Does community happen by accident

A few people commented on the feeling of community they experienced at the three day Growing Radicles training in March. I’m glad that people felt this, and it was not an accident.

Building community was part of the Intention, from the start. I asked Janet Redmond if she would be part of the event, and so glad she had a big Yes for it. We parked the camper on site the day before the event and when we woke in the wee hours of the morning, declared an energetic workspace around the land, before calling in the bright principles of Connection, Love, Simplicity, Clarity, Healing, in support of healthy and nourished people and people.

People began arriving around 8am on day one, and at 9:30am we gathered in the opening circle.

Janet and I held space for each and every person to share what had brought them to the event, and what gifts they were bringing. This was the watering of the community radicle (embryonic root of a seedling), inviting each person to take root and declare what was their verse, in the di-versity of the gathering.

The next piece of the community creation was the introduction of a proposal culture. When someone wanted to declare the time we would break for a meal, request the focus of the next piece of learning, or how to manage emptying of the humanure compost buckets, a proposal was put to the circle. Each proposal was followed by the question: Any resistance? Resistance was shown by displaying a number of fingers from 0–10 (where 10 is maximum resistance and 0 is no resistance).

Those with higher resistance were invited to share what their resistance was about, and so the wisdom of the crowd was invited into the space. A proposal could be changed until there was no resistance, or so little that those with any remaining resistance were able to accept it, and the group could move on.

Finally we landed the distinction between logistics and other conversations. Throughout the three days, any logistical conversations were attended to at the beginning of each session, honouring the primary intention of the three day training — learning the principles and practice of Syntropic Agroforestry. By the last day Sylvanis, 9 years of age and the youngest member of our community, held the space for the logistics conversations.

These are some of the steps which were made to set the scene and build the social systems that created a sense of community which lasted for the three days, and beyond.