Creating Community in a Forming Cohousing Group Part 2
By Sterling Newberry
At various times, we at Daybreak Cohousing have felt the strain of so much work to do in developing our future home. We realized early on that we needed to be especially conscious of building in pure social time as a balance to all our work, and to ensure that the extended family relationships grow along with the infrastructure. This is part 2 of ways we are attempting to address this.
A second way we are building community is through informal group invitations. These are spontaneous and individually organized. Recently, I heard about a public invitation from Cascadia Commons, an existing cohousing community nearby, about a folk music duo coming to perform in their common house. I sent out an invitation over our Google group, and several people responded. We ended up being half of the group at the concert. We not only had a fun social time together with good music, but connected with our fellow cohousers as well.
These activities can be an open invitation to a movie, concert, forum or book or poetry reading. The key thing is that they are not about the work part of building our community. People come up with things they like to do and would love to have friends come along with them. While any one of us might have relied on a preexisting group of friends in the past, and might invite them to this informal group invitation, we also are being conscious about including our Daybreak family. This can have the benefit of mingling our emerging Daybreak family with our other friends or genetic family members as well.
These are less regular and more spontaneous than our Sharing Suppers, and attendance depends more on shared interests then the Suppers, which are centered often on our shared interest in food and being with each other around food.
By Sterling Newberry
At various times, we at Daybreak Cohousing have felt the strain of so much work to do in developing our future home. We realized early on that we needed to be especially conscious of building in pure social time as a balance to all our work, and to ensure that the extended family relationships grow along with the infrastructure. This is part 2 of ways we are attempting to address this.
A second way we are building community is through informal group invitations. These are spontaneous and individually organized. Recently, I heard about a public invitation from Cascadia Commons, an existing cohousing community nearby, about a folk music duo coming to perform in their common house. I sent out an invitation over our Google group, and several people responded. We ended up being half of the group at the concert. We not only had a fun social time together with good music, but connected with our fellow cohousers as well.
These activities can be an open invitation to a movie, concert, forum or book or poetry reading. The key thing is that they are not about the work part of building our community. People come up with things they like to do and would love to have friends come along with them. While any one of us might have relied on a preexisting group of friends in the past, and might invite them to this informal group invitation, we also are being conscious about including our Daybreak family. This can have the benefit of mingling our emerging Daybreak family with our other friends or genetic family members as well.
These are less regular and more spontaneous than our Sharing Suppers, and attendance depends more on shared interests then the Suppers, which are centered often on our shared interest in food and being with each other around food.
By Sterling Newberry
