Community
Mo Shafieeha and
Community
Over the subsequent years, Feÿtopia evolved into a community of people who live at the castle in the ‘off season’, roughly November-April, for anywhere from a few days to the whole season. Community members are encouraged to co-create the experience of living at the castle: meals, parties, and improvements to the grounds can be planned by anyone.
Gillian Morris • Case Study: Feÿtopia
The dilemma of chasing spectacle versus achieving lasting impact by starting small and cultivating deep, sustainable engagement.
TRANSCRIPT
It's interesting to think about if you're playing the game of spectacle, there's only sort of one path forward, which is more or bigger. Yeah. And mischief trapped ourselves in that own game. Like we've, we built the game, we designed a game. We want it because we're a player of one. And then we essentially are trapped by the game unless we
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“I think you can only really get staying power if you focus on a relationship with a small group for as long as you can possibly hold on and then a little bit more, and then maybe, maybe you have a chance of something with like really significant staying power.”
The Breakfast — Meet new people over breakfast
thebreakfast.app
Kin-building is, at its heart, about finding ease and choosing to rest in others. When you have more people in your life, there is less on your individual shoulders to do and achieve. I do wish I had known sooner that it was about people just as much as it was about accomplishments.
Zooming out: great communities, in the traditional sense, required limited options so people would remain dependent: no specialists or external trade (to ensure we all collectively worked together), and no diversity or weird ideas (to ensure a homogenous group with a focus on tradition). We had far worse medical treatment, underwent excruciating manual labor, and didn’t necessarily share the same interests with others, but because we were dependent on each other, the bonds were strong. Now the options are virtually limitless, and we’re seeing our social bonds decay as a result.
“Community offers the promise of belonging and calls for us to acknowledge our interdependence. To belong is to act as an investor, owner, and creator of this place. To be welcome, even if we are strangers. As if we came to the right place and are affirmed for that choice.”
“People will be accountable and committed to what they have a hand in
It seems to me that Don believed deep down that our worlds were worth decorating, and that doing so was a joyful act. “The people who use lawn ornaments are typically friendly because they’re decorating the outside of their house for someone else,” he once told an interviewer.