Our Prototype Retreat Centre
Events & co-living in the south of Spain
Nati & I just signed a short term lease on a lovely villa in the south of Spain. We’ll be living here until the end of February:
For years we’ve dreamed of owning our own retreat centre. We love hosting, and we run workshops for a living, so in one sense it seems obvious that we should have our own place. But I also have some doubts. Maybe we’ll get sick of dealing with the practical logistics of running a venue. Will we get tired of constantly having people around? Can we make it work financially?
At the end of this 3-month experiment we’ll either quit the idea entirely, or we’ll be ready to take the next step: finding the perfect property, putting together an investment plan, and choosing co-founders for a longterm adventure.
In the best case scenario, we’d like to add our place as a stop on the new pilgrimage of countercultural co-living hubs across Europe, places like Liminal Village, Life Itself, Traditional Dream Factory, Commons Hub, and the new kids on the block: Maysou A Noste.
There’s still plenty of details to work out, but we already have a rough plan for some of the events we want to run in the villa from late November to February. I’ll give you a quick overview of what we have in mind, maybe you want to join in?
RichFest!
I'm hosting RichFest!, following in the tradition initiated by JessCamp (hosted by Jess), KaiCamp (hosted by Kai), and XiqWeek (hosted by Xiq).
These events are part of a growing movement of gatherings for friends from Twitter to get together for a few days of face-to-face shenanigans. I've been tracking this movement with interest; see for example my interviews with the organisers from Vibecamp, Catalyzbon, and Kaicamp.
RichFest is a 5-day meetup for people who know each other from Twitter to hang out and enjoy the exquisite pleasures of being surrounded by likeminded weirdos with no particular objectives besides weaving social fabric. It also happens to start on my birthday: Nov 30.
There's a couple tickets left.
Microsolidarity Community Leadership Cohort
Imagine a cohort of 15 experienced organisers. We’ll start with a week together, pooling our collective wisdom to make sense of the challenges we face in our community-building work.
After the retreat we’ll have a 3-month program for small-group peer-support and 1:1 coaching with me. The participants will go back into their communities better able to serve, and I’ll use my position in the hub of the network to produce open-source resources that will be useful to community organisers everywhere.
I'm thinking of this is as the “2.0” iteration for the Microsolidarity handbook, the advanced class that comes after the “intro to Microsolidarity” course (BTW, next course starts Oct 3rd).
The Hum Residential Training
Our training & consulting company The Hum has grown to 10 members over the past couple years. In addition to having our own team retreat at this lovely new venue, we’re also planning to run a residential training.
Our clients are building purpose-driven organisations with decentralised authority, that take great care of people, encouraging a high degree of autonomy without compromising effectiveness. We’re dreaming of a retreat for a small group of leaders to go deep into the paradoxes of collaborative leadership. Being a founder or director is challenging at the best of times, and it gets particularly sticky when you’re trying to embed new ways of working that are more participatory and autonomous. The move from “parent-child” to “adult-adult” leadership comes with a load of spicy questions. So we’re excited to create an intimate context where a select group of leaders can explore these topics together.
Enspiral Community Retreat
We’re planning to host the 6th gathering for the European division of the Enspiral community here. We’ve been meeting twice a year, gradually cultivating a committed community of peers. It’s hard to pin down what exactly this community is “for” but its partly about supporting each other to do more meaningful work. We’re freelancers who coordinate on shared contracts, social entrepreneurs who support each other with peer-coaching and advice in the neverending puzzle of how to build a livelihood that matches your values.
The gathering will be open to community members & their invited guests.
Co-living & Co-working
Outside of these gatherings, we’ll open the house as a temporary co-living and co-working space. We’re imagining a handful of people staying for a week or a couple of weeks at a time. There’ll be no agenda or facilitated program, just time to live together and rub shoulders while working remotely or taking some vacation time in Andalusia.
As you can imagine, there's a lot for us to organise. Apart from RichFest!, everything else mentioned here is provisional and subject to change. If any of these invitations spark your interest, leave a comment, so we can keep you in the loop as plans progress. If this prototype retreat centre goes half as well as I’m hoping it will, next year will be looking for investors to help us settle into a permanent location.
Sending you unbearable cuteness from El Torcal,
Rich & Nati
No problem.
Do you have an approximate itinerary, or will it EMERGE?!
What a brilliant programme of activities!
The one that most appeals to me right now is the last one - co-living and co-working for a week. Finding myself in a later stage of life than you two, I am noticing that many of the conversations I have with same-aged people are about what to do with the precious time left to us. For me that means trying to make sure I am doing what I love doing -- writing and reading, engaging with people (like you) who are curious, inquiring and reflective, and enjoying good food.
That's (only partly perhaps) different from contemplating livelihood and leadership. But I thirst for the sparkling conversations Jean and I always seem to have with you and Nati. It's been too long since the last one.
Love to you both.