COIF Events make our community history and archives come alive. Together we step into our inner historian / archivist / librarian / journalist, explore relevant skills, resources and our ever expanding vibrant collective autobiography.
Here we provide information about upcoming events as well as the outcome from past events. (Please click on the arrow on the left to expand the sections.)
To book or for more information: please contact us.
Upcoming COIF Events:
Details about the Your Community – Your Story Workshop Series
This is a series of 7 modules – each one can be taken independently.
In each module we explore one of the central themes of our collective autobiography. We facilitate a range of activities including group work, conducting interviews as well as diving into historic materials (paper as well as digital), creative expression in writing, drawing etc. and above all we will have lots of fun!
Where: in the Park Ecovillage – details will be shared with attendees following booking.
Workshop format: (timings approximate)
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- 1st hour: Introductions (both personal and subject)
- 2 hours of Generative free flow space – research, interviews, creative explorations, writing etc.
- Last hour: Reporting back and next steps
How to sign up: Booking is essential – Click here to contact us to book your space.
Costs: Give as you feel moved in the spirit of “gift economy”. Participation is more precious to us than payment.
This workshop series is designed by Lydia Pappas (Community Archivist), Laura Pasetti (Artistic Director of Theatre of the 7 Directions), Janet Shaw, Sylvia Robertson and Cornelia Featherstone (researchers) and delivered by members of the team and guest presenters.
Your Community – Your Story: Sunday 6th Sept (2-6pm) – Worldview/Culture
At the heart of regenerative culture lies a transformation of consciousness — a shift away from the disconnected, extractive worldview that underlies so many of our current crises, and toward a more holistic understanding of what it means to be human. In the original diagram this was called ‘spiritual’.
The workshop will be led by Laura Pasetti who brings her deep experience with Ecotheatre and her own spiritual practices. Whilst experiencing creativity first hand, we’ll also explore the role Arts and Creativity have played over the decades to ‘do our work’ in transformation and healing, in making us whole so that we can grasp the holistic/spiritual worldview that may help us heal our planet at this perilous time.
In our collective autobiography there are already many stories gathered for those aspects – click on the hyperlinks to explore further: Spiritual Principles, Arts, celebrations & rituals, Consciousness and Education.
Booking is essential as spaces are limited – register here.
Click on the arrow for more information
Where: in the Park Ecovillage – details will be shared with attendees following booking.
Workshop format: (timings approximate)
-
- 1st hour: Introductions (both personal and subject)
- 2 hours of Generative free flow space – research, interviews, creative explorations, writing etc.
- Last hour: Reporting back and next steps
Costs: Give as you feel moved in the spirit of “gift economy”. Participation is more precious to us than payment.
This workshop series is designed by Lydia Pappas (Community Archivist), Laura Pasetti (Artistic Director of Theatre of the 7 Directions), Janet Shaw, Sylvia Robertson and Cornelia Featherstone (researchers) and delivered by members of the team and guest presenters.
The last workshop in the series is: Your Community – Your Story Saturday 26th Sept (2-6pm) – Whole System Design. Watch this space for more information.
CHI’26 Storyfest – Ekopia’s Community Hub Initiative = CHI 22nd – 24th September 2026 in the Moray Art Centre.
The COIF Team is supporting Ekopia in this storyfest.
Fasil Bogale, CEO writes:
The Moray Art Centre charity is vacating its tenancy of the MAC building’s lower ground floor at the end of August. This provides an opportunity to explore the future use of the available spaces while ensuring they remain open for community activities, including art classes, from September.
At Ekopia, we do not have a predetermined vision for the space. Instead, we want to work with the community to explore whether the MAC lower ground floor could become a vibrant community hub, either as an interim solution or a longer-term aspiration. The Storyfest is an open and creative community consultation, inviting people to share their stories, ideas and aspirations. Together, these conversations will help shape the next chapter.
The concept of the three-day our CHI = Community Hub Initiative Storyfest:
• Each day has a distinct flavour
- Day 1 – Tues 22nd Sept 4-8pm: The Old Community Centre -What did the CC mean to us? What needs did it meet? How has the loss through the fire in 2021 affected us?
- Day 2 -Wed 23rd Sept 4-8pm: The 2031 Community Hub – as time travellers we will come back from 2031 and tell the folk in 2026 what we have seen/heard/smelled/tasted in the 2031 Community Hub. We will describe in detail the location, the building, the activities …
- Day 3 – Thurs 24th Sept 10am-12noon: The 2026 Community Hub Initiative – for champions to create the roadmap to make a Community Hub reality. We will explore what short-term and long-term actions do we need to take to secure the future of a community centre? In the meantime, how can the Art Centre building act as a bridge, supporting the community until a long-term solution is in place? what are the concrete steps we need to take now to co-create the Community Hub?
• The framework for the first two days is in two parts
- A free-flow format of story gathering for the first three hours: People can come at any point from 4pm onward – bumblebees and butterflies welcome 😊. After a brief introduction everyone is welcome to move through the spaces and activities which include small group conversations, creative expression, shared food (potluck – bring food, drink, your own crockery/cutlery). 😊
• A focused harvesting session in the last hour each day: last entry at 6.45pm, everyone present gathers by 7pm for a sharing circle which will be recorded.• The third day is a focussed group meeting starting at 10am.
Just come along on the days – no booking required.
Large group attunement photo Findhorn Foundation
November 14 – 21, 2026: Findhorn Foundation Heritage Week: A Living Story
This is a citizen-scholar experience, grounded in the daily life of the Park Ecovillage, where the ordinary rhythms of the Community become the context for discovery.
Taking place during Birthday Week in November, the programme sits within a meaningful time in the Community calendar. Around the 17th November, the Community marks the beginnings of this experiment in living, creating a shared atmosphere of reflection, celebration and connection.
This offers a unique opportunity not only to explore the story of Findhorn, but to experience it as it is being lived, remembered and nurtured together.
Click here for more information and to book.
Past Events – outcomes:
Your Community – Your Story: Social/Culture
This module focused on The Community Centre (CC) – the social heart of our community culture. We gathered stories in the intimate space of our workshop in preparation for the first day of the CHI26 Storyfest 22-24th Sept which looks at the ‘Old Community Centre’. After recalling our personal connections to the CC in the whole group, we had Open Space conversations about the CC Over the Years and the ‘Gritty Bits’ (or Warts-and-all) sharings about difficult aspects, including the destruction of the CC by fire in April 2021.
Click here for stories about the Community Centre in our collective autobiography.
Your Community – Your Story: Economy
Fourteen citizen-historians gathered on 6th Aug 2026 for a four-hour workshop to explore the Community’s evolving relationship with money, business, and financial sustainability as it transitions away from its historic “ashram economy” toward conventional incomes, pensions, and hard currency.
While discussing practical solutions like mixed-tenure housing and local currencies, participants examined the deep spiritual reframing of money as an energetic tool, connected childhood patterns of scarcity and abundance to collective risk-taking, and engaged in candid conversations about the personal financial costs and pension gaps associated with long-term community living.
In our collective autobiography there are already some stories gathered under the category Economy – and there is so much more to research, share and celebrate! The Topic – Community Economy gives an overview with lots of references for further research.
19th July 2026: UN-CAP-PED – The Living Time CAPsule
A Community Consultation to Help Shape the Community Archive Project Together
Uncapping Sixty Years of Shared Heritage and Stewardship
— a lively, interactive afternoon preserving the memories,
stories and hopes that make this community what it is.
Your Community – Your Story: Ecology
Nature Spirit drawing by Frances Ripley
On 5th July 2026 participants explored Ecology in a number of ways: through storytelling, performance, art, movement and embodied connection with the subtle realms.
They also discussed what Co-creation with Nature meant for them both in the past and how it might be in future.
Click on the arrow for a wee photo gallery to fire up your imagination.
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- Fay planting tree FHT 2012 photo Findhorn Hinterland Trust
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- Cullerne Gardens ©Adriana Sjan Bjman
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- Cullerne Gardens fields ©Findhorn Foundation
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- Lyle checking a solar panel
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- Wind turbines photo Kelsey Grubbs
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- Original Garden greenhouse
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- Growing in Cullerne Garden tunnel photo Geoff Dalglish
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- felling the burnt trees
Your Community Your Story 1 and 2 collage
Your Community – Your Story: Our Roots
Stories about our founders came alive on 14th June 2026 as Jonathan Caddy gave a tour to the Original Caravan and shared very personally about the early days, formative influences, core principles, vision and purpose.
In our collective autobiography we have gathered stories under the category Our Roots.
Click here for the Summary Report of this workshop.
To whet people’s appetite, we created this short promo video with fabulous historical footage:
Romany’s mandala
Cansu’s collage
Your Community – Your Story: Findhorn Journeys
In this workshop on 13th June 2026 we explored our personal story asking each other “What drew you here? What did you learn? What are you doing with what you learned?” Some of the most fascinating conversations start with these questions.
Click here for the Summary Report of the workshop.
We played with some fabulous historical footage and created this lovely short video:
These kind of stories form a crucial part of our collective autobiography – click here to explore them.
21st May 2026: Our first COIF Film-Night
On the occasion of COIF’s 5th Birthday we organised a Film-Night.
The Film-Night worked better than we could have dreamed with lots of amazing coincidences. The film schedule was a bit of a stab in the dark but it turned out that each film flowed into the other rather well, covering a lot of ecovillage aspects over the decades, and with a sense of humour playing through it all. This aspect only became clear when watching the whole programme in one sitting. This synchronicity gave us a sense that is was ‘intended’ on a ‘higher level’ rather than just orchestrated by us, thus making it much more meaningful and precious. And, in the tradition of Experience Week, the evening ended with a practice that can be applied by each one of us in our daily life – Personal&Planetary Transformation in practice.
This is the whole programme and if you have 3 1/2 hours to sit through it all you may capture that same magic.
Easter 2026 Artist Hunt – The Story of COIF
For the 2026 Easter Conference Economics As If Life Matters Laura Pasetti of the Theatre of the 7 Directions organised a special edition of the Artist Hunt entitled The Stories that Took Root. COIF Team member and storyteller, Sylvia Robertson, told the story of how COIF came about.
Click her to listen to her story and read the responses participants gave to the question “What does the Community mean to you?”.
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.<
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