Urban
Community
Experiment
Updated: October, 2016
Exploring blueprints for metamodern living.

Introduction An intentional community research project for
like-minded people to live, co-create and evolve
together
To research a blueprint of how to build and
maintain a community for affordable, holistic
and connected living in an urban environment.

Intentional
community
• Connected living: more than just sharing affordable living
space, it is about being present and active in each others
lives and personal growth journeys, cross-generational
and beyond the traditional family concept.
• Co-creating: the creative potential of the community is
bigger than the sum of the individuals. Creating with a
shared intention for the evolution of the whole.
• Evolving: through community reflection, peer-to-peer
support and other social tools and technologies
community members become increasingly empowered to
make the most out of their individual potential and live
their lives to the full.

Urban challenges
INDIVIDUAL / FAMILY
● Loneliness and chronic isolation
● Lack of purpose and direction
● BIFI (boredom, impatience, frustration, irritation)
● Increasing Anxiety and Depression
● Disconnection from nature
● Expensive housing
● Overwhelm
● Addiction
● Distraction
● Lack of support
● Difficulty in raising a family
HOUSE SHARES
● Lack of intentional community
building / connection
● Do not benefit of economies of scale
● May not live with likeminded people
● Un-tapped/latent creative potential
● Human inter-connectivity
challenges and unskillful conflict
management
CITY
● Housing crisis
● Escalating Mental Health epidemic
● ‘Gentrification’ of city centre and
ghettoisation of areas
● Arts sector under pressure
● Decrease in community diversity
● Loneliness of older adults
● Anti-social behaviour
● Addiction
Collectively producing results that nobody wants

Global transformation is needed to allow
humanity to flourish and be at its best.
Transformation is rooted at the individual level,
without which there can be no transformation at
the community level, and in turn without which
there can be no lasting global transformation.
Change starts at home.
Change starts
at home

We believe that when people rally around a higher vision, a greater
purpose and live to their highest potentials, they are collectively
empowered to create the change necessary for a more purposeful
and compassionate society.
We will:
● Become a hub where the kind of experimentation, learning and
growth necessary to build this vision will be embodied and
demonstrated.
● Serve as an incubator through which other communities can
emerge and establish themselves.
● Contribute our voice to the call for a new pattern of living and
help redefine how we interact with ourselves, each-other and
the world.
Vision

Community Building: Demonstrating that modern urban
community living can be achieved, sustained and can be accessible
in our cities to people from all walks of life.
Community Maintenance: Exploring the social tools and
technologies that are needed to keep a community running and its
members engaged and motivated. Discovering how we can
co-create a safe environment to enable people to be their
authentic selves and the processes and mechanisms to manage
conflict skillfully.
Community Research: Our purpose is not to create an inward
looking utopian community but to create an outward looking
community that, through its learning, is able to discover the
principles, mechanisms and networks necessary for effective
modern-day urban community living. We wish to act as a blueprint
for building and maintaining urban communities, to serve as a
working model that can be shared with and replicated by other
social groups.
Focus

To make the a new model of living appealing it needs to:
• Demonstrate tangible improvements on the wellbeing of the
individual as well as impacting at the societal level.
• Be resilient and be able to bounce back from internal and
external shocks
• Be reliable and keeps doing what it is supposed to.
• Be replicable by groups from all walks of life
• Have structural processes necessary to promote connection,
creativity, personal growth and resolve conflict.
Abide by three foundation pillars which are explained on the
next slide.
Community
blueprint

The three pillars
1. Commitment of Time & Energy: the individual needs to
prioritise the project and commit time, physical and mental
energy towards the project. The more you put in, the more you
get out.
2. Common Purpose: The co-created common purpose is the
community glue. The umbrella project of the community that is
higher than the community itself and gives back to society and
the extended community.
3. Inner work: The ability to self-reflect, observe patterns and
behaviours, change and grow allows an individual to actualise
their potential. This in turn enhances the community’s potential
to create wider societal change. Whereas ultimate
responsibility for inner work and personal transformation lies
on the individual, the community can also engage social tools
and communal practises to facilitate and encourage this
process at individual and group level.
Through our research of both
sustainable and unsustainable
communities, we have found that an
intentional community should rest on
three central pillars.

● Personal growth
increases energy by
decreasing social
conditioning and
patterns
● Supercharge each others
evolution
● Injection of purpose for individual &
community
● Motivation for prioritisation of time
● Responsible participation
● Increase quality of time and energy
invested
The three pillars
Common
purpose
The community glue
Time and
energy
The more you put in
the more you get out
Inner work
External issues are a
mirror of the issues
inside
● Cultivating Emotional
Intelligence
● Being present & focused
● Ability to check personal ego’s
● Skilfully dealing with conflict
● Mutual support to increase
resilience towards adversity

Documentation &
research
Standing on the shoulders of giants:
● Drawing on learning from existing intentional communities and
cooperatives (e.g. ZEGG, Findhorn, Tamera, Sunday Assembly,
community founders etc.) for documentation procedures.
● Building on previous academic research documenting and
evaluating intentional communities (Sanguinetti, 2012; Mulder,
2006; Skinner, 1968)
Recording processes of initial community formation:
● Recruitment
● Creation of shared vision and values, guidelines, decision-making
process, work-share procedures
Documenting community characteristics:
● Social: e.g. Community interactions, shared meals, workshops,
activities
● Human: e.g. Methods for individual growth, well-being, learning
● Built/Natural: e.g. Housing, intentional architecture, financial
self-sustainability, permaculture

Distilling
learning,
replicating &
training
Social groups that our preliminary findings have identified
could most benefit from cultivating this model:
● University students: Partnering with UCAS,
universities and schools to explore alternatives in the
the student accommodation experience.
● Single parent families: partnering with women’s
charities to explore alternatives for single parents to
raise their families.
● Older adults: Addressing the looming crisis of an
ageing and socially isolated population.

Community facets
Documentation
& research
Activity hub,
seminars &
event space
Facets which aim to benefit the wider community
Personal
development
Community
incubation
Rural twin
project
Sustainability
&
Food systems
Bed &
Breakfast
Partnership
formation

The Bruce Stone: The community space was planned
to be on a 132ft oil barge comprising of 16 bedrooms
(11 with ensuite bathroom facilities) 4living and
working areas, a large community / event space and
three external decks (one with all weather heated
enclosure) with capacity for food production.
Community housing

Mooring history
There are few available spaces along the Thames for a
vessel of this size and finding a mooring has been a
challenge.
Royal Dock
The initial spot for the mooring was Royal Docks, but due to
the recently announced expansion of City Airport, this
option is no longer viable.
St Katherines Dock
We have been in talks with St Katherine’s Dock near Tower
Bridge. The Dock were enthusiastic about the community
concept open to mooring us. however, challenges arose
around the extensive exterior work and other associated
costs required to bring the barge up to the aesthetic
standard required by the dock management.

As a community we are now looking into other
housing models that have the necessary facilities
to serve our needs and ambitions.
The community is currently engaged in looking at
alternative housing models as well as exploring
the options available to us for future funding and
partnerships with Local Authorities, NGO’s and
Private enterprise and Individuals.
Moving forward

Timeline
• November 2014 Community research, ongoing
• March 2015 Conception
• June 2015 Inception – founding members
July 2015 New members join
August 2015 The Bruce Stone secured
September 2015 First formal recruitment process and
Selection weekend.
October 2015 New members join
• November 2015 First visioning retreat
• December 2015 Establishing values, standards,
processes
• March 2016 Moorings
• August 2016 Second formal recruitment process and
Selection weekend.
• September 2016 New members join
October 2016 Funding proposal for alternative housing