Community Agreements
These agreements cover more of the practical side of living together. For us, these are more tangible and may include topics that feel edgy as we get into the details of co-creating a life together (or even the idea of it). Without these kind of agreements, and the conversations that happen around them before and during our communal living experience, things could become unclear and bring unnecessary tensions and resentments. As with the relational agreements, it’s helpful to hold that we’re imperfectly perfect and acknowledge that things will arise that have not yet been agreed to and, thus, we approach them as an emergent process that is up for review on a regular basis (tbc).
We have only just made a small start on these so have flagged up the many other things we are aware of that we’ll need to have discussions and agreement around as time goes by. Please check out our Collective Decision Making section for how decisions will be made around these.
Please note some of these agreements could be deal-breakers for you:
- As a community we take time to deeply listen to each other on a regular basis by having check-ins at the beginning of meetings and sharing gratitude.
- We value and make time to hang out together in fun and connective ways to continue nurturing our relationships and we recognise that there are times when people need to spend more time alone.
- We have clarity around the focus of a meeting before it starts and we have an agenda that supports this to happen.
- We invest time in creating and maintaining beauty in our communal spaces
- For those who are living at the property we have a community day each week, and we prioritise attending this, or make it up on other days if needed. On this day we may have meetings and/or work on shared and individual projects that are agreed to be for the good of the community.
- Full and trial members pay a per person monthly contribution to the community to pay for communal expenses such as food, renovations, tools, trainings etc.
- Full and trial members keep up with their monthly mortgage contributions, or find someone to cover their payments if needed.
Areas we probably need to create agreements around:
- Communal parenting of children
- Intimate relationships
- Running courses on site
- Running businesses from the land/buildings, including confidential calls (but not including just working on a computer)
- Pets
- Noise near people’s spaces
- Sensitivity to neighbours in and around the community
- Nakedness
- Roles
- Being away from site and subletting to other people
- Conflict transformation
- Inclusion and exclusion process
- Attending meetings
- How meetings are run
- Kinds of meetings
- Accountability process around values and relational agreements
- Guests
- Violence
- Smoking
- Shared resources
- Death & dying (killing policy…)
- World view
- Mental illness
- Physical disability
- Privacy
- Positive language
- Fairness and equality
- Covid regulations
Other suggestions that may also be important to create community agreements around:
- Sexuality
- Transportation
- Emergency fund or kitty
- Money/Income
- Transparency
- Spirituality
- Dietary limits and concerns
- Inclusive humour
- Insurance
- Resilience (interaction with local neighbourhood)
- Authenticity & consideration
- Appreciating different perspectives, honouring people’s decisions
- Inflow (provenance,) and outflow (waste and toxicity.)