The City of Light

Dear Community (by Angus Marland),

The following is a synopsis of the Community Economy project which I presented to the FF Trustees and Management in early December. 2010.

The report starts with a look at how the community has grown over the last 50 years. After 10 years of ‘incubation’ in the 1960’s the Findhorn Foundation was thriving with about 300 members by the end of the 70’s. The population declined during the 80’s and 90’s, and by the year 2000 there were about 120 co-workers. That number is keeping pretty consistent through the 2000's up till now.

Paralleling this, in the 1980’s a community started to form around the Foundation, and in the mid 90’s the 'Open Community' was about the same size as the Foundation, though without any coherent form or structure. The NFA was established in 1999, and during the 2000’s it grew to its present size of about 300 individual and 30 organisational members.

About 650 community people feel engaged enough to have their names in our internal phone book, so in addition to the FF and NFA, there are about 250 people who are not ‘members' yet are part of the Community. The question arises; 'what is it that we are all members of?' Is there a new Community structure emerging that we can all say 'yes' to – and what does it look like?

Eileen’s guidance was that we would grow from a family, group and community into a village, town and City of Light. Our first 50 years can be seen as representing the first triad of family, group and community. The transition into the second triad is bound to be a momentous shift and could take over 20 years to complete. During the first ten, running through the 2000's ‘Community’ has predominated over ‘Village’. We are now at the turning point in which the second triad, begining with Village, begins to predominate over the first.

The transition can be witnessed in the change from the FF as the main provider of ‘Spiritual Community, Education Centre and Ecovillage’ to where we are today, with more of a village
enterprise consisting of multiple ‘Spiritual Communities, Education Centres and Ecovillages’.

The Economy Project set out to understand our historical and current social and economic relationships (individual and organisational) and to identify the steps that can be taken so that our future evolution meet the needs of the times. This include broadening our economic relationships, for example we could set up a Time Bank in which hours rather than pounds are the 'currency'.

Some statistics also help to set the scene:

• 70% of us in both the FF and the NFA Community are over 50 years old.
• 1/3rd of the FF and Community live at The Park, 1/3 on the Findhorn Peninsular and 1/3 in Forres and the surrounding area. Of the 240 people living at The Park, 25% (60 people) are FF co-workers.  
• The Park has 60 houses, 32 caravans, 27 bungalows and 5 eco-mobiles. Most houses are private, the bungalows and eco-mobiles are half private half FF, and the caravans belong to NFD.
• The FF spends about £500k per year developing, operating and maintaining its properties and land at The Park. It also spends about £100k per year attracting visitors/guests to the area through marketing etc.
• The NFA services the whole community with a supporting membership of half the community. £150 per year subscription is requested, the average received is £110.

Clearly, there are some interesting questions we need to ask ourselves and each other about exactly what kind of a Community we believe we are a part of, what kind of a Community we would like to be a part of, and how to collectively make the choices to become that which we'd like to belong to.

If anyone would like to see the report to the Trustees and Management, please email me and I’ll send a pdf.

Angus Marland

Printed in Rainbow Bridge 7th January 2011