Episode 2011-7
Richard Heinberg, the noted Peak Oil activist and author once said: “This may be the most propitious moment in history to join an intentional community.” Indeed, as we look at the changes underway across the planet, making intentioned, conscious decisions about the way we live may not only be a well-timed phenomena, it might be a necessary and critical element of future living.
In this episode of Light Transitions Radio, guest Diana Leafe Christian discusses a number of different types of intentional communities – including ecovillages, and transition towns – and describes how these communities begin and mature.
Diana is the author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, about forming successful communities and ecovillages, and Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community, about researching, visiting, evaluating, and joining a community. (New Society Publishers, Canada, 2003 and 2007).
For 14 years Diana was editor of Communities magazine; she now publishes “Ecovillages,” a free online newsletter about ecovillages worldwide http://www.EcovillageNews.org
Her monthly column about ecovillages appears on the homepage of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) website. http://gen.ecovillage.org/
Diana is a certified trainer of Ecovillage Design Education (EDE), a program of Gaia Education, an international educational project of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN).
She leads workshops on starting successful new communities and on the consensus decision-making process, offers consultations, and speaks at conferences internationally. (For example, keynote speaker at the Japanese Ecovillage Conference in Tokyo, 2007; instructor at EDE courses in the Philippines.)
Her articles have appeared in Mother Earth News, Permaculture Activist, and the Encyclopedia of Community. She has been interviewed on New Dimensions Radio and Peak Moment TV.
Diana lives in an off-grid homesite at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.
Websites mentioned in the show
Ecovillages
- Findhorn – UK
- Twin Oakes – Virginia
- The Farm Communitity – Tennessee
- Ecovillage Ithaca – New York
- Earth Haven – North Carolina
- Dancing Rabbitt
- Los Angeles Ecovillage
Transition Towns
Books