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.

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.

Where: in the Park Ecovillage – details will be shared with attendees following booking.

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.

UN-CAPPING SIXTY YEARS OF LIGHT: The Journey of Our Community Archive Project 🌟

There is a beautiful whisper moving through the Park: our collective legacy is making its presence known, actively calling for preservation. Are you listening? Will you heed the call?

Over our 60-year journey as pioneers, an extraordinary multimedia history has accumulated. For too long, precious pieces of this sacred story have remained tucked away in hidden boxes, vulnerable to time, neglect and other hazards. In a spirit of co-creation, the Community Archive Project (CAP) is officially underway to gather and ground these living records, holding them in love and trust, for ourselves, for the public and the generations of pioneers yet to come.

The Gaps We Need to Fill 🔍
While we have a strong foundation of formal records, an archive is only as vibrant as the people who built it. Right now, we have distinct gaps we are urgently seeking to fill. We need the ‘chats-over-tea’ history: the personal letters, daily photographs, early newsletters, and rare audio-visual materials that capture the lived heartbeat of our community over the decades.

Shaping What Happens Next: A Call for True Ownership 🤝
This is where the narrative shifts. This archive is not a project being done for the community by an outside institution—it is a shared heritage resource that must be driven by the community. As we navigate important organisational transitions, the time has come for us to take full democratic ownership of our history and actively shape what happens next.
If we don’t step forward to co-curate and define our own legacy, who will?

Step Into the Vault on July 19th 🚪✨
How do we decide what is kept, what is digitised, and how our story is told to the world? What are the boundaries of our physical archive? To answer these questions, we are opening the vault. You are invited to a special Sunday Slot—The Living Time CAP-sule Archive Brief. Join us as we transform the Universal Hall on Sunday, July 19th (2:00 PM – 5:00 PM) into an active, collaborative design space.

Come claim your piece of the story, discover the gaps we need your help to bridge, and let’s co-create our collective autobiography together!

Save the Date: Sunday, July 19th | 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM |The Universal Hall

Nature Spirit drawing by Frances Ripley

In this workshop 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 here for the Summary Report of this workshop.

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

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.

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.

Mainly Magnus (1973)

Findhorn Original Garden Peter Vallance (2012)

Turning Point (2009)

Going Green CNN (2016)

Growing Up Green (2021)

France24 (Oct 2025)

Robert Holden Tea Meditation (2017)

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?”.