Life at Findhorn
A weekly insight into life inside one of Britain's best known eco-villages – Findhorn – by resident Jonathan Dawson.
Life in the goldfish bowl
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 20 August 2008
For good or bad, television cameras have become an unavoidable part of life in the ecovillage
Another camera crew is in town at the moment, shooting another film about life in the community.
We have become a good deal more careful about who we let in with movie cameras following the debacle several years ago with the three-part Channel Four series, The Haven, that made us look and feel rather foolish. Our naive hope had been that the film would try to depict something of [...]
Great time to be in Scotland
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 31 July 2008
Jonathan Dawson talks about the Climate Challenge Fund and the gust of political fresh air sweeping across Scotland
It is a great time just now to be in Scotland. There is a tangible sense of freshness, excitement and opportunity in the air. Most surprisingly in this age of disenchantment and cynicism with all things political, a significant source of this new energy is developments in the sphere of mainstream, party politics.
In short, we have a new, fresh SNP administration in Holyrood that almost overnight seems to [...]
Wedding and windbills
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- Posted by Rhiannon Hanfman
- 18 July 2008
Is the credit crunch going to have an impact on guest numbers at eco-villages? Rhiannon Hanfman reveals this and more.
Last week I drove my friend Judi Buttner to Loch Ness to officiate at a wedding. Judi is the Findhorn Foundation’s official marriage celebrant and can legally perform weddings not only in the community but anywhere in Scotland. The Foundation has, for at least ten years, had its own celebrant so that community people who do not, as a rule, want a traditional church wedding could have the kind of [...]
Ageing naturally
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- Posted by Rhiannon Hanfman
- 08 July 2008
Growing old as a member of an eco-village has its perks, writes Findhorn resident Rhiannon Hanfman.
Following on with the theme of the ageing population of Findhorn and (everywhere else, really) I would like to approach it from the perspective of one of 60s generation who is now in her sixties. Since it was we who instigated the cult of youth and coined the phrase ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty’, we can hardly complain if there are those who now feel that there are way too [...]
New Age old people's home
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 27 June 2008
As in society as a whole, the wealth of the boomer generation is provoking a crisis of access for youth. How do ecovillages ensure they don't just host an older population?
One of the early Findhorn luminaries, David Spangler, once famously said that a major challenge for Findhorn would be to avoid becoming a New Age old people’s home. I notice that I have been recounting this anecdote over the years with a certain self-satisfaction, sure in the knowledge that this is a fate we have managed to escape.
After recent visits to a couple of ecovillages where youth truly are [...]
Fire in its belly
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 06 June 2008
The models and solutions on offer at Findhorn are not off-the-peg selections aimed at bored shoppers in the sustainability saloon
Last week’s blog saw me down at the Green Heart of Hawick festival, celebrating GEN’s recognition that the battle for sustainability would be won on the streets of our villages, towns and cities, with ecovillages more akin to research laboratories than models to be widely replicated.
And yet, as I come back from another working weekend away – this time in Sweden (of which, more below) – I realise [...]
Green heart of Hawick
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 22 May 2008
Jonathan Dawson makes a trip to an environmental fair in Hawick and explains a recent paradigm shift in the role of the ecovillage in contemporary society
Green Heart of HawickI spent the weekend down at Hawick, a picturesque town in the Scottish Borders. The event was an environmental fair and conference called Green Heart of Hawick, put on by the irrepressibly enthusiastic Michael Shallis and his team.
The fair had everything, from films (including Al Gore’s "An Convenient Truth" and the wonderful "Power of Community" about Cuba’s response to its peak oil crisis), talks [...]
Yes……..and
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 12 May 2008
How people come and go at Findhorn but how often they leave a positive legacy behind them...
This week, as many others, our community newsletter, the Rainbow Bridge, carries news of one or more members leaving the community. In an ecovillage of around 500 souls, this level of turnover does not present too much of a problem.
There are still several people here who first came to Findhorn in the 1960s and a good number who have been here for 20 years or more, so there [...]
Strange times
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 25 April 2008
What a puzzling time to be alive. In the world that surrounds us, beauty and the comforting familiarity of seasonal rhythms. The ospreys have returned from West Africa and are putting on a grand fishing display in Findhorn Bay.
The last of the winter snow still lies deep on the mountaintops, glistening and melting in the now warm spring sunshine. (I spent last weekend walking in the magnificence of [...]
Talking to the descendants
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 14 April 2008
Our second report from the Positive Energy conference at Findhorn
Well, the Positive Energy conference was quite a blast. We had a little over 150 guests in for the entire week of the conference, together with up to 60 locals in for most individual sessions.
It seems to me that Findhorn does this kind of event especially well. A key moment in my own decision to come and live here was attending a [...]
Positive Energy Conference
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- Posted by Mattie Porte
- 25 March 2008
Findhorn resident Mattie Porte shares information about the current conference on positive energy at Findhorn that will continue until March 28.
This is one of my favourite times to be here as a member of staff of the Findhorn Foundation. It's a time when our whole community pulls together, everyone contributing their skills and resources and talents to ensure our guests have a deep and meaningful experience. It's also a time when our community is enriched and enlivened by the co-mingling of thoughts and ideas and creative expression of both fellow [...]
The Transition Town concept
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 17 March 2008
Jonathan Dawson suggests that ecovillages are moving toward encouraging Transition Towns, which allow sustainability to be incorporated into mainstream society.
A great thing about living in such a large community (I know that the 500 or so souls who call this place home may not seem like a major conurbation to any Londoners reading this blog, but it is large by the standard of most ecovillages) is the scale of diversity that it affords. The place often feels like a small village that believes itself to be an unusually dynamic, [...]
The dog that turned green
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 29 February 2008
Communities in Scotland and Brazil raise questions about carbon trading
I have just watched an excellent movie called The Carbon Connection. The film focuses on two communities, in Scotland and Brazil, which find themselves on opposite sides of a carbon trade deal.
The town of Grangemouth near Glasgow lives cheek by jowl with a huge BP refinery, that has bought the right to continue polluting by buying carbon credits through the planting [...]
The LA Ecovillage
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- Posted by Jonathan Dawson
- 22 February 2008
Jonathan Dawson blogs about an alternative Findhorn, in downtown Los Angeles...
I want to devote my blog this week to an extraordinary development unfolding in a poor, multi-ethnic, working-class neighbourhood some 6,000 miles from here – in inner-city Los Angeles.
Why on Earth would I do that is a column called Life At Findhorn?! Well, first because we are part of a much larger global family, one of whose members, the Los Angeles [...]
Away with the fairies
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- Posted by Rhiannon Hanfman
- 19 February 2008
Spring has sprung at Findhorn, and memories of nature spirits are re-awakened
Spring has arrived, it seems. The daffodils are pushing up in my garden. Normally I would be pleased — new life, growth, all of that — but the spectre of global warming dampens my enjoyment. It feels too early. I am concerned about global warming though worrying about it will not keep it at bay - and I am also glad that the [...]
