Page 2 - Bulletin #67 - November 2020

Message from the 2022 Conference coordinating group

Our group has been pursuing various ways of preparing for our conference. With a time
line of now less than two years, we feel that we need to have some concrete proposals
(dates, venue, registration address and approximate costs) in place within the next few
months, because many of our members will be scheduling their conference plans for the
summer of 2022 a year before.

Our present idea is to arrange a partly or wholly virtual conference (hybrid), with clear
cancellation arrangements in case corona is still with us. This makes it easier for us to
consider a place with facilities for fewer actual participants, but it is vital that we put in
place a solid and well functioning streaming facility to enable people to participate
virtually from around the world. Because of the savings in expenses incurred by travel
and accommodation, this might enable more members than usual to participate.

The Danish Ecovillage network had their annual meeting at Munksøgaard on Saturday
Oct 3th with a focus on research in ecovillage-living. A program at Copenhagen University
called COMPASS – (Collective Movements and Pathways to Sustainable Societies) have
already generated interesting research conclusions, that was presented during the
meeting – and have inspired and encouraged to go for more much more research in eco-
villages. Due to Covid19 the arrangement was changed into a virtual gathering with less
than 50 attending physically and quite a few by way of Zoom. Material with conclusions,
ideas, hope and enthusiasm for further work has already been distributed to the LØS- 2
network in Denmark. This way of arranging conferences (a combination of some
attending physically and others online) seems to work for the future.

It would be possible for Jan Martin Bang to travel to Denmark during the winter months
to meet with Ole Uggerby and others in Denmark, and to see the proposed possible
venues. This would be dependent upon travel funding being made available from the
ICSA budget.

Ole Uggerby sent a request to Ross Jackson of the Gaia Trust to find out if we can
cooperate and coordinate with them on the 2022 conference. Ross answered that he
suggested the Danish Ecovillage Network also be a partner to the conference, and that he
would very much like the Gaia Trust to participate.

Given that the current suggestion is that the theme of the conference be “From cohousing
to ecovillage - how community living can contribute to finding solutions to climate
disruption and other current challenges” a cooperation between these three groups
would be perfect. Of course it would be good to have the Global Ecovillage Network also
as a partner.

We are exploring the possibility of conducting a membership survey in the spring of 2021
to see how many members would be willing to attend the 2022 conference virtually and