It’s been a big weekend for ‘Communing with the Campbells’. There’s been a lot of ‘communing’! On Saturday we visited the cohousing community of Marmalade Lane in Cambridge. Marmalade Lane is a multi-generational community - its residents come from all ages and walks of life and include families with young children, retired couples and young professionals. It’s a sustainable neighbourhood of 42 award-winning homes with extensive community facilities and a sociable shared garden and car-free lane. I had reached out to Marmalade Lane to see whether we could visit the community as part of our research. In order to understand whether that was feasible the community invited us to stay so that they could get a feel for us and us them.
Within moments of us arriving (5pm Saturday night) the kids had disappeared, enveloped into the welcoming throng of the other kids. That and the excitement of monkey bars, an amazing trampoline and an extraordinarily well equipped playroom they were gone. Various different residents came and spoke to Katie and I about our plans and of course we had as many questions for them as they had for us. The Pizza was exceptional, prepared by a team of resident volunteers and cooked in an awesome pizza oven the like of which I’ve not seen outside of restaurants. Even though we retired relatively early to watch Emma Radakanu win the US open it was a fascinating first insight into communal living.
We left Marmalade Lane on Sunday morning after a brief tour of one of the residents houses to get Indie to her best pals birthday. The question was had we done enough to convince them that our intentions are honourable and deserving of accommodation and hospitality on a longer term basis?
Having left Cambridge we headed home. We had tickets to hang out with Russell Brand in a field next to the river for his event called ‘Community’. It was a fascinating few hours of chanting, meditation, comedy and discussions about ‘a better way’. Russell is a big believer in Community & connection being an effective route out of the current crises we find ourselves in. I think it’s fair to say that my pal Russell and I are very aligned on that. I’m really hoping g that I’m going to be able to sit down with Russell to pick his rather extraordinary brain before we embark on our mission.
So back to that mission. This morning we received an email from Marmalade Lane informing us that we’d been accepted for an extended stay. So the first cohousing community we are going to be ‘Communing’ with will be Marmalade Lane from the 6th October. It’s a great relief and also really exciting to have our first community confirmed. Like I said, it’s been a big weekend 👍
marmaladelane....
#communingwiththecampbells
#community
#cohousing
#alternativeliving
#breakthrough
#communal
#russellbrand
7 окт 2024
