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intentional community

Two Women’s Journey to Intentional Community

June 27, 2022 by Luvian Iskandar

Hi from Scilla and Sharyn. We are deep friends.  We are also members of Narara Ecovillage in New South Wales, Australia. Our ecovillage website, https://nararaecovillage.com is a mine of information – so go dig! We met 7 years ago when the ecovillage site had been purchased but no building of new homes had begun. Scilla and her partner were in transit towards a shared life, leaving their separate homes in Tasmania and Sydney while Sharyn was in the process of selling her beautiful home of 25 years in order to live at Narara.

Both energetic, socially committed and somewhat rebellious ‘Maga’ women in our rich Autumn stage of life, we found much in common, despite birth places literally ‘poles apart’: Scilla was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and Sharyn grew up in the heart of Sydney. We both chose paths quite early in life that deviated from the norms expected by our families, we both lived in an ‘intentional community’ with our young children and we both found our greatest personal and professional satisfaction in the spheres of inner growth, conflict resolution, and therapeutic support.   

Sharyn was one of the ‘pioneer’ members of Narara. Inspired by the determination of Lyndall Parris, Narara Ecovillage founder, she joined around 20 other visionary contributors pooling resources to buy this glorious valley property. Narara Ecovillage Cooperative is now the steward of 170 acres nestled between the deep peace of Strickland State Forest and the suburb of Narara. Intercity rail links give us easy access to both Sydney and Newcastle.

Narara Ecovillage was legally constituted as a trading Cooperative with all memberships holding an equal shareholding. Membership is a prerequisite to buying a plot of land and building a house at the ecovillage. The commitment and courage of the early members to the vision of building an inspiring, sustainable ‘demonstration’ ecovillage was remarkable and Sharyn was a critical catalyst in the manifestation of this dream. 

Sharyn designed and built her ‘hippy’ home of 17 years living in a community in the northern New South Wales rainforest. After many years of more suburban life, Narara gave her the opportunity to revel in the design and construction of her beautiful natural build home.  Drawing on her talents as a painter, aspiring glass artist, budding sculptor, and accomplished clothing creator she offered specialist builders and artisans the scope to demonstrate their skilled craftsmanship in working with natural and recycled materials of all kinds.

Laying down the ‘social foundations of community is arguably more important than the physical infrastructure and Sharyn stepped early on into the role of community catalyst by setting up the Wellbeing Circle and facilitating monthly Members Meeting for many years. She enriched early policies and procedures with insight from her decades of training and practice in mediation, conflict resolution, and crisis counseling as well as her own inner work. When talking to prospective members of the ecovillage, she cheerfully affirms that ‘living in community is the toughest personal development course you’ll ever take’! She knows this from personal experience!

Scilla came across ‘intentional communities’ while studying in California in the ’70s on a scholarship from her Scottish university. The trauma of war veterans she met in classes, the courage of social changemakers, and the commitment of environmental activists defending our fragile planet Earth as well as disillusionment with the economic and social consequences of actions by the dominant Global North helped to plant seeds for her life of ‘active pacifism’. Her areas of work included practice and policy in child protection and juvenile justice, teaching, disability support, journalism, and an ongoing reverence for the healing power in the space between people and horses.

While Sharyn’s earlier ‘community’ (and her mothering) experiences were set in the remote rainforest of Eastern Australia, Scilla found herself the parent of two small boys living in a large shared property with a volatile group of young people living as long-term WWOOFers in a 19th century English country house under renovation. This was a fascinating and tough introduction to stepping outside the norm of Western family homes and taught her a great deal about what was wonderful as well as what does not work in a community. In particular, the unilateral power held by a founder/leader can spell disaster when the going gets tough.

Having encountered Quaker communities in her earlier overseas exchange experience, a year of traveling with 2 small children a decade later connected her with the worldwide intentional peace-building community’ of Servas https://www.servas.org.au.  This strengthened Scilla’s commitment to conscious ethics-based community building and moving to live in Tasmania in the late 1980s presented the opportunity to explore place-based intentional community once again.

She became involved in at least eight aspiring or emergent ecovillage projects in that time … most failed to materialize due to legal, planning, or finance impediments or did not meet her needs and expectations at the time. Factors that deterred her included insufficient clarity around a shared vision, remote physical location, lack of inclusive decision-making, damaging inequity in resources, or incompatibility of personalities in key leadership roles.

However, this time in Tasmania also introduced Scilla to inspiring organizations and catalysts to creating healthy sustainable communities – be they for purpose or place-based. These included GEN, Pachamama Alliance, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Conflict Resolution Network (CRN), Alternatives to Violence (AVP), and Permaculture, including a focus on Social Permaculture.  A powerful and enduring sense of community formed around her rural property where she offered equine-assisted growth and learning experiences.

Meeting one another, with tapestries of life weaving in so many similar threads, felt like a ’knitting together’ at a soul level.  We laugh a lot and cried a fair bit too!  While occasionally treasuring silence – especially in forest walks, we have shared many rowdy dinners and countless discussions as co-leaders of our Community Circle.  We enthusiastically deepen our practice of Sociocracy and are currently exploring the application of the Prosocial ‘lens’ to strengthen collaboration in our community and honestly accompany people interested in considering membership on their ‘Journey to Joining’ Narara Ecovillage.  

We feel blessed to be here and grateful for our capacity to continue to grow and learn. Above all, we are enlivened by the opportunity offered by this ecovillage – and the international movement it is part of – to contribute to shaping a peaceable world for our grandchildren’s grandchildren and all Life. 

You can find more information about Narara Ecovillage on their website here.


About the Authors

Sharyn Wilson. Narara Ecovillage, Australia

Sharyn is a pioneer member of Narara Ecovillage. Born in Sydney, she has led an adventurous and creative life. She built her home in the rainforest of northern New South Wales, raised her son, and lived with self-sufficiency and personal growth as her intentions. She has pursued a lifelong journey of learning and practicing conflict resolution, mediation, and personal development as well as art, travel, and a commitment to the community. Returning to the North Shore area of Sydney she found and later re-designed her beautiful Avalon home while continuing to help others through crisis counseling work. Drawn back to the quest for a more intentional community, she attended a gathering at the critical decision-making point in the purchase of Narara and said YES in no uncertain terms by joining the early investors. She has been at the heart of the Community Circle, is a member of the ecovillage Steering Circle, and facilitated the monthly Members’ Meetings throughout the early years, and is deeply committed to the practice of Sociocracy (and now the introduction of Prosocial) at Narara Ecovillage. 

Scilla Sayer. Narara Ecovillage, Australia

Scilla was born in Scotland and grew up with a deep sense of commitment to place-based community.  She discovered ‘intentional community’ while on an overseas scholarship year at the University of California in the early 1970’s. Scilla found work as an editor and art correspondent in London before moving to join a small community in Norfolk. Life circumstances and a need to escape Thatcherism in the UK led to a radical life shift in the 1980s.  She and her husband traveled for a year with 2 small children and moved to Tasmania. Her lifelong connection with horses and deep appreciation for the transformative power of the relationship between them and humans led her to explore equine-assisted therapy. She trained in New Zealand, the USA, UK, and Australia, establishing ‘Chiron Horse Programs’ in Tasmania. This flourished for nearly 20 years. All this time she was involved with a number of ecovillage development projects before she felt the draw to Narara Ecovillage. Now living there full-time and deeply involved with supporting social sustainability, she balances this intensity with meeting a growing interest from ecovillagers and others who wish to explore the magic and the learning that exists ‘in the space between people and horses’. You can reach her at scilla.sayer@gmail.com.

Filed Under: articles, ecovillages Tagged With: Australia, intentional community, Narara Ecovillage, stories

Southern Life Community Participating at the Daomi ‘ao International Contemporary Art Exhibition, China

October 26, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

The second Doumi ‘ao Contemporary Art Exhibition was commenced on 30th September 2021 in Doumi ‘ao Village, Songyang County, Zhejiang Province. The village is an ancient village rich with cultural gems, with more than 400 years of history. Recently the village resources have gradually lost their vitality and their resources have been underutilized due to the urbanization trend of young people.

The exhibition is part of an ongoing government effort for rural revitalization and protection of culture. The Songyang County government has started to implement the “One Hundred Artists Settled in Songyang Village Plan” in 2018 in an effort to slowly bring abandoned villages back to life. At present, the county has organized the preservation of 142 old houses, 63 houses and formally signed a contract with 60 artists to create a batch of art villages such as Doumi ‘ao Village. The first Doumi ‘ao International Contemporary Art Exhibition in 2019 hit national headlines and made local villagers see the hope of revitalization in their hometown.

Southern Life Community, participated in the exhibition by renovating an old house in Doumi ‘ao Village and transforming it into an exhibition hall. In this exhibition, they show the development history of their community over the past five years and make art installations using objects from their daily life. Other than being an exhibition space, the house will also serve as a working and living space for artists and other community members.

About the Southern Life Community

Southern Life Community is one of the first intentional communities in Mainland China. It is a community based on openness and sharing. We welcome visitors and residents from all over the world to join our way of life and co-create in working teams. We have always been committed to accommodating groups discriminated against by society including women, people with disabilities, farmers, and sexual minorities. We share the common view that we are friends no matter who we are. So our members often do not care about external image, skin color, gender, and other differences. We believe that there is no garbage in the world, only misplaced treasures. In our community, each of us has access to public resources and a vote. Everyone has the right to speak up during and initiate a meeting.

We have a wealth of crafts going on where women play an important role in this work. Men are often engaged in manual labor. However, people are able to freely explore what they want to do in our community. Our daily activities in the community over the years have been to build houses, farm fields, play music, make sculptures, and build bridges between people from all over the world. Through the daily processes of action, understanding and integration happen quietly.

By organizing and planning a large number of art activities every year, we try to make social integration truly happen through art. Through the beauty of art, beautiful moments where there is no difference between people often appear. 

We believe that ecological civilization is the future. Ecological civilization is a civilization that embraces diversity. Nothing is absolutely bad, and every species has its meaning and value of existence, and its value and significance are balanced. With this in mind, we also engaged in ecosystem restoration and research and have restored 200 mu (1333+ square meters) of wetland in a nearby area over the past years. 

Our community is made of new residents who are attracted to the countryside and want to settle here and also local people who have a passion for active social work to build their area. New residents who came have been paying attention to the countryside, they use their experience and understanding of city living and bring new perspectives and different possibilities to the local peoples’ daily life and work. There are also short-term residents who come for volunteering, research and engaging in different projects. Through interaction with different people coming from different backgrounds, local people get a fresh and different view of their daily life. Gradually, local people become more involved co-creation process of our community as organizers and co-sponsors of on-site projects and facilitating gentle integration of new residents with local conditions. With the gradual deepening of the relationship between new residents and local people, the formation of a common goal of sharing life and mutual assistance happens naturally.

The formation of our community will be an experimental sample of new rural communities in China, exploring the values of sharing and altruism, the worldview of peace and goodwill, and the consensus community with scientific and artistic thinking. Hopefully, we can be a long-term inspiration for the transformation of more villages.


Tang Guanhua, Founder of Souther Life Community

Tang Guanhua is the founder of Southern Life Community. He is an artist and an intentional community enthusiast. At one point in his life, he moved from the city to LaoShan mountain with his wife to experiment with self-sufficient lifestyles and built a self-sufficiency laboratory for youth to learn self-sufficient lifestyles. With such experience, he established AnotherLand NGO, the first and only NGO focusing on eco-community development in China. He organized China Intentional Community Summit two times and helped the Chinese people to understand the concept of an intentional community better by refining the term in the Chinese language. He is considered to be the founder of the China Intentional Community movement by the Chinese media. In 2015 he founded Southern Life Community, an experimental intentional community in southern China that attracted thousands of people to come and explore sustainable lifestyles. He has been awarded the China Post-85 Charity Figure Award, Top 10 Public Welfare Project Awards of People’s Daily, nominated for UNDP Equator Prizes, and shortlisted for the UN 2018 Young Champions of the Earth. His artworks have been collected by the Museum of Contemporary art Beijing, Alibaba Foundation, Tamera Peace Research and Educational Center, Federation of Damanhur, and much more.

Filed Under: arts, ecovillages, Uncategorized Tagged With: arts, China, ecovillage, intentional community, Southern Life Community

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