I was away from July through September. During that time, Brad penned a five-part series revolving around work, land use, culture, institutions and stories. I learned first-hand what a delight it is to receive these writings, but I also struggled to give them the time they deserved. I’d quickly read through each one as it arrived, enjoying the loose associations and insights, assuring myself that I’d be back for a more careful, intentional study. And each time, I’d find that second look pushed further down the line as more pressing concerns manifested. Tetris, level 15, meet modern life.

I’ll say now that the series is indeed worth revisiting. I’m carving out some time and brain space to work with what Brad put together, and this is the first of a handful of responses. Here’s some feedback on essay one, Holding the Center: Building an Institute for Art and Ecology (and other land-based projects).

The Essential Land-Based Project: Why Home Matters Matter

“And this may be the most important element to understand — that what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” -adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy, p. 63

I want to nudge the focus of Brad’s land-based project template askew, even if just by a hair. If we’re serious about shifting our culture toward ecological ways of being in the world (the byline of the series), I want to make sure we’re not glossing over what might play the crucial role in that trajectory.

But first, it’s been a while, so some background from Holding the Center: Building an Institute for Art and Ecology should be helpful.

“Outdoor music festivals, folk schools, nature centers, eco-villages, community gardens, retreat centers, camps, and farmer training programs.” Those examples are emblematic of land-based projects, “projects that take place on the land, that are integrated into the surrounding ecological and social environment, that are run by communities, smallholdings, farms, organizations, or businesses, and that often encompass more than a single building or service.”

By Brad’s admission, this working definition benefits from flexibility so in one sense my upcoming quibble is just one of semantics — it’s arbitrary. On the other hand, I’m only writing this because it matters.

So, back one step — why do land-based projects matter?

Brad’s words:

“…They hold the values of a community, but in a setting more immersive and dynamic than institutional “concrete block” community centers, and they might expand their notion of community to include the non-human members of a place.”

They also “perform a host of key functions that we can’t live well without. To name a few: ecological education, creating safe space for gatherings of all kinds, creating abundant opportunities for people to connect to the natural world, often in life-altering ways.”

Here’s my squabble. The home is the most powerful venue for this transformative work, the spot where those crucial and rooted functions happen most naturally. That, and on the land beneath it, your house’s home. I don’t think work in the home is excluded from the Holding the Center vision, per se, but it got lost a bit amongst the other models. It’s a bummer. The education, relationships, development and systems that flow out of households, amongst family and friends, and in work that isn’t tied to a paycheck or organizational ethos, but simply flows from values held without formal organizing frameworks have to be given weight and uplifted.

Granted, it’s not an either-or situation. There should be a reciprocal relationship between homes, meaning what happens in and around them, and all of those more community-, work- and network-facilitated projects. The crux is that you can’t have those latter projects functioning as best as they can without a bevy of rightly organized, home-scale setups scaffolding them.

Households don’t need “outdoor music festivals, folk schools, nature centers, eco-villages, community gardens, retreat centers, camps, and farmer training programs” to flourish. They don’t require those partnerships to convey ecological education, offer safe space, and deepen connection to the natural world. They likely benefit deeply from those, but don’t need them.

On the flip side, those venues will only be as resilient as the supporting members they’re comprised of and maintained by, and members’ resiliency is tied to their “first places” first. Those spots are where the bulk of the work needs to happen and where the rest of the shifting settles well from, if it is to settle well.

In fairness, that’s quite the jump.

I don’t mean to paint a skewed picture of a perfect home where all goodness flows from. That’s an offense to honest assessment. Plenty are not harbors of safety, comfort or connection. Living in a spot doesn’t meaningfully equate to grasping a real tie to the land or living, yet non-human surroundings. Not much needed work might happen where you spend most of your time. You might not even get much sleep there. My introduction to this essay should clue you in — in my own home, there are things that I value, yet for whatever reason, they aren’t receiving the time they deserve. There’s dislocation between optimal functioning here and reality. There are 10,000 different reasons your home might be similar, which should be sobering, but it needn’t be depressing. It just means there’s work to do. And where there’s work to do, there’s purpose and direction. And where there’s purpose and direction, there’s hope and vision. Don’t take those lightly.

Holding the Center wasn’t just about land-based projects. It also briefly assesses the non-profit sector. The essay serves as a primer on the positive and shadow side of the world of organized altruism. Aware of limitations, Brad also offers resources for a deeper non-profit dive in this list of books: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Decolonizing Wealth and Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World. Reviewing the titles, a related sociological stance, post-development theory, comes to mind.

(Pro-tip: post-development theory finds kinship amongst conversations on how narratives are constructed, passed along and made to disappear. It’s also brought up in opposition to neoliberalism. Both of these, the mechanics of narrative and neoliberalism, have roles elsewhere in Brad’s essays.)

Here’s a working description — post-development theory understands international development projects to operate as trojan horses, carrying Western, modernist narratives, values and metrics, whether unwittingly or not. While development work at its best supports livelihoods and living conditions, those improvements are too often short-lived and concentrated. At the same time, the interventions overwhelmingly erode cultural and metaphysical foundations uniquely formed over time and in place. This risks leaving populations targeted for development dependent rather than sovereign, regardless of the intentions of those in the assisting role.

These views are espoused by folks like Ivan Illich and Gustavo Esteva, whose purview I’ve glanced across yet still have a minimal understanding of and familiarity with. I’ve noticed, though, that a lot of folks whose lives inspire me have been inspired by post-development thought. (When I say “whose lives inspire me”, I’m referring to how, as best as I can tell, they endeavor to live at home in ways that align with their words and more public-facing vocations.) Post-development thought says that if you want to improve conditions overseas, consider not going there to fix what you think is broken but work to responsibly live where you’re already at — amongst a culture, traditions and landscape that should be more legible to you. If you do that, ironically, you’ll likely ease some of the burdens on “others”.

Again, stop trying to do the good there and focus on where you are. The place where you have a better grasp of cultural nuances, historical trends, geologic, weather, and ecological patterns, and the way things simply work. Where you’re at is the most sensible place to get a handle on what is truly needed. If you show up here, here is less inclined to take from there, so there is freed up a bit more to do what’s needed there.

Returning to land-based projects with this thinking in mind — what’s the most effective way of creating rooted and supportive patterns and gatherings? Living them out in our own lives. The most natural place to do that is from where we live. By arranging that well and intentionally, we’re freed up for other forms and venues of needed work, whether it’s through a career or trade, a network of sorts, or any more formal, structured organization.

You might be wondering what this sort of thinking might look like in your life. Good. I wonder about that a lot, too. For my own life, not others. I haven’t the foggiest of what’s appropriate in your circumstances.

Here’s what you can do for some directed reflection. In Holding the Center, Brad left a fantastic template for identifying an overarching ethos and then visioning and articulating practical ways of enacting it. I’d suggest working through that set of questions. And when instructed to consider “your local community, at whatever scale you consider that to be,” ignore that second part. Think, instead, about where you sleep; think about your stove, your tools, your words, your demeanor, your food, your time, the lawn, your energy usage, what you find fulfilling, and all things related to where and how you go about your daily doings on the regular. As you make decisions, return to those thoughts.

Another gift from Brad: this time from the essay So Many Small Things, which concludes the series. Consider the values “of the place-based communities who preceded colonization in your home place — thrift, interdependence, grace, patience, reciprocity, gratitude, belonging, curiosity, reverence, humility, local knowledge, resilience, moderation, and a respect for local cultural traditions and for elders.” Keep your household in mind. Are these reflected there?

Do you know of networks working towards expressions of these same values? That’s what brought me to Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology in the first place. They were asking some of the same questions that I was, furthering understanding and practice in areas I was coming to understand as necessary and beautiful.

Non-profits and land-based projects have to be bolstered by households that value the same work in and amongst their neighborhoods — households tied into ecological and human communities. As adrienne maree brown (quoted at the very top) points out in Emergent Strategy — this is where the patterns gain momentum and scale outward like fractals. It’s not something we watch happen. It’s something we help facilitate. Brad wants to strengthen land-based networks, through collaboration and conversation. This “home-work” helps too. Our networks of land-based projects will never be as relevant or operate as effectively as we want unless we’re first working to embody grounded visions at home.