Skills for Community Living

The 2022 UK Communities Conference brought together people from many UK intentional communities to celebrate communal living and discuss its benefits and challenges. The conference gave an overview of the UK communities scene, creating a space for communitarians, academics, and laypeople to seek insights into their way of life and the chance to change it.

This year, we move from the why to the how, and ask: what skills are needed to do community well? Communal living requires and fosters many skills—personal, relational, and organisational, alongside practical and land skills. These are often idiosyncratic, varying between people and communities. How do we share such skills? How are they retained in a community and transmitted over time? What can help us to do this better?