Create Community!

Welcome to the Create Community Bank of Resources.

During the last years we've done a lot of research and would like to share these with people who want to start or continue being thriving healthy communities.

If you feel like you have resources to share here please feel free to edit the page and add these on.

Creating a Life Together, Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities by Diana Leafe Christian

This great book contains real life experiences of many communities and covers a variety of critical topics including the start up phase of community, the role of a founder/s, community vision, power, decision-making and governance. It skillfully goes over those gnarly parts of the community which are perhaps difficult to talk about such as setting agreement over property ownership, membership fees and policy making. It seeks to give the reader a great foundation on to which to build a community that can last beyond the honeymoon phase. It covers also the softer side of community building including communication, process and dealing with conflict and the tricky paths to find people to start a community with and a screening process for those who join later.

Steward-Ownership, for community owned businesses

This is an excellent model for community enterprises focusing on self-governance and purpose driven enterprises.

Common Unity Grow Kit

A great free course on how to start a plant based community around growing food together.

Can be seen in action in this documentary: Together we grow

Inclusive Decision Making Process

This is a decision making model created by Aimee Fenech following Sociocratic principles.

A free market is an event were people bring goods they do not need to give away without payment or obligation to exchange. This type of market is excellent for mutual care as it provides for the needs of the community members who are unable to offer an exchange for basic needs.

People could bring food to share with others, have free events for children, workshops and anything else people want to offer without payment or exchange obligations.

This type of event works well within communities where people know each other well and are friendly with each other already or areas in which people would be open to experimenting.

A market in which only preowned items are brought for exchange, gifting or to sell through local currency or fiat currency.

This type of event works well in areas where markets are a part of the existing culture. Watch out for necessary permits in your local area applicable to organizers and sellers. There may be additional license requirements for the sale of food and beverages.

A market in which hand-made artisan products are offered for exchange, gifting or to sell through local currency or fiat currency.

For this to be a community building event consider how is this serving the community and what community activities and be built into it so that it becomes more than a commercial event.

An event bringing together farmers and agri-food people from the area to bring their products for exchange, gifting or to sell through local currency or fiat currency. The critical part is to give participating people the container in which to discuss issues, resources and advice in a mutual care fashion.

Community Events for Strengthening Local Economy Event Organisation Checklist