News

Progress Timeline

9 May 2024

This meeting was a major, major milestone for the project. We officially ratified the name "The Connection Project", as well as the project's brand new vision booklet, and a comprehensive set of procedures documents. This was the end result of a ton of work, and so we took the opportunity to celebrate the complementary way that our small but devoted core group worked so well together.

17 August 2023

We spent a lot of time during 2023 exploring various overseas AR organisations. Not only was this a chance to clock some seat time practicing the craft, it was also an opportunity to meet with movers and shakers, to see what we can learn from others' attempts to grow this movement. We successfully introduced an hour of AR practice into our weekly think tank meetings. We also started a reasonably major project to flesh out our new project's policies and procedures. Affectionately known as the PPPs. Little did we know this would take the better part of a year of weekly meetings to complete :)

15 March 2023

It has been a busy summer. We managed to run a total of 12 three day Collab Skills Courses in the north and south islands, primarily working with existing community projects and groups. Covid seems to have gifted humanity something of a back to the land 2.0 movement. The call to come together to support each other and organise for change is compelling just now. Along the way we had so many fertile conversations with people working in this space, and look forward to many more.

But, today we formally ratified a proposal to split the project into two organizations. One will carry on the torch for the pursuit of connection inspired housing cooperatives, and the other, to hold a container that offers mutual support for relational capacity building. At this stage we don't have a clear idea what this latter project will look like or what it will be called, but, it will for sure have something to do with AR, and something to do with Polyvagal Theory. A nervous system informed version of Authentic Relating? Watch this space.

1 September 2022

So... life beyond the old hotel that inspired the project. As we had time to reflect, we realized that the big house is a metaphor that speaks to engaged collaboration, to us as a species turning toward each other, rather than away, as a response to the challenges that lie ahead. Consequently, we decided to double down our efforts on our Collab Skills Course offerings, with the goal of creating a bigger audience for this kind of project. We would like to thank everyone who has supported the project this year.

20 April 2022

An opportunity came up at short notice to buy a lovely 120 year old hotel with 16 bedrooms and a ballroom in Whangerei. After a less than ideal length of preparation time, we managed to throw together some agreements, a group of about 16 interested people, and almost enough money to buy the hotel. It was not quite enough! But it was one heck of a wild ride, that gave us a taste for more.

20 December 2021

A group of six got together to explore other ways to get people back on the land, back into community. We were faced with the choice of brand new ecovillage developments (involving millions of dollars, lots of resource use, and years of development), or tiny house villages (maybe quicker if we were willing to tolerate unresolved regulatory complications). We sensed that there was another way, one that empowered us to take a more active part in the process of project development, and that actually focused on the essence of community. The penny finally dropped while watching this group of ordinary British folk go about setting up a housing coop from a retrofitted larger existing house.