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| Twin Oaks Entrance Sign |
Sky Blue: How Can We Peacefully, Equitably, and Sustainably Coexist?
Podcast at BlogTalkRadio
Intentional
communities (ICs) address social and economic issues. Since 1987, The
Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) has been a resource and
proponent of intentional communities. Multiple secular models exist:
housing co-operatives, ecovillages, income sharing communes &
cohousing.
Restructuring society based on cooperation,
sustainability, & social justice can be learned as people live while
decreasing resource consumption & waste; foster peaceful
relationships & conflict resolution & participatory democracy,
economic justice, and gender equality.
Individual lifestyle
choices are leveraged with collective action and experiment with a
holistic approach to addressing social issues. Groups explore legal and
financial structures; install renewable energy systems, share resources
& collective governance.
Sky Blue, a member of Twin Oaks
Community, helped start two worker co-operatives & car-sharing
system; visited dozens of communities & coops in the US &
Europe.
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| Llano Office at Twin Oaks Community |
Welcome To Twin Oaks Community
Twin Oaks
is an intentional community in rural central Virginia, made up of around
90 adult members and 15 children. Since the community's beginning in
1967, our way of life has reflected our values of cooperation, sharing,
nonviolence, equality, and ecology. We welcome you to schedule a visit.
Update, late November 2016:
We no longer have immediate openings for membership.
We do though expect to continue to have openings with a waiting list to join.
Learn about our Visitor Program here.
We
do not have a group religion; our beliefs are diverse. We do not have a
central leader; we govern ourselves by a form of democracy with
responsibility shared among various managers, planners, and committees.
We are self-supporting economically, and partly self-sufficient. We are
income-sharing. Each member works 42 hours a week in the community's
business and domestic areas. Each member receives housing, food,
healthcare, and personal spending money from the community.
Our
hammocks and casual furniture business has generated most of our income
in the past. Making tofu as of 2011 has become roughly equal in
importance to hammocks. Indexing books and now seed growing are also
significant sources of income. Still, less than half of our work goes
into these income-producing activities; the balance goes into a variety
of tasks that benefit our quality of life—including milking cows,
gardening, cooking, and childcare. Most people prefer doing a variety of
work, rather than the same job day in, day out.
A number of us
choose to be politically active in issues of peace, ecology,
anti-racism, and feminism. Each summer we are hosts to a Women's
Gathering and a Communities Conference where we welcome both experienced
communitarians, and seekers who are new to community living.
We
give tours of Twin Oaks almost every Saturday afternoon from March
through October, and on most alternating Saturdays from November through
February. Read about the Saturday Tour here.
We offer a
structured three week visit designed to give the visitor some general
education and experience in living at Twin Oaks. Read about the Visitor
Program here
Please do not drop in and expect to get a tour or be
able to stay overnight. Tours and visits must always be pre-arranged,
and to be a guest here, a member must agree to be your host before you
arrive.
Twin Oaks Community
138 Twin Oaks Road # W
Louisa, VA 23093 USA
540-894-5126
888-424-8838 Fax
Email Us
When
communicating with us by email please do not send attachments. Please
send only plain text email, not HTML formatted mail. When you write,
please tell us how/where you heard about Twin Oaks. If it was through
another website, we'd like to know which one, and the URL if possible.
More About Twin Oaks
Twin Oaks is often seeking new members.
After
a long period of having a waiting list, Twin Oaks now has a number of
available membership spaces. Accepted visitors can move into the
community as soon as 30 days after their visitor period ends. [Updated
July 1, 2016]
Since Twin Oaks began in 1967, our lifestyle has
reflected our values of equality and nonviolence. Our goals have been to
sustain and expand a community which values cooperation; which is not
sexist or racist; which treats people in a caring and fair manner; and
which provides for the basic needs of our members. Although our original
inspiration came from B.F. Skinner's novel, Walden Two, it is now just
one of the many influences which have helped shape Twin Oaks' character.
Our desire to be a model social system has broadened to include
human-scale solutions to problems of land use, food production, energy
conservation, and appropriate use of technology.
Size, Location and Facilities
We are approximately 90 adults and 15 children ranging in age from newborn to 80 years.
Our
contiguous land encompasses over 350 acres and extends over a mile up
from the South Anna River. It includes creeks, woods, hilly pastures and
farmland.
Over the years we have built seven large group houses,
a children's building, a community center including our main communal
kitchen, industrial buildings, and various other structures. We have
incorporated solar and/or wood heat in almost all of our buildings.
Work Areas
We
use a trust-based labor system in which all work is valued equally. Its
purpose is to organize work and share it equitably, giving each member
as much flexibility and choice as possible. Work is not seen as just a
means to an end; we try to make it an enjoyable part of our lives.
Most
people prefer doing a variety of work, rather than the same job day in,
day out. We work about 45.5 hours a week, including domestic chores
often not valued as "real work" in the mainstream culture. Over half of
the work we do involves non-income activities ranging from caring for
our children to milking cows to networking. We particularly seek to open
work areas to women and men that are not easily accessible to them
outside of community because of lingering prejudices about what "women's
work" or "men's work" should be.
Twin Oaks supports itself
primarily through the manufacture of handcrafted hammocks and other
casual furniture items and a tofu and soy foods business. We also have a
book-indexing service. Our direction is to develop other industries
which will diversify our economic base, produce more basic goods and
services, and provide satisfying work to the people who live here.
Decision-Making
Our
style of government is adapted from the novel Walden Two. We have three
planners who serve 18-month staggered terms; they carry out executive
functions and help focus the community's attention on issues and the
long-range effects. Candidates for planner may be vetoed by 20% of the
full membership; planner decisions can be overruled by a simple majority
of the full membership.
Members normally make their will felt
through personal conversations, opinion papers, and polls. We hold
weekly community meetings at which the community planners receive input
prior to making decisions. There are dozens of managerships covering
large and small areas-anyone who wants to become a manager can.
Sometimes several managers or a crew share responsibilities.
Interpersonal Relations
We
don't always get along with each other perfectly, but we usually relate
to each other with gentleness and tolerance. We feel we have been
successful in creating a healthy environment which respects individual
preferences while reinforcing group values of nonviolence, equality, and
cooperation.
We don't expect people to always be sociable.
Although we are a community, we are aware of the necessity for solitude
and intimacy. Members have private rooms, and we also have a retreat
cabin, a sweat hut and many living rooms available for individual use.
Recreation
We
provide our own entertainment in the form of homemade music, readings,
coffeehouses, and occasional plays. We value the ways in which we create
a distinct culture. Our holidays are social high points of the year; we
celebrate each change of season and the anniversary of the community's
founding.
Twin Oakers often go to Charlottesville, Richmond,
Washington, and other nearby cities for cultural events, political
involvement, or to visit friends. Sometimes there's a small group trip
west to the Blue Ridge Mountains or east to an Atlantic Ocean beach. At
home, our darkroom and wood shops are available for personal use. We
have quite a collection of books and recorded music, and are connected
to the world at large via radio, newspapers and magazines. We do not
have television because we feel that would be too big a pipeline for
just those values and products we are trying to avoid, but we do show
videos and 16mm films.
Since 1983, we have hosted an annual
Women's Gathering, combining music and celebration, education and
support for the gatherers, who come from across eastern North America.
These events serve as a way for members to connect with the women's
movement-and are great fun.
We also host an annual Communities
Conference, which draws a wide variety of experienced communitarians and
interested seekers who are new to community living. The conference is a
mix of workshops, networking, recruiting and socializing. Anyone
interested in attending our conferences can write directly to that
conference, care of Twin Oaks, and we will put you on the mailing list
to receive a registration flyer.
Children
Children are
cared for by their parents. Parents often make voluntary arrangements
with other parents or non-parents to mind their children some of the
time.
Over the years, a number of schooling options have been used including homeschooling, public school, and Montessori.
Unfortunately,
we do not always have child/family housing space available. If you are
part of a family with children under age 18, please contact our Child
Board for more up-to-date information.
Membership
We have
open spaces for membership! Would you like to join us? Potential members
must visit for three weeks before being considered for provisional
membership. After the end of the 3 weeks, you must spend a minimum of
one month away from Twin Oaks while the community decides whether to
accept you. This is to give you time to contemplate your decision to
live here, and also to give you time to get your affairs in order and
pack. If Twin Oaks decides to accept you, you can move in after that one
month away, or you can choose to wait up to 6 months after the end of
your visitor period to move in. If you have to wait longer than 6 months
before you can move in, you can extend your "window of acceptance" for
an additional 3 months (making a total of 9 months) if you visit for 7
consecutive days and work up to the labor quota any time during the
second trimester. Once you move in, there is a six-month provisional
membership period, which is a time to decide whether you fit Twin Oaks
and Twin Oaks fits you. During this time provisional members enjoy most
of the rights and responsibilities of full members. (Exceptions to this
are that they cannot vote or participate in the vetoing of planner's
decisions, and they must incur the costs of any pre-existing medical
conditions.) After new members have been accepted by the community for
full membership they are asked to sign an agreement with us. The
membership agreement covers financial arrangements worked out with the
community and the community bylaws. Each member, in return, is
guaranteed an equal share of all the benefits the community can provide.
There
is no membership fee--we want to encourage people of diverse economic
and racial backgrounds to live here. Resources may be held outside the
community but one cannot benefit from their use while a member. Clothing
and personal effects remain your own, unless you choose to share them.
We ordinarily distinguish personal from shared items by keeping them in
our rooms. We do not have private vehicles. For more information about
this, see our Property Code
Visiting
We are still
maintaining an active visitor program. People who are interested in
joining Twin Oaks must first participate in our three-week visitor
program (though you don't have to be interested in membership in order
to participate in the program.) It is best to make your plans to visit
several months in advance. Well before you plan to stay here, read our
3-Week Visitor Program page, which will include the year's visitor
schedule. You will be asked to write a letter of introduction including
some personal history.
Visitors take part in our work, and attend
meetings which help explain aspects of Twin Oaks. We try to give as
good an idea as possible of what membership is like here. There is a $50
visitor fee, which we will waive if you cannot afford it.
We invite you to join our mailing list.
Twin Oaks
138-W Twin Oaks Road
Louisa, Virginia 23093
(540) 894-5126
(888) 424-8838 Fax
See founder Kat Kinkade's book, Is It Utopia Yet? which describes the first 25 years of Twin Oaks.
Why Income-Sharing?
It is a more economically just way to live in relationship with each other.
It
avoids a luxury economy and many of the pitfalls/tragedies of the class
system and of economic privilege. (although often not all of them, as
income-sharing is complex and as subject to the pressures of the
mainstream as anything that is outside of the dominant paradigm)
It
frees up energy and resources in the group to pursue other activities,
especially ones more closely tied to the values mission of the group.
Since the group is collectively taking responsibility for covering the
basics of life like rent, food, etc. this is much more efficient than
each person in the group spending their life energy to provide those
things for themselves. Therefore there is extra time, money, etc
leftover for people in the group to spend on other activities that are
important to them. For example, Twin Oaks sets aside a certain amount of
money and labour hours each year devoted to members to do political
activism—in this way, doing activism work counts as part of our weekly
work quota. We've also sent people to seed-saving workshops, and given
hours for a member to write a book about growing food.
By
collectivizing their resources, the group can have access to more
resouces than each individual could alone. For example, at Twin Oaks
members have access to an outdoor sauna beside a pond, a fully- equipped
woodworking workshop, free yoga classes in our home, etc. It is highly
unlikely that any one of us would have these in our lives otherwise, but
we do here because the group has had the resources and chosen to
provide them for ourselves.
People have a higher level of
interdependence and engagement in each others' lives—being financially
connected results in connections of other types as well. For many
people, this vastly improves their quality of life. Of course it brings
up challenges as well, but again for many people this is well worth the
trade-off, and to the extent that those challenges can be resolved with
some level of skill, that can lead to a deepening of relationship and of
the strength of the group structure.
Sharing income acts as a
general purpose insurance policy. All insurance schemes are simply
arrangements for pooling risk so that the individual members of the pool
do not have to keep as large a reserve of cash on hand. Income sharing
allows members to insulate themselves from financial risk (loss of
health, loss of job, loss of property) with a much smaller per capita
cash reserve than an independent person.
Sharing income frees up
individuals to do less income-generating work than they would need to do
if they were living independently as long as the group as a whole is
doing enough income generating work. This is one way that utility
maximization comes in by allowing more specialization (social
efficiency) and personal flexibility. Examples: One member is a talented
programmer (easily monetized skill set) but terrible cook another is a
talented cook and handy person (less easily monetized skill set). The
programmer can spend more time programming without worrying about
keeping fed and keeping their domestic machinery functioning, the cook
and handy person can spend time cooking and fixing things around the
house without worrying about earning money. As far as personal
flexibility goes, if your finances are not directly and solely dependent
upon you earning money you can more easily take vacations or take time
off when you need it as long as the group will carry you (and presumably
as long as you are willing to do the same for others later).
Also,
sometimes we broaden the definition—it's not just about income-
sharing, but resource-sharing in general. We collectively own our
vehicles, our houses, and over 500 acres of land—there are benefits to
these that go beyond just having one bank account for many people.
Independence is very appealing but it comes with a high price tag.
