco-Developments. And the plan for that site is to build a sort of small scale business hub using refurbished containers and tiny houses and little straw bale cabins and a whole range of different small, easily put up, relatively cheap premises, forming a kind of a hub with community space in the middle. And we can use those cabins to offer as premises for people in our wider neighbourhood to try out good sustainable business ideas. So that’s what we’re aiming to do there is to create this little hub where people can try out, you know, they have a good idea about a sustainable business, might be repairing something or making food or whatever it is, and can have a small premises for as long as it takes them to get on their feet or figure out that actually that idea isn’t going to work. But we can provide support and mentoring and the physical space. And that actually feels like the most fruitful place where we can really welcome in our wider suburban neighbours and kind of a place of exchange and support while still safeguarding, I guess, our own home living environment. Because if we were flooded with refugees from capitalism, let’s say, we need to sort of safeguard ourselves enough that we can be of service, actually, and value what it is that we have that is probably going further than some other people are wanting to go. But it’s just that balance and finding the permaculture edge, the transition place where aspects of both can mingle. And it’s the fruitful growing edge that allows each of the other states to continue.
Eva: Thank you so much for sharing. That’s a very inspiring idea. And from the way you talk about it, I’m understanding that you are still in the design phase of this project. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I would really love to hear an update once it’s launched, once you start to hear a response from the community. So I’ll be in touch.
Robin: Yeah. It’s going to take a while yet, but the wheels on the train are starting to move.
Eva: Wonderful. And if you can think of any other examples throughout our interview of this interlink between different areas, please share, because I find that very interesting. And we have talked a bit about this already, but I’m curious if you have any other tools that you believe ecovillages can share with the wider society to help build this resilience. So we talked about check-ins. I think this is one great example, but I don’t know if you have more ideas.
Robin: Actually, one of the biggest offerings that ecovillages can make is that sense of sort of agency of people having an influence on what’s done and what’s decided. And the systems that really hold that, like the governance system, the way the community is organized to get work done, how the community makes decisions, etc., because I think that’s the biggest difference in a way. You know, like the buildings are great and different in terms of their sustainable materials and everything else. But actually, I think it’s the social structures that are the most different from how society is structured. Again, I think that in our wider society, which I imagine is quite similar to a lot of Western countries, people have been trained for decades now to feel like they’re on their own, they’re individuals, it’s individuals that matter, you know, my home’s my castle, all of that kind of stuff. But when disaster strikes or when there’s a crisis, people can then just have absolutely no idea what to do and look to the authorities to do something. We had big floods last summer. There was a big storm and then a cyclone. In the Hawke’s Bay on the East Coast of the North Island, there were huge floods and several people died and many, many houses were wiped away, etc. And it wasn’t the authorities or the disaster relief that really made the difference there, it was the local community networks. And in particular, the marae, the Māori organisations based around, I only know Māori words for this, so it’s kind of hard to describe.
Eva: Please honour them with the Māori word.
Robin: Yeah, yeah. So our indigenous people are called Māori. They have family-based areas with buildings, with a big meeting house, a big dining room, and often houses around it. And organisation systems, they were just the best organisers in that crisis. They had the facilities, they had the space for people to eat and sleep. They had the people systems to make decisions, to organise whatever needed organising, the food, etc. And that’s what we’re finding in the report after that disaster, is that the most functional organisations were the Māori marae. And I think that’s what ecovillages offer as well. We have physical space where people can gather, where we can feed people, where people can sleep. And we have the social organisation to actually do something about it, to make decisions, to kind of pool our resources and our skills and thoughts about it and take action. Whereas if you’re just living with your family in a single house in the suburbs, and you don’t know your neighbours very well, it’s very, I mean, people still do, crises bring people together in a way that they may not expect. They still don’t have necessarily the organisational systems, the relationships between them to really kick into gear as well as communities do. So I think that’s one of the most valuable things that ecovillages can do for their wider communities and the society as a whole, I guess, is demonstrate that people can have agency. You know, you can make a difference. You can have systems that mean that you can be effective in those times of crises. And it’s not just times of crises either. It’s the kind of the slow crises that I think we’re mostly part of at the moment. In terms of addressing systemic challenges, I think that’s gold.
Eva: Thank you very much also for touching upon the traditional or indigenous communities that I think really inform a lot of the more Western intentional community design as well. That’s beautiful. Talking a bit about this uncertain future, I want to invite you on an imagination exercise. When you imagine a resilient future, what does it look like? It might be very similar to what you described, but going a bit more into the imagination, what could it look like?
Robin: Well, I guess it depends on the scale that we’re talking about. But if I focus on the scale of our suburb of Ranui, I imagine people having useful work, finding the skills that they have, where they can offer and contribute to the health of everybody. I imagine people relearning how to grow food, especially in this area. So many people, I think, have completely lost touch with how to make food or how to grow food or how to cook food. That’s just such a tragedy. I imagine people withdrawing their energy from the rat race, the working for somebody else for slave wages and putting that energy more into their own lives, growing food, nurturing families, and looking at their neighbours and seeing how they can contribute, how they can be part of a healthy life. And I think in New Zealand, we’re very, very lucky because we have a very benign climate. You know, it doesn’t get too hot or too cold. We can grow all sorts of vegetables and fruit from subtropicals through to sort of cooler temperate. We have healthy soil. We have a relatively well-educated and good sort of reasonable democracy and a peaceful place. So actually, when I think about it, there’s not a lot that we need if we can feed ourselves, if we can be part of a thriving community, if we have good shelter, etc. It might come down to those things in not too distant future, really. And I don’t see that as a bad thing, necessarily. We can still make art, write, make music, have thriving lives. A whole lot of other species on the land would have healthier lives as well because we’re reducing our impact.
Eva: I absolutely agree. I like to relate a lot of the different phases of my life to community. And I say that New Zealand is the closest thing to community I have found on a country level. So I hear that a bit mirrored again in your words that you are almost there or you have all of the building blocks, the healthy soil, the temperate climate. It’s just switching back this cultural or social system that has moved in the past decades.
Robin: Yeah.
Eva: And I also really want to appreciate that you started with your neighbourhood because I think that is where we have the most impact. And if we were all to focus on our local community, then we really start to see big global change.
Robin: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And I think of it in terms of permaculture, which is generally around how we organise our gardens and growing systems. But I think those same permaculture principles can be applied to how we live as a community. So if we look at kind of zones, so there’s the zone of the single house where there’s a bit of shared space and a bit of private space and a governance system, which is usually mum and dad, and then at Earthsong, we have clusters of houses. So there’s about six or seven houses in a cluster, which also has some shared open space, et cetera. And then each of those clusters is part of Earthsong, which also has a community house, shared space. It has community open space. It has a governance system. So that’s kind of zone three. And then zone four is the suburb. It could be made up of lots of zone three communities. So if the suburb itself has shared space, it has shops and parks and churches and things like that, if it had a stronger governance system as well for that level of community, a lot of the governance that at the moment is citywide could actually be devolved down to suburbs. Not everything, because it’s good to also have bigger systems for overall scale, but I think how I can see it working in terms of having an eco-city, like I believe that we can build eco-cities, but I don’t see that as being made up of lots of single households. I see it being made up of lots of layers of community and governance. And one of those really key layers is the layer of the eco-neighbourhood, which is what we call ourselves, where people really do have that decision-making power and that agency in that sense that they matter within that group of people. So an eco-city would be made up of lots of eco-neighbourhoods.
Eva: Talking about this permaculture system within an urban social setting, and also you mentioned two key ingredients, people finding the skills that they can offer to the community to improve overall community health and people learning to grow and cook their food. What are some of the steps we can take as an individual, as a society, to start making this future a reality?
Robin: I guess we’ve started by designing and building and living in our eco-neighbourhood scale. And I think that has huge value because people can then come and visit and see and walk around and think, wow, what is this place? This is like my sort of grandma’s house or they sort of hark back to earlier times somehow, but that’s the only way they can understand it. I think that has huge value that people can see that it is possible and this is how it feels and why not? It’s like it just makes so much sense when you see kids of all ages running around together and the two-year-old having a conversation with the 80-year-old unrelated adult, etc. And yeah, and the houses nestled in amongst the gardens and the trees, that’s how we’ve started. And I think letting people see that there are other ways of organising housing, other ways of kind of valuing different things, but then also helping to have opportunities, learning opportunities where people can learn how to compost and grow vegetables and learn how to make decisions by consensus and that sort of thing. So we definitely do some of that as well. We have an educational trust at Earthsong that owns a third of our common house, is owned by our trust, and we have lots of seminars and learning opportunities. I don’t know if that’s going to make the difference, but I think it makes A difference.
Eva: And I think that’s all we can ask for, really.
Robin: Yeah.
Eva: As an ecovillage founder and someone who has participated in this resilience project, I’m wondering if you have any advice for other ecovillages hoping to work on their own community resilience.
Robin: Well, some of the exercises that we did, I think were incredibly helpful. So I would certainly encourage other groups to, I think they’re, or will be available online, hopefully. So working through those is just a wonderful way of thinking about your own ecovillage.
Eva: Was there one exercise that stood out to you as particularly helpful, aside from the timeline?
Robin: Yeah, I think the Three Horizons one was very, very interesting.
Eva: We have shared this one, so I can link it to your show.
Robin: It’s easy to kind of say all the things that are wrong, but then helping to envision what you actually do want then. The sort of insight that new technologies and disruptions could either help to cement the standard ways of doing things or be disruptors that help to get to the desired way. I think that’s quite a powerful thing to remember. It helped our thinking and it helped to give a sort of structure and shape to what we thought together. I think just lots of talking, actually, and valuing the process, the time that it takes as being of value. I think if people resent the time it takes in meetings and want to do things faster, then you miss out on a lot of the value and the juice as well, the things that keep you going, that feel good about it. So I would just encourage people to value spending that time with your neighbours and thinking together because different things come out that you would never think by yourself.
Eva: Absolutely. That’s how we come closer together.
Robin: Yeah.
Eva: I’m curious how you build personal resilience in your own life.
Robin: Well, I love my family. I have two little grandsons and spending time with them is very fulfilling and lovely. I get out in my garden, actually, and get my hands in the soil and grow food. It’s what feeds me most, I guess, feeds me emotionally as well as physically. And add time in nature. Yeah, getting out of the city and spending time near a beach and walking in the forest are definitely things that clear my head and clear my heart and remind me that I’m just one little being on this amazing, beautiful planet.
Eva: Yeah. Amazing. I also think it’s extra powerful to hear from an urban community the simple act of gardening as such a profound way to connect with the land and with other living beings. And this is something that really someone can do no matter their living circumstances. Absolutely. With some exceptions, but yeah.
Robin: Yeah. Yeah.
Eva: Our time is coming to a close and I’m curious if there’s anything else you would like to share with our listeners before we wrap up.
Robin: Well, I think I’ve sort of said a lot of them really, but I do think that living in an intentional community, there’s so many aspects of it that are really building our skills to be of service in a wider way. Having shared spaces, shared resources, helps us to care. We have to care for our common house. Helps us care for the wider area outside our own home. Learning to communicate, to work through difficulties. So much about the skills and challenges of living in community that I think are training us to rethink what it is to be a human on this planet and how it could be. That’s important. And I would just like to make a little plug for my book. I’ve written a book called Cohousing for Life (*also available in e-book at ecovillage.org/store), which really, it’s my brain download of everything that I learnt really and we learnt building Earthsong. Also, it itemises a lot of the structures that we use to work together and the design and things like that. So it’s my offering to the communities movement around one set of experiences in building. I love hearing how other people have followed their dream and got through the challenges and built something that matters to them.
Eva: Thank you very much for sharing. I’ll be sure I also link your book in the show notes for anyone who’s interested in finding and reading it. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today.
Cohousing for Life | E-book & print version
Robin: It’s been really, really great. Thank you so much for doing these podcasts. They’re valuable.
Eva: Talk soon, hopefully. I can’t wait to hear about how your projects are being implemented.
Robin: Yeah. Thank you so much, Eva.
Outroduction
Join us again next week as we continue the conversation over what it means to be resilient in our time of deepening polycrisis. While you wait for the next episode of Community Resilience, we invite you to explore more about the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project by visiting us online at ecovillage.org/resilience.
GEN Staff
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