Dear friends,

Greetings from a bright and sunny Findhorn.

Over the winter and spring, I have had the good fortune to visit a number of really exciting new and established ecovillage initiatives. As you know, I try, where time allows, to document these so that some of the inspiration becomes available to the wider ecovillage family. Some of this material appears in my weekly blogs on the New Statesman magazine: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/life-at-findhorn

See especially the recent blog on ‘Los Angeles Ecovillage’, a remarkably innovative and inspiring inner-city initiative in one of the world’s least ‘eco’ cities. I am now writing an article on urban ecovillages based on the experience of LAEV, the emerging Leeds ecovillage in England, that I spent some time in in late 2007 and other urban EV initiatives.

I am also working at the moment with the Angsbacka community in Sweden. Angsbacka <http://uk.angsbacka.se/> is a small community that runs courses on spirituality and personal development as well as hosting Scandinavia’s largest summer festival on these themes. It wants to develop a larger resident ecovillage and to begin to run courses and festivals on sustainability. Its first such eco-festival will be the Alive Now festival in August (see their website for details – I will be among the presenters). It should be great and the location is magnificent – do consider participating.

Finally, I got to see The Village in Ireland, the new and innovative settlement that has succeeded in getting a new category introduced into the planning legislation in Ireland for sustainable communities. What is especially interesting about this community is that the new-build ecovillage will be an extension to the existing village of Cloughjordan. They have strong support on all fronts – from all the inhabitants of Cloughjordan (not one objection to their planning application!) up to the Minister of the Environment! (I am trying to persuade them at the moment to write about their experience in an article for Permaculture.)

Finally, the Positive Energy conference – that a number of folk from the ecovillage family got to – was a resounding success on all fronts. Much inspiration and transformation during a quite magical week. Daily reports can be found on www.findhorn.org Images on www.findhorn.org/gallery.

One very significant thing shared by the Positive Energy conference and the Convergence festival in Dublin (Post Carbon Cities, Transition Towns and Eco-Villages) the following week that I presented at that was that in both cases, the Ministers of the Environment (Scottish and Irish) presented, making it clear that they look to ecovillages as major sources of inspiration and models for sustainability and increasing the budgets available to environmental NGOs.

The doors of power are now wide open to us. The challenge we face now is to walk through and talk to power.

Jonathan