We came together around a farm.
Collective Spaces began with people asking what shared ownership could make possible. We bought land together in southern Virginia and began the slower work of becoming responsible to it, to one another, and to the community around us.
We are a member-owned working farm whose people live in different places, bring different resources, and participate in different ways. Some help make the land financially possible. Some bring time, skill, governance, or physical work. Some hope to live closer to the land. We need a healthier overlap among all three.
What we build matters, but so do the reasons for building it, the people affected, and the relationship each project creates with the farm and the wider community.
Collective Spaces is about asking how and why:
- How do we build an equitable structure in a larger society that is deeply inequitable?
- How do we enact our values of diversity and inclusiveness?
- How do we cultivate collective decision making?
- How do we design systems that are sustainable?
More than a collection of buildings in a particular place or even a group of people, a community is greater than the sum of its parts.
The learning, growth, and healing that happen as we connect with each other and the land is the fiber that holds Collective Spaces together.
Read more about becoming a member of Collective Spaces Farm here