Our Mission

A time of return

So many of us are feeling it now: the deep call back to the land, to each other, and to the wider community of life; the longing to restore those ways of being that support the healthy flourishing of both human culture and natural ecosystems.

This call comes from the deepening recognition of what truly nourishes the earth-rooted spirit in us all, and the rejection of the structures and systems that have for too long crushed that spirit.

The growing interest in traditional crafts, land-skills, low-impact living, natural building, permaculture, small-scale diversified farming, folk arts and animist spirituality are all part of the re-kindling of land-based culture here in the UK.

But what we see emerging today is only the beginning of a movement to reclaim our right and our responsibility to live gently, wisely and beautifully on the living earth.

Our mission is to help nurture this movement, through the creation of a vibrant network of land-based communities all across the country.

One-planet possibilities

We’ve lived on the land in community, and tasted the many joys of a life rich in connection to nature and tribe.

We’ve experienced the sense of meaning and purpose that comes with enacting a direct, creative and holistic response to the multiple crises of our times.

We know that genuinely affordable, healthy and beautiful low-impact homes can easily be built, that low-cost, high-quality, nature-based lifestyles can easily be created, that regenerative ways of growing food are easily applied, and that a host of other one-planet solutions exist which can comfortably meet human needs while respecting ecological limits.

And we believe that everyone who wants to embrace these possibilities should have the opportunity to do so.

Sadly, despite clear demand for land-based community living here in the UK, remarkably few thriving communities exist, and the obstacles to their creation—financial, bureaucratic, and social—remain formidable.

Most would-be pioneers can't find a viable path out of the cultural matrix of industrial civilisation, and many feel their dreams of one-planet living forever out of reach.

The Land-Based Living Collective seeks to change this.

Our mission is to forge a broad pathway back onto the land, and to provide robust support for all those ready to walk that path.

Land-based futures

We’re working to become an enabling organisation dedicated to building a vibrant network of land-based settlements all across these green isles, empowering individuals and groups on the journey back—and also forward—home to the land.

We aim to shape a near-term future in which land-based living is recognised as a legitimate and valuable contribution to our cultural tapestry—where hundreds of thriving communities across the UK demonstrate that humans can live harmoniously together as beneficial participants within natural ecosystems.

This isn’t a utopian retreat from society, but an active reimagining of what sustainable human settlement can look like in the 21st century—a “thrutopian” vision that acknowledges the many challenges we face while charting practical, research-informed pathways through them.

We know that the return to the land won’t appeal to everyone—at least not while the current system still provides a semblance of stability and security.

But a growing number of us here in the UK recognise that low-impact, nature-based, community living represents a direct response to many of the problems facing our world, and many thousands would be ready to embrace it today—if given the chance.

We also believe that millions more would love to see our countryside re-populated by gentle folk working intimately with nature in ways that not only restore ecological flourishing but which nourish the roots of a culture in which humans and living systems can thrive together.

In these ways, we exist to serve all those who hold a vision for bright future in which humans live in harmonious relationship with each other and the wider community of life we are part of.

A renaissance of land-based culture

For 99% of our human existence we lived close to the land, immersed in natural living systems, deeply connected to the enlivening rhythms of the earth.

Our food, shelter, stories, identity, culture—all emerged from intimate relationship with the particular bioregions we inhabited, giving us a pervasive sense of belonging to the land and to the wider web of life, as well as a deeply felt duty of care towards it.

Fast forward to the present and we find that in the UK today 84% of us live in cities, almost entirely cut off from the land-base, while even in the countryside most villages are largely extensions of suburbia—only tenuously connected to the land around them.

Consequently, the open countryside lies mostly empty of people—and, increasingly, of wildlife too—given over to industrial farming, corporate estates, and a conservation paradigm that too often seeks to maintain landscapes in an artificially depleted state—in terms of both human and ecological richness.

Almost all of us are cut off from direct engagement with and participation in the life of the earth, estranged from our evolutionary milieu and severed from the primary source of our sustenance.

It’s time to reverse this direction, which is, we believe, at the root of so many of the crises we face today, and re-root our national culture in the land-base that is, ultimately, our primary source of health, wealth and happiness.

The great turning

For too long now has meaningful access to land been denied to all but the few.

For too long has the narrative of separation, and the socio-political systems it has spawned, divided us—from the living earth, from each other, and from our own authentic possibilities for wellbeing, natural abundance and joy.

For too long has our basic right to subsist been stripped from us, and the means for creating lives of quiet dignity and wholesome sufficiency taken out of our hands.

For too long have the many complex strands connecting us to the rich web of life, community and meaning been systematically broken—only to be replaced by synthetic and often toxic substitutes which we have then been forced to pay for.

But enough is enough.

It’s time now to loose the chains that have for too long bound us to an economic and political system that no longer serves life in any meaningful way.

It’s time to forge a path back home to the living earth and to each other, to re-member the life-nourishing ways of being our indigenous souls still carry like precious seeds ready to be planted in the dark soil.

The Land-Based Living Collective has come together to contribute to this great turning—the deep project of our times.

For we believe that only from within a deeply restored relationship with our own earth-rooted selves, each other, and with the wider web of life can we embody a renewed sense of natural reverence for this miracle of life we are part of and begin to heal the wounds of our ravaged world.

Islands of coherence

We all know that our world is on the brink of all kinds of potential collapse scenarios—ecological, economic, political...

Given the scale and of the multiple crises we face, it may not be possible now to transition peacefully into anything like the kind of ecological civilisation that would ensure a liveable planet for our children's children to inherit from us.

But while it is still even slightly possible, we must try to do what we can to bring about such a transition.

Tinkering around at the edges of business-as-usual isn't, we believe, going to create the change we need.

Minor modifications to the prevailing destructive 

Among all the different ways people are working on to achieve this, we think that the creation of land-based communities can be a powerful 

We believe that land-based communities can serve as beacons of possibility, proving that one-planet living is not only achievable but deeply desirable—and in almost every significant way superior to anything industrial civilisation has to offer.