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Who are we?
Meet the Project
Development Team
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 Who are we?
The Project Development Team is the core working group and meets once a week.
The wider community is made up of full members, waiting pool members and prospective members. All decisions are passed by the full members at monthly General Meetings.
Go to 'how to join' for further information about membership categories.
Ecoarc are our architects.
Members' bios
Note: this is not a complete list.
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Chris
Chris spent 20 years involved in co-operative housing before moving to Lancaster where he has worked as a construction project manager for community based building projects. He is a councillor on both the City and County Councils. Chris is a partner in Greenbuilt, an Eco-Building Consultancy and Project Management Partnership. He is Chair of the Walter Segal Self Build Trust and an editor of Diggers & Dreamers, a guide to communal living in Britain.
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Kate
I’m currently finishing my MA in Fine Art. I hope this will improve my chances of employment in the art field. I hope to do some art projects at Forge Bank, and maybe I can involve other group members – creating art work is a great way to bring people together. I’m also a keen folk singer and banjo player. I lived in communities of one sort or another for 28 years. I realised that there were a lot of people who would like to live in community, but who found the idea of the 60’s style commune a bit off-putting. Cohousing is a middle way, with a mixture of private and shared space. There’s a supportive community around you for those times when you need it – it is the best of both worlds. I have been a builder, conference organiser, therapist, adult education tutor, equal opportunities officer, outreach worker, city councillor, coffin painter, maker of artist’s books – and that is just the paid work.
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Dawn
Dawn’s partner Pete had been involved with the Cohousing Project for a couple of years before she decided to take the plunge and joined in the summer of 2009.
What attracted Dawn initially was the ideal location of the site on the banks of the River Lune. Since then she has come to know the people who make up the Cohousing Group and feels she has ‘come home’ in every sense of the word.
Dawn practises homeopathy from Ashbourne and Buxton in the Peak District. She envisages setting up a new practice in Halton or in Lancaster once we move in. She will probably rent office space in the Mill building. This helps with the decision to downsize the living accommodation she has been used to in Tideswell where she currently lives.
Until recently Dawn owned and managed The Bakewell Natural Therapy Rooms. She also teaches homeopathy and related subjects such as NLP both at home and abroad. Dawn is interested in walking, cycling, swimming and has a well-established allotment.
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Pete
I manage to live very frugally so I can get away with only working a few hours – I am a nurse and am able to pick and choose my shifts. I am also a Homeopath and occasionally work with the Travelling Homeopaths Collective which provides a drop-in field clinic at large events such as music festivals. I don’t get paid for that but it gets me into the festivals!
I put in lots of hours at my allotment and nowadays cohousing takes up a lot of time. I meditate an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening every day, it’s a Buddhist tradition, called Vipassana. I go to the meditation centre for a ten day retreat about once a year and help as a volunteer worker there as well. That’s where I got my experience of cooking for large numbers and have been quietly collecting recipes for preparing community meals on a large scale.
I heard about cohousing a couple of years ago at a Homeopathic summer camp, sitting by the campfire idly chatting into the night. I said “wouldn’t it be great to live with a bunch of people who were all trying to live car free, and had compost toilets and solar panels on the roof and all ate together vegan food and it was like this summer camp all year round?” One of the other people round the camp fire said “you’ve just described Lancaster Cohousing in a nutshell” and three weeks later I was signed up. Originally we only had an idea but now we have bought some land, assembled a group which makes all decisions by consensus and are putting our plans forward for planning permission. Every idea in the camp fire manifesto is still in the plan except for the compost toilets, so I might just build my own in the woods.
A long time ago I cycled overland to India, which I fell in love with. I was an extra in Sir Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” and shared a cave with a Yogi for a few months.
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Elizabeth
Elizabeth moved with her family to Lancaster last August in order to be able to be more involved in the work of developing the cohousing and building the community. They'd previously lived in Hampshire, she is enjoying the slower pace of life up north.
She likes gardening – a bit of a problem at the moment since she had no garden! – so she is helping out one of the other cohousers who has an allotment and looking forward to growing when we move to Halton. Elizabeth has two children, Fergal and Lily, 7 and 5, they don't go to school and learn naturally through living and being curious with the
assistance of Luke (their Dad), Elizabeth and all the people they come into contact with through cohousing, the local home education community, current neighbours, family etc. They have loved being involved in the development of the cohousing and have shown a keen interest in designing and planning their new home. They have both enjoyed the friendships they have made with children and adults in the group. Fergal is especially
keen to have more boys in the group, but a little less bothered about this since spending time at the new playground in Halton just up the road from our site, where lots of boys can be found stunt biking.
Elizabeth works as a speech and language therapist at a special school on the other side of the bay, where she learns a great deal alongside the pupils who are educated there.
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Luke
Currently a full-time dad and home educator. Previously, 17 years of IT consultancy. Found cohousing because they wanted to live differently and with like-minded people. They considered many types of community living, mainly relying on Diggers and Dreamers for background information. At the time of their search, Lancaster was top of their list since it seemed to have the best chance of happening whilst the kids were still kids. He sees this as a fantastic opportunity for the children to see a different perspective on the world.
His hobbies are running, photography, getting out in the countryside. He’d like to get involved in woodworking and excited about the work possibilities in the Mill building. He’s trying to learn the accordion. He is bringing his IT skills to the community and trying to bring efficiency into our systems. For example, he’s introduced shared documents, shared calendars, etc – and he’s the treasurer.
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Fiona
Currently I’m finishing a PhD in Jewish history (an oral history project) at Strathclyde University so I have lots of contacts in Scotland. I also have a long distance relationship with a Scot, so I might scout for work up there till the houses are built (which means there might be a room available in my house between now and April 2012 for a cohouser with not much luggage).
Previously I worked at the Department of Continuing Education at Lancaster University where I organised a learning programme for older people. Before that I spent ten years working in adult and workplace literacy, training tutors and running networking events and doing research too. In the future I might get adult education research work back at Lancaster University or I might follow up the opportunity to work in and from the Mill building.
How did I get involved? I saw a poster: took some friends to a public meeting on cohousing they weren’t interested, but I was, because of the upcoming empty nest syndrome. My daughter will be leaving home soon. In fact she was very keen for us to join the cohousing community and is disappointed that it won’t be opening before she leaves home. I play English, Irish and European folk music on the melodeon and Klezmer (Eastern European Jewish) music on concertina. I have spent a bit of time in Peruvian Amazonia where I’ve experienced another type of community which uses a money-free economy and lives in a beautiful setting in the forest.
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Anna
I am Fiona’s 18 year old daughter. I have been running the crèche during cohousing meetings and organising my friends to do that too. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the younger kids in the project. I’m off to De Montfort University in Leicester in September to do a one year art foundation course and I am hoping to do the Textile Art degree at De Montfort after that. I’ll be looking for babysitting work in Leicester when I get to Uni so please get in touch through the cohousing project if that’s any use to you! (I recently took an Early Years First Aid qualification). I went to Peruvian Amazonia with my mum when I was three and remember a monkey that weed on my mum’s head and, for some reason, my mum and I both remember a particular yellow caterpillar sitting on a leaf on a forest path.
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Huw
I am Lucy’s partner and Martha’s dad. I am taking a career break in order to be a full time dad. I didn’t know about cohousing before but was attracted by eco-build and enjoyed group holidays. The community aspect will be the biggest difference in my life and seeing Martha growing up there will be great. I enjoy singing and running and have visions of setting up a cohousing choir and a cohousing running group. I am excited by the prospect of an urban community in the countryside.
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Lucy
I work in the education department at a local prison focusing particularly on resettlement. Prior to this I worked for the prison inspectorate and before this I was a sociology teacher. I like to keep active e.g. walking, running, being outdoors. Since Martha arrived on the scene about a year ago my priorities have changed a bit but I still get upset when Liverpool lose at football!! We joined Lancaster cohousing after attending an event at the local cinema and I am particularly attracted to the community aspects of cohousing and bringing up Martha within this environment.
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Martha
I am Huw and Lucy’s one year old daughter. I love to crawl around whilst grown-ups sit and chat. I like books with flaps and my favourite person is myself. I can’t wait to be living in the same street as Polly and hanging out together all the time.
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Jane
I have had a longstanding interest in things ecological since studying for my geography degree in the 1970's. I learnt about Lancaster Cohousing through my friend, Margaret, who has been involved with the group from early on. My partner, Ian, and I were thinking about building an ecohouse ourselves but lacked the skills and the time, and this seemed a good solution: building with others. We lived in Sweden for a while, where some of the elements of Lancaster Cohousing were present in the block of flats we lived in: green energy, recycling, shared laundry room, shared cycle storage, etc., but there was no sense of community; the idea of the common house seems an excellent solution.
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Ian
The eco aspect first attracted me to the cohousing scheme, but I have been surprised to find that the community aspect is now also important to me. Gardening together on site appeals, since I have enjoyed a little ‘grow your own veg’ before. I recently took up woodworking for a hobby and am looking forward to continuing to develop my woodworking skills, whilst making useful things, in a wood workshop in the Mill building. Although my partner, Jane, and I had known about Lancaster Cohousing for a while through a friend, it never occurred to us to join until the friend suggested it.
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Jon
I've recently gone self employed, and my main work at the moment is project-managing the cohousing project. I also do bits of environmental and transport consultancy and energy surveys of homes. I started my working life as an ecologist. In my spare time I love escaping to the quiet bits of countryside which surround Lancaster, and exploring new places on my bike. I've been getting more into running recently too. I get a lot of satisfaction out of making things happen but I easily get fed up with long meetings. I have a reputation for getting food ready quickly, but creating a huge amount of mess in the process.
I often wonder how people with children find the time to look after them and do all the other things
they do?!
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Kathy
I lived in Berkeley for two years and met ‘The Blue Book’ authors which got me interested in cohousing. I really enjoy being amongst community. It will be great for my one year old daughter Polly and great to live in a street with no cars. I like yoga, cycling, jogging, allotments and gardening and I hope all of these things are things that I will be able to do in cohousing. I was involved from the beginning of this project.
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Polly
I am Paul and Kathy’s one year old daughter. I am currently the youngest member of the group. My favourite books have surprise mirror endings and my favourite food is sage and marjoram sausages. I like dogs especially Shep (see ‘Stuart’ below).
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Mark
I love eating and spent my late teens and twenties working in Italy and learning to cook what one friend calls ‘peasant food’. As a vegan this is at least a step up from the lentil munching label. At the moment this is adding to my waist line as cohousing work has wiped out my free time, but I’m going part-time at work and looking forward to reconnecting with my old routine of fell running, circuits, yoga and Tai Chi. I also enjoy reading novels, talking, socialising and I value quiet thinking time alone. My ambition is to learn to sit still, but I can’t help getting involved and over committing myself on fun active things to organise.
I’m looking forward to the choir and folk singing and dancing in the community; our running club and fell section; doing yoga together; watching people gardening;>) and eating great food together; spending time with the community’s kids; learning some meditation and frugal living; getting more eco and low-impact; planning green activism; hanging out with people on my door step, in the common house, down on the river, in the gardens, late at night after food, over the Saturday papers, at parties and celebrations; helping with the compost loo; practicing volleyball for the inter communities annual volleyball match; having a weekly Tai Chi course on site; learning to canoe on the water and watching my partner David swim in the Lune; talking optimal health with those more wiser; and having someone paint my cardboard coffin when it’ll be needed late this century. Oh and yes, learning to sit still...
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Mary
I am a retired lecturer in Social Anthropology. I like to offer occasional short courses for adults so might rent mill space for that. My hobbies are hill walking and scrambling, cycling, debating, writing, reading world history and eco-activism - is that a hobby? I lived in India for ten years including a year working at the Gandhi Research Institute in Benares. I have one son who is now a journalist in Indonesia so I have carbon footprint problems. For as long as I can remember I have thought it was mad to live either as an isolated couple/nuclear family or singleton.
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Pam
I currently work in Glasgow as a university teacher but have strong links with Lancaster, having first come to the university for a year in the early 1990s and not having left until work took me away 4 years ago so I'm desperately waiting for my wonderful new co-housing house to be ready to move back to. I have for nearly 20 years been going to a cooperative community in Scotland to help with one of their annual maintenance weeks during which I really enjoy cooking vegetarian/vegan food for 40 - 50 people and am looking forward to the chance to do the same in our cohousing project. For me cohousing is about rebuilding the sort of communities that I grew up in that we seem to have lost but as I grew up near Heathrow I think, given our rural site, that I have a whole new set of skills to learn from my cohousing friends! In terms of hobbies etc I like reading (particularly crime fiction), cooking, knitting, swimming (but not in the Lune) and hope to get involved with the Grand theatre when I return to Lancaster though as a "techie" not a "luvvie" as I'm a bit of wallflower! Cohousing, for me, represents the ideal balance between my need for community and my contrasting need for private space.
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Richard
I work as a financial controller and my hobbies are white water canoeing and sports and nature photography. I found out about co-housing through the Steiner school and was attracted by the community spirit and the good site for children to grow up safely. I like the outdoors and walking. My interesting fact ….I once starred in a Chinese pot noodle ad!!
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Stuart
I’m in my early 40’s and live with my dog. I work as an environmental scientist for a campaign organisation. I’m vegan and have long tried to live an eco-friendly lifestyle. Moving into a zero carbon house in a cohousing community is the obvious next step for me. I currently work from home and so will move my office from my spare room into a unit in the Mill building. I enjoy 80’s music, country walks, racquet sports, reading, politics and cult TV/ films. I pretend not to be interested in football or the Eurovision Song Contest.
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Cliodhna
Geof is my long-suffering partner and we have a darlin’ grown up son called Louie who is studying Fine Art. Heaven for me is being in nature, growing, cooking and eating food, teaching yoga and meditation and living life slowly, mindfully and appreciatively. All of this I do some of the time - a mighty improvement on how things used to be!! I am privileged to do my professional work designing and hosting whole systems dialogue and transformation processes. For as long as I remember I have been passionate about healing my own relationship with Earth and sharing this with others, so I also facilitate Be the Change Symposiums and tutor on spirituality/deep ecology related courses at a quaker international study centre. I am inspired by the vision, passion, energy, commitment and brilliance of my co-housing friends and am learning mountains just being with them on this journey. I have a professional background in culture, regeneration, partnerships and local government inspection but no one would guess it…
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Geof
Geof is a lecturer in Performing Arts at Edge Hill University. He has also worked as an actor in repertory and touring theatres in this country and abroad. He is currently a member of Larkin’ About, performing larger than life characters at numerous festivals and street events.
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Frances
As the daughter of a travelling professor I got to travel widely in my childhood living in Australia, the USA and Thailand, and now have family at all corners of the world, which is good in some ways and not others. I returned to the UK at 17 to go to university in Scotland and then worked in television in London. Looking for a more sustainable way of living and community led me to Lancaster Cohousing and I now make web videos and am documenting our project on video. If you visit us, I’ll be the one wandering about with a camera asking for interviews, but don’t worry, it’s not compulsory! I also like hill-walking, cycling and growing vegetables and hope to do a bee-keeping course when time permits.
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Mac
I work as a science archivist at an environmental research organization, and have an interest in local politics (I’m currently a city councillor) and in local history. Between them, the council, the day job and this project take up most of my waking hours. I’ve visited the Laurieston Hall cooperative community on many occasions, and the shared work that they do appealed to me, so I was interested to find out more about the cohousing group in Lancaster, and went along to the first public meeting they held. I was struck by the amount of work and thought that had been put in at such an early stage, which gave me confidence that this would be a realistic project. Now I’m looking forward to finding out for myself just what “living in community” means in real life!
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Maria Angeles
I currently work in environmental research, but was previously a civil servant, a travel agent, hotel receptionist. I have a large family but not in the UK, which makes me appreciate the advantages of living in an intentional community such as this one. I like getting together with friends to cook, watch good films or play board games. I also enjoy quieter time on my own, reading science fiction books, attempting to meditate or exercising in different ways. I enjoy the outdoors and I am a member of both a mountaineering club and an orienteering club, although still manage to have a terrible sense of direction.
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Steve
I am currently working as an environmental consultant specialising in renewable energy and low carbon solutions. Prior to this I worked in the aerospace industry as a system designer and project manager of aircraft safety systems. Outside work I spend my leisure time mountaineering, both in the UK and abroad, as well as exploring the subterranean world of the Yorkshire dales. At home I watch a lot of films on DVD, as I have not owned television for the last eighteen years, and have recently tried growing a few vegetables in our garden (potatoes are easy but the slugs seem to have ravaged my cabbages before I could harvest them!)
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Diana
I've been retired from wage-earning for a few years now, and am enjoying the flexibility of being able to put my energy where my passions are (though I still have some learning to do around avoiding over-commitment!). I've done a lot of work in the voluntary sector under the broad umbrella of community building, and for my buddhist community (Thich Nhat Hanh). I knew I wanted to be part of the project as soon as I heard about it – no backward glances! I love how we are building our community and our houses simultaneously – and I'm enjoying learning along the way. I'm sharing a house in the city at the moment, so looking forward to opportunities for more practical land-based work when we get to Forge Bank, and I'm just refreshing my canoe skills, ready to enjoy, and help others enjoy, the lovely river. What a great place to live, and a great place to visit for friends, children and grandchildren! Yes!
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