Hello again! If my last update felt like I was doggy-paddling along the edge of a vast ‘Loch of Languished Lore’, I’m happy to report that this month I have finally found my footing on solid ground.

April has been a whirlwind of transition. We are moving out of the ‘delightful yet overwhelming’ initial phase of poking around cupboards and diving straight into the physical, tangible work of building a centralised home for our history. The information gaps I tumbled through last month are beginning to close, replaced by a very clear—and very large—mountain of boxes.

To truly understand the heartbeat behind these boxes, I also took a step deeper into Community life this month by attending the first Experience Week held in the Ecovillage Findhorn for several years. Beautifully themed “From I to We,” this programme has been the foundational, original way to introduce the Community to people from all over the world since the 1970s. It was a profound immersion into the Community’s core values, and it provided the perfect spiritual grounding for the massive organisational task ahead. After all, an archive isn’t just a collection of individual “I’s”; it is the collective story of “We.”

Angel Meditation

Mapping the Park: A Landscape of Words

To give you a sense of the staggering richness of the Community’s intellectual footprint, I have spent the last few weeks conducting a comprehensive survey across our key Community spaces, including the Park Building, Universal Hall, and the Evelyn and Universal bungalows.

Instead of just catching glimpses of tucked-away materials, we are now actively mapping the true scale of what we are dealing with. Our literary and archival footprint is substantial:

• The Park Building: Multitudes of books are being tracked and sorted across several floors, filling the spaces from the upstairs rooms right down to the Lecture Room and landings.
• Universal Bungalow: The main spaces have become temporary homes to an array of legal boxes, protective tubs, and bags holding the Community’s intellectual heritage.
• Evelyn’s Bungalow: Tucked away in the Coffin Room, we have gathered extensive rows of boxed history alongside collections of audio cassette tapes that are crying out for professional care and digitisation.

It is a massive collective footprint representing six decades of spiritual and communal unfoldment. But we aren’t just taking inventory; we are laying the groundwork for a sustainable, world-class archive. As we look ahead to May, we are preparing to structure these materials into a formal archival hierarchy compliant with international standards.

Weaving the Threads: Community & Trust

Mandala Beach

In March, I mentioned that the list of people to speak with unravels as I knit it. This month, that beautiful knitwork grew deeper, and the essential trust-building interview process has continued in earnest.

I’ve had wonderful follow-up sessions with many of our long-standing stakeholders and keepers of the flame. I’ve also expanded our outreach to a whole new circle of Community members, while initiating contact with many more to map out what I like to call the “Archive of Archives”.

We even had a chance to bring these records into the light by helping curate a beautiful “From the Archives” display for Ekopia’s Cullerne Gardens Launch. It was a joyful, experimental step in seeing how archive materials can help create personal and collective narratives, showing that our history belongs directly to the living community.

Cluny Library photo Lydia Pappas

Alongside historical documents, we uncovered beautiful, pristine copies of landmark Community books, including Eileen Caddy’s Divinely Ordinary and David Spangler’s A Pilgrim in Aquarius. These discoveries are fueling our strategic Park Library Plan, where we envision creating a “Living Library”.

This isn’t just about storage; it’s about consolidation—bringing the Cluny Hill, Findhorn Foundation, and Education collections together into one professionally managed resource. A big thank you to Fabien Barouch for all his hard work and help in organising this side quest!

What’s Next: The Universal Move

Our immediate goal for the coming weeks is to use the Universal Bungalow as our central staging area. With grateful thanks to EF CBS for allowing us to have access to this bungalow for two months to undertake this essential work!

By gathering our dispersed materials into one unified space, we can finally begin our initial triage. Using a tailored “Keep or Disposal” framework, we will prioritise core Foundation publications and esoteric reference materials, ensuring our library remains a focused, high-quality resource. Please contact us if you feel drawn to help with this process. We are looking for volunteers as this sorting of the multitude of books is a very large job.

Park Building books

We are also investigating potential heritage grants and resilience funding to support future preservation and a dedicated photo library digitisation project. We can apply for some of these grants in May and June, so please join us in meditating for their success to assist us in our work. If secured, they will supply both the needed funding and vital support for these massive tasks. And if the stars align, May might even include a research visit to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh or Glasgow to view their current holdings!

It still feels a bit like falling down the rabbit hole, but the landing is looking a lot softer now that the Community is pulling together to help this archive breathe

Thank you for walking with me on this journey!

Robin Original Garden

COIF TEAM

Inspired by CommUnity, a group of NFA volunteers, manages this website. Hearing each others stories, and learning about the history of this community can help us all to find more cohesion and a sense of belonging. Read more.&lt