Kin Hill, Cumbria, UK
SAWA joins a rural homestead in exploring their relation to land and community
Located on an 80-acre farm just north of Hadrian’s wall, Kin Hill is a small community inhabited by a bunch of nature-loving folk looking to re-think their relationship to the land and each other. Included in this mix of people is Lulu Guinness, the current land-owner who’s vision of transforming and gifting the land she has lived amongst to the stewardship of the community who live on it is certainly not usual. Her vision hopes that by moving caretaking responsibilities from one person to many we may return to caring for the ecosystem as a whole and not the desires of just one part of this beautiful web.
During Ed’s time at the Hill he acted as the Veg Garden Lead, setting up the community veg patch with the help of the community and in particular Ros Reason. This included a geo-dome which produced bounty-loads of tomatoes, and a courgette patch with enough courgettes for practically a whole village!
SAWA + Ed was also involved in participating in the group process involved as a community forms and deepens into the intention of a place; dreaming, meeting, walking the land as well as doing what needs to be done and organising processes to achieve that. This took the the form of:
* Weekly collaborative ‘Get Stuff Done’ sessions intended for maintaining the land and growing food.
* Monthly ‘Hiponey’ sessions Hippy + Money = Hiponey – tackling money issues small and often helps avoid conundrums further down the line.
* Quarterly ‘Big Things’ meeting a place to visioning into the next 3 months. All of these sessions were immensely rewarding – it’s amazing what people can do when they link and combine to focus on one task.
One of the key SAWA contributions was the sharing of Ed’s ethos and attitude to building – why should the knowledge of construction once done by so many hands be placed on the shoulders of only a few key workers as we tackle and maintain our buildings today? Builders and buildings are an essential part of climate adaption so can we lighten the load by doing some of this collectively. This idea and SAWA principle manifested in him leading a workshop to construct ‘the Hide’ – a building made from reclaimed materials intended in part for teaching skills required in building. The Hide is also now in the process of becoming a place for the community to gather and for off-gridders to have a space to go out of their own homes to read and work.
The ethos of teaching building skills was continued this year after Ed left site with a hands-on lime rendering course led by natural builder Jue Sota and the results are pretty awesome if you ask me!
