Braziers Park in UK – A Group Work Experiment

An invitation from the Education Team at Braziers Park Community enticed Robin to the experimental group work and social research community in South Oxfordshire for four days. This completed her stay in UK.

Members were interested to participate in a ‘Dynamic Decision Making’ one day workshop and Robin also encouraged some community cross pollination by giving a presentation about ‘Crystal Waters Permaculture Village’ on her last evening there.

The community is housed in a small Gothic style castle, quite an extraordinary building that was originally a farm house built in 1688 and extended with the Gothic turret type wings in 1799.

The community has a large Permaculture garden and hosts many volunteers, workshops, seminars and four festivals a year including WOOD which Robin was luck enough to participate in on her first day there.

Each day the community has a half hour morning circle where people share anything they feel to in a round then tasks and support jobs for the day are allocated. One evening a week they have a ‘Sensory Meeting’ where many things are discussed but no decisions are made and on another evening that have a ‘Executive Meeting’ where decisions are made. There are 12 places for permanent residents, lots of opportunity for one to three months volunteering and also for being part of the wider support non-residential community that looks after the building, estate and philosophy.

Here’s a link to their website

About Robin Clayfield

Robin Clayfield is an international teacher, facilitator and author who is passionate about healthy groups, organisations and communities, their structures and governance and most importantly, their facilitation and group dynamics. She presents and consults all around the world to support global health, well-being and whole systems change through using Permaculture, Social Permaculture and ‘Dynamic Groups’ methodology. Robin is a Permaculture Pioneer and Elder who has lived at Crystal Waters Permaculture Eco-Village in SE Queensland, Australia since 1988. Her books and resources include ‘You Can Have Your Permaculture and Eat It Too’, ‘The New Permaculture Principles Card Game’, ‘The Creative Community Governance and Decision Making Resource Kit’ and the ‘Creative Process Wild Cards’. She is also the co-auther (with Skye in 1995) of ‘The Manual for Teaching Permaculture Creatively’ plus several resources and card games for teachers and facilitators.

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