CALIFORNIA BOOK SIGNING TOUR FOR DIANA CHRISTIAN
Aug 22- 30 Slide Show and Book Signing Tour with Diana Christian Author: "Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities"

What works and what doesn't work in forming community Intentional Communities and EcoVillages? Diana Christian, author of "Creating a Life Together Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities", and Editor of Communities Magazine (www.fic.ic.org/cmag) talks about the process of forming these kinds of new communities. Gleaned from dozens of successful communities in North America , she shares the nuts and bolts of beginning and how to avoid fatal mistakes that cause communities to fail. Discussion be creating vision documents, decision-making and governance, buying and financing land and the organic process of growing community.
See article at end of email "Starting a Successful Urban Ecovillage" by Diana Christian in Hopedance Magazine www.hopedance.org issue #51

Public Talks with Diana Leafe Christian Donations $5- $10
FRI Aug 19 7:30 7:30 pm: Public talk and overview $15 LA Ecovillage 117 Bimini Pl. LA 90004 Lois Arkin crsp@igc.org 213/738-1254 crsp@igc.org
Sat/Sun, Aug. 20-21, 2 day workshop: How to Start a Successful Urban Ecovillage, 10 am - 6 pm, LA Eco-Village, 117 Bimini Pl., Lois Arkin, reservations required, crsp@igc.org
TUES Aug 23 ldyllwild , 7:30 pm Idyllwild Park Nature Center Auditorium, 25225 Hwy. 243, Idyllwild, CA 92549 "Scott Horton" <lasemillabesada@hotmail.com> phone 951-659-5362
WED Aug 24 7pm Ojai Kent Hall Help of Ojai 111 W Santa Ana St, Ojai sbpcnet@silcom.com 805-962-2571
THUR Aug 25 7pm Santa Barbara Downtown Library sbpcnet@silcom.com 805-962-2571
FRI Aug 26 7pm San Luis Obispo Downtown Library Bob Banner hopedance@aol.com 1-866-749-7819,805 544 9663
Monday Aug 29 7pm Alameda Point Collaborative 677 W. Ranger Ave. Alameda, CA 94501 Douglas Biggs <dbiggs@apcollaborative.org> www.apcollaborative.org 510.898.7849
?TUES Aug 30 San Francisco Commonwealth Club 595 Market Street SF ( www.commonwealthclub.org) Eric Corey Freed <eric@organicarchitect.com> (415) 474.7777, still being organized

For Tour updates contact Santa Barbara Permaculture Network sbpcnet@silcom.com, 805-962-2571,www.sbpermaculture.org
SPONSORS- Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, LA EcoVillage, LA Permaculture Guild, Ojai Permaculture Guild, The Alameda Point Collaborative, ADSPR, Organic Architect, & Hopedance Media.


Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, by Diana Leafe Christian, editor of Communities Magazine, foreword by Patch Adams. 2003 New Society Publishers, 272 pp.,

About the Author:
Diana Leafe Christian has been editor of Communities magazine, a quarterly publication about intentional communities in North America, since 1993. She has been interviewed by NPR and the BBC about intentional communities and has contributed a chapter on forming new communities to Creating Harmony (Gaia Trust, 1999). Her articles on ecovillages, financial and legal aspects of communities, children in community, and communication and group process issues in community have appeared in publications ranging from Mother Earth News to Communities magazine, the Communities Directory, and Canada's This Magazine.
Diana leads workshops for forming-community groups and educational centers nationwide and at communities conferences, on the practical steps to create ecovillages and intentional communities, including the land-purchase, zoning, and legal stages of these projects.
She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, one of the "successful 10 percent" communities she began researching for this book.

MORE ABOUT BOOK AND BOOK REVIEWS
Creating a Life Together is an overview of the process of forming new ecovillages and intentional communities, gleaned from founders of dozens of successful communities in North America formed since the early '90s. This is what they did, and what you can do, to create your community dream. It attempts to distill their hard experience into solid advice on getting started as a group, creating vision documents, decision-making and governance, agreements and policies, buying and financing land, communication and process, and selecting people to join you. It's what works, what doesn't work, and how not to reinvent the wheel. This information is not only for people forming new communities - whether or not you already own your land. It can also be valuable for those of you thinking about joining community one day - since you, too, will need to know what works. And it's also for those of you already living in community, since you can only benefit from knowing what others have done in similar circumstances."
Diana Leafe Christian is author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities (New Society Publishers, 2003), about forming communities in today's financial and zoning climate, based on the experiences of successful community founders in the 1990s. She has been editor of Communities magazine, the Fellowship for Intentional Community's quarterly national publication about intentional communities in North America, since 1993. For the past six years she has led workshops on the practical steps to form intentional communities. Diana is a member of Earthaven Ecovillage.

"Wow! The newest, most comprehensive bible for builders of intentional communities. Covers every aspect with vital information and hundreds of examples of how successful communities faced the challenges and created their shared lives out of their visions. The cautionary tales of sadder experiences and how communities fail, will help in avoiding the pitfalls. Not since I wrote the Foreword to Ingrid Komar's Living the Dream (1983), which documented the Twin Oaks community, have I seen a more useful and inspiring book." --Hazel Henderson, author, Creating Alternative Futures, and Politics of the Solar Age.
"A great deal of research and trial-and-error has been assembled here, and every potential ecovillager should read it. This book will be an essential guide and manual for the many Permaculture graduates who live in communities or design for them." --Bill Mollison, co-originator of the Permaculture concept, author of The Permaculture Designers Manual, Ferment and Human Nutrition.
"A really valuable resource for anyone thinking about intentional community. I wish I had it years ago." -- Starhawk, author of Webs of Power, The Spiral Dance, and The Fifth Sacred Thing -- and committed communitarian.
"Creating a new culture of living peacefully with each other and the planet is our number one need--and this is the right book at the right time. Creating a Life Together will be instrumental in the ecovillage courses I teach. I can't wait to tell people about it." --Hildur Jackson, cofounder, Global Ecovillage Network (GEN); co-editor, Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People.
"A comprehensive, engaging, practical, well-organized, and thoroughly digestible labor of love...This book is a gift to humanity, helping to move forward the elusive quest for community, fueling a quantum leap towards a fulfilling, just, and sustainable future." --Geoph Kozeny, 30-year community activist, producer/editor of video documentary "Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture."
"Before aspiring community builders hold their first meeting, confront the first realtor, or drive their first nail, they must buy this essential book: it wil improve their chances for success immensely, and will certainly save them money, time, and heartbreak. In her friendly but firm (and occasionally funny) way, Diana Christian proffers an astonishing wealth of practical information and sensible, field-tested advice." --Ernest Callenbach, author, Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging
"While anyone can build a village, a subdivision, or a housing development, the challenge is filling it with people who can get along, who can reach agreements, and who can achieve far more together than they ever could alone. If your aspiring ecovillage or intentional community gets even this far - and this awesome book will show you how - then maybe you have a realistic chance of living sustainably, and by example, of changing the world. My appreciation grows daily for this thorough, practical, and engaging guide." --Albert Bates, Director, Ecovillage Training Center, and Board member, Global Ecovillage Network
"Developing a successful community requires a special blend of vision and practicality woven together with wisdom. Consider this book a marvelous mirror. If the abundant, experience-based, practicality in this book delights you then you probably have the wisdom to realize your vision."
--Robert Gilman, founding editor of In Context, A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture

Review by Geoph Kozeny
If Creating a Life Together had been available in 1972, probably it wouldn't have taken me five tries to start a community that would last for more than 13 months. But with no such "how to" resource available, my cohorts and I plunged into it the hard way-by trial and error. After flailing around through those first four attempts, then living for ten years in a community that succeeded, and subsequently visiting 350-some communities to figure out what worked for them and what didn't, I was resigned to the idea that someday I'd have to write the definitive manual on creating and sustaining intentional communities. I'm eternally grateful that Diana Christian did it first.

As I compare the topics featured in Creating a Life Together with my ancient annotated list of things to include in my intended book, I'm thoroughly impressed with how she covered the bases. It's all here-from conceiving a community, through building a vision and gathering a group, to finding and buying land, and ultimately how to get along together and make it work. (See excerpt, "Accountability and Consequences," pg. 16.) Further, it's written in a readable, captivating style that makes extensive use of interviews and vignettes from the everyday life of real communities. (As a testimony to Diana's thoroughness, pithiness, and the relevance of the information, the publisher, a former communitarian himself, chose to publish a book twice the length he'd originally agreed to once he read the manuscript.)

The breadth and depth of this work should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Diana's credentials. As editor of Communities magazine, she's perused scores of insightful and practical articles over the last ten years, and, always looking for a good story, has sought out and interviewed dozens of veteran communitarians, especially community founders, about what went wrong and what worked well. (Not to mention learning many hard lessons firsthand, through the break-ups of two community start-ups she was involved in before joining Earthaven, one of the communities profiled in the book.)

Creating a Life Together includes abundant examples from thriving ecovillages and communities as well as numerous anecdotes from groups that failed (although the latter sound strikingly familiar, they're usually presented as fictitious models) - making for a very effective community-building guidebook.

Information is presented logically, using the metaphor of growing a successful garden: Planting the Seeds of Healthy Community (major bases to cover and planning pitfalls to avoid); Sprouting New Community (techniques and tools); and Enriching the Soil (communication, working with conflict, adding and sustaining members). However, this seemingly straightforward order is offered only to make the concepts easy to digest. "Don't assume these steps are linear," Diana cautions. "The process of growing a community is more organic - simultaneously ongoing and step by step." She makes it clear that circumstances may dictate swapping the order, doing many steps at once, skipping steps if appropriate, and even adding new ones of your own.

The "Seeds" section examines basic concerns, including a general overview of what has worked and what hasn't, the founder's role and its challenges, crafting a clear vision, raising start-up funds, and establishing effective and empowering decision-making structures. The "Sprouting" section, comprising the bulk of the book, focuses on the critical importance of good documentation, legal structures, working with lawyers, finding and buying land, zoning, refinancing, balancing privacy with group involvement, and setting up internal community economics. The "Enriching" section digs into the most critical aspects of sustaining a community once it's established: how to work with the beliefs and emotions that underlie conflict and agreements for handling conflict, constructively offering and receiving feedback, and how to help each other stay accountable to the group. Additionally, a very helpful appendix features numerous sample documents of community visions and agreements, several dozen extremely helpful community-building resources, plus links for finding hundreds more on the Web.

Creating a Life Together is a comprehensive, engaging, practical, well-organized, and thoroughly digestible labor of love. Hopefully scores of wannabe community founders and seekers will discover it before they launch their quest for community, and avoid the senseless and sometimes painful lessons that come from trying to reinvent the wheel. This book is a gift to humanity-helping to move forward the elusive quest for community, fueling a quantum leap towards a fulfilling, just, and sustainable future.
Geoph Kozeny, a 30-year community activist, is producer editor of Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture, a two-hour video documentary on intentional community. geoph@ic.org; http://www.store.ic.org.

For lots of interesting book reviews, workshop raves and other testimonials about Diana Christian's book and workshops, see http://www.creating-a-life-together.org/


Starting a Successful Urban Ecovillage
By Diana Leafe Christian (article in Hopedance Magazine www.hopedance.org Issue #51)

I’ve been fascinated by ecovillages ever since I become editor of Communities magazine, 11 years ago. Then I wrote a book about how to start successful new ones. And now I live in one: Earthaven, in the mountains of North Carolina.
My favorite definition of ecovillages is that ecovillages are “human-scale, full-featured settlements in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that supports healthy human development, and which can be successfully continued into the indefinite future.” (Robert and Diane Gilman, 1991). “Human-scale” means you know everyone in the ecovillage and can feel that your voice counts in the group’s decision-making. Maybe this is 20 people; maybe 120. “Full-featured settlement” means you live there; work there; grow or otherwise get your food there; and your social, cultural, and spiritual life is there. Urban ecovillage activists point out that in a city, your work, and social, cultural, and spiritual life may not be on-site but nearby, accessible by bicycle or public transportation..
Ecovillages can be intentional communities, educational centers, or traditional indigenous villages, depending on how ecologically sustainable their vision and purpose. Do any real ecovillages exist, given that we don’t yet know “the indefinite future.” I don’t know, however, I believe there are “aspiring ecovillages.” I’m aware of four urban ones in the U.S.: Los Angeles Eco-Village, EcoCity Cleveland, Cincinnati Ecovillage, and Ecovillage Detroit.
I also believe it’s a whole lot easier to create an ecovillage in an urban setting than a rural one. First, unlike their country cousins, urban ecovillagers aren’t challenged by where they’ll find decent-paying jobs to pay off loans for purchasing and developing their ecovillage property-they’ll probably keep the urban-based jobs they have. And while their urban property will probably be far more expensive than that of their rural counterparts, they’ll most likely get permission for a higher population density, and thus divide their loan payments between more people, making their property relatively more affordable. Further, urban ecovillages are more likely to buy property with existing utilities and buildings, which, because of rising construction costs, can be less costly to retrofit than the new construction and new utilities required when buying undeveloped rural land. For the same reason urban ecovillage residents can often live on-site sooner, and more comfortably, than if they had to deal with clearing brush, building roads, and starting buildings from scratch.
I also believe urban ecovillages can make a bigger difference in our ailing culture. For example, living more densely in cities helps preserve farmland and wilderness from human development. Living in cities also conserves resources, since it’s cities and towns, not the countryside, that offer large-scale cooperative ventures such as public transportation, shops within walking distance, food co-ops, various other kinds of worker-owned co-ops, and apartment buildings with central utilities, which waste lots less natural resources than individual single-family homes. Urban ecovillages can also influence far more people, and provide green and appealing alternatives to the painful realities of blighted neighborhoods and dead downtowns While people travel across the country to see what we’re doing at Earthaven, we would have a lot more impact if our natural buildings, off-grid power, organic gardens, and constructed wetlands were smack in the heart of downtown Asheville, where thousands of people saw us daily.
Since the early 1990s I wanted to know what it takes for newly forming intentional communities and ecovillages to succeed. So I began interviewing founders of communities that succeeded and those that failed. The major steps seem to be establishing a core group with a particular vision and purpose, choosing a decision-making process, creating agreements and policies, creating a membership policy, choosing a legal structure, finding and financing property, and moving in and renovating (or developing) that property..
Yet I also learned that no matter how inspired and visionary the founders, only about one out of ten new communities and ecovillages actually seemed to get built. The other 90 percent usually floundered around, sometimes from lack of money or not finding the right property, but more often because of gut-wrenching conflict, and, occasionally even lawsuits.
I began to see a pattern. Most new-community failures-rural or urban-seemed to result from what I call “structural” conflict: problems that occurred because founders didn’t explicitly put certain processes in place or make certain important decisions at the beginning. creating one or more omissions in their organizational structure. Several weeks, months, or even years later the group would erupt in major conflict that could have been largely prevented if they had handled these issues early on. Naturally, this sets off a great deal of interpersonal conflict too, making the initial “structural” conflict even worse.
While a normal amount of interpersonal conflict can be expected, I believe that much of the structural conflict in failed communities could have been prevented, or at least greatly reduced, if the founders had paid attention to at least six crucial elements in the beginning. Each of these, if not addressed in the beginning can generate structural conflict later on. Here’s what I found:

1. Identify your ecovillage vision and create vision documents. One exhausting source of structural conflict is when various members have different visions beliefs about why you’re doing the project in the first place. This can erupt into all kinds of arguments about what seem like ordinary topics-how much time the group works on a particular task, or how much money you allocate for a particular project. It’s really a matter of underlying differences (perhaps not always conscious) about what the ecovillage is for. All ecovillage members need to be on the same page from the beginning, and must know what your shared vision is, and know you all support it. Your shared vision should be thoroughly discussed, agreed upon, and written down from the outset.

2. Choose a shared decision-making process, and if it’s consensus, get trained in it. Most people resent power imbalances, and such imbalances can become an enormous source of conflict in an forming ecovillage. Decision-making is the most obvious point of power, and the more it is shared and participatory, the less this particular kind of power imbalance will come up. Shared decision-making means everyone in the group has a voice in decisions that will affect his or her life in the ecovillage. The way your decision-making method works must be well-understood by everyone in the group.
A more specific source of community conflict is using the consensus decision-making process without thoroughly understanding it first. What often passes for consensus in many groups is merely “pseudo-consensus”-which exhausts people, drains their energy and good will, and generates a great deal of resentment. So if your group plans to use consensus, you’ll prevent a great deal of structural conflict by getting trained in it first.

3. Make clear agreements-in writing. People remember things differently. Your agreements-from the most mundane to the most significant-should be written down. Then if later you all remember things differently you can always look it up. The alternative-“I’m right but you’re wrong (and maybe you’re even trying to cheat me)”-can break up an ecovillage faster than you can say, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

4. Learn good communication and group process skills and resolving conflicts a priority. My definition of “good communication skills” is being able to talk with each other about sensitive subjects and still feel connected. This includes methods for holding each other accountable for agreements. I consider it a set-up for structural conflict if a forming ecovillage group doesn’t address these skills right from the beginning.

5. In choosing cofounders and new ecovillage members, select for emotional maturity. An often-devastating source of conflict is allowing someone to join your group who is not aligned with your vision and values. Or someone whose emotional pain-which might come up weeks or months later as disruptive attitudes or behaviors-can end up costing you hours and hours of meeting time and draining your group of energy and well-being. A well-designed process for selecting and integrating new people into your group, and screening for those who resonate with your values, vision, and behavioral norms, can save repeated rounds of stress and conflict in the weeks and years ahead.

6. Learn the head skills and heart skills you need to know. Forming a new ecovillage requires many of the same planning and financial skills as launching a successful business, and the same capacities for trust, good will, and honest communication as building a successful marriage. Founders of successful new communities and ecovillages seem to know this, and those that get mired in wrenching conflict usually do not. So the sixth major way to reduce structural conflict is to take the time to learn what you’ll need to know.

Not everyone in your forming ecovillage group needs to be equally skilled in these ways, nor must you possess all these skills and areas of expertise among yourselves when you begin. You can always hire training or expertise in whatever you need-from consensus to permaculture design.
“Forming a new community,” says community activist Zev Paiss, “is the longest, most expensive, personal growth workshop you will ever take.” I agree. But with the right tools and skills- and a the burning intention to make the world a more cooperative and sustainable place-it’s totally worth it.

Diana Leafe Christian is editor of Communities magazine and author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities (New Society Publishers, 2003) . Her articles have appeared in Communities magazine, Permaculture Activist, and Mother Earth News. She has been interviewed about the growing trend towards community living by the BBC, NPR, New Dimensions Radio, Canada’s This Magazine. the AARP Bulletin, and the Los Angeles Times. She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.
For more information, see Urban Ecovillage Network: www.urban.ecovillage.org.