Exploring Community Empowerment at Fearless Cities

Our two guests this week are deeply embedded in the creation of Tiny Homes as a way for us meet the needs of all within the bounds of the living planet. Both are living absolutely at that sharp, bright edge of inter-becoming from which our more flourishing future will emerge.  

Rachel Butler is the founder of Tiny House Community Bristol, Chair of Bristol Community Land Trust and is a member of Bristol’s One City Homes & Communities board. Her root mission is within systems change/paradigm shift: to re-common as much land as practicable, enabling as many people as possible to move back onto and reconnect with this land, by co-creating and co-residing in Tiny House Regenerative Settlements. She believes that, at this critical time of human-created poly crisis, as the current system collapses and composts, it’s also time for the human species to rejoin the web of life, in sacred reciprocity; healing our relationships to self, each other and community; not only human, but of all beings and kinds.

Maddy Longhurst is a director of Tiny House Community Bristol alongside Rachel and, for the last 4-5 years has been helping to create their Tiny House development in Sea Mills, Bristol, as well as another small tiny house community off the radar. Since having to leave her rented home this August, she and her daughter have decided to exit the mainstream housing system so as to no longer be subject to its unethical, exploitative ways, but to live, for now, in the fertile margins until their tinies are created. 

She's UK coordinator of the Urban Agriculture Consortium, weaving relationships between people working in the urban and peri-urban agroecological transition. She is also Studio Coordinator for Constructivist, a regenerative design school for built environment professionals, and part of the Strategy circle for Bristol Commons. Some of her current areas of work are on Reimagining the Greenbelt as a place for regenerative settlements, prototyping Landed Community Kitchens and developing a model for Tiny Homes for land regenerators in the city.

As you can imagine, our conversation ranged from how grinding bureaucracy so often gets in the way of genuinely restorative, regenerative practice,  to the philosophy and practices that are the foundations of the change we need to see in the world.  We explored the actual social technologies that moved things forward and learned of two workshops that sound totally transformative.  Since recording, it's become apparent that the one in Bristol with El Juego is not really open to other participants, which is sad, but I have no doubt they'll be back - and that Maddy and Rachel will be able to engage with the teaching and bring it into life here and elsewhere.  I've put links in the show notes to the Fearless Cities event in Sheffield on the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd of November.  If I go, I swear I'll be at a microphone in time for the Ask Me Anything Gathering in the Accidental Gods membership that day.  This is also a good time to remind you that Dreaming your Death Awake is on the last Sunday of October, 27th from 4-8pm UK time. It's on Zoom and anyone can come.

Tiny House Community on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/tiny-house-community-bristol-ltd/
https://www.tinyhousecommunitybristol.org - this is the Tiny House Community Bristol website - please have a look at the Sea Mills page where you can see and support their planning application
The THCB Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/364360747248042/
THCB Instagram @tinyhousecommunitybristol

Other related sites of interest:
https://www.bristolclt.co.uk
https://wecanmake.org/
https://thebristolcommons.org/
https://www.bristolonecity.com/
https://www.in-abundance.org/
https://coexistuk.org/
https://www.urbanagriculture.org.uk/
https://www.fearlesscities.com/
https://www.fearlesscitiessy.org/
https://eljuego.community/
El Juego Tour details here: https://eljuego.community/tour-reino-unido/

https://www.regenerativesettlement.com

https://www.agroecologicalurbanism.org/building-blocks

https://www.urbanagriculture.org.uk/ongoing-projects/fringe-farming/

for those interested in policy around community led housing (CLH): Bristol's CLH policy page https://www.bristol.gov.uk/council/policies-plans-and-strategies/housing/community-led-housing-policies

Also maybe this for great examples of tiny homes around the world: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoNTMWgGuXtGPLv9UeJZwBw

Also another progressive 'compact homes' policy https://www.teignbridge.gov.uk/planning/custom-and-self-build/compact-homes/defining-compact-homes/

Accidental Gods Online Gathering:
Dreaming Your Death Awake online Gathering 27th October 4pm - 8pm UK time https://accidentalgods.life/dreaming-your-death-awake/