About Diana Leafe Christian

• Ecovillages  • Cohousing and other Kinds of Intentional Communities • Consultation-Workshops  • Workshops  • Conferences  • Colleges and Universities   • Books  • New Book Projects As a result of writing books on starting new ecovillages and how to join an ecovillage (see below), Diana Leafe Christian has become a speaker and activist about the ecovillage movement internationally, and a consultant to many different kinds of intentional communities, including ecovillages, cohousing communities, and forming-community groups. Ecovillages She publishes and edits “Ecovillages,” a free, bimonthly online newsletter offering news and inspiration about ecovillage projects worldwide. The newsletter is a project of the nonprofit CRSP organization in Los Angeles. Diana speaks about ecovillages at conferences and gatherings across the US and internationally. In 2007, for example, as a keynote speaker at the Japanese Ecovillage Conference in Tokyo and the Urban Ecovillage Conference in Chicago, she presented her slide show, “Ecovillages: Where They Are, What They’re Doing, Why They’re Important.”

She has written about ecovillages and been interviewed about the ecovillage movement for publications in the United States, Canada, and Japan. She contributed a chapter about starting new ecovillagesto the anthology Beyond You and Me, the first of four books written for the Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) certificate program of Gaia Education, a project of Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). (The EDE website offers a downloadable copy of Beyond You and Me. It’s also available as a printed book from Permanent Publications in England.) She is contributing two chapters to EDE’s 2008 book on economic sustainability in ecovillages. (One chapter is on “social enterprise” businesses at Earthaven Ecovillage, where she lives; the second chapter is on the legal and financial aspects of starting a new ecovillage.)

Diana also contributed a chapter on starting successful ecovillages to Creating Harmony: Conflict Resolution in Community (Gaia Trust/Permanent Publications, 1999).

Cohousing and other Kinds of Intentional Communities
As a result of her second book, Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community, Diana is website host for the interactive feature “Finding Your Ideal Cohousing Home” in the Member’s Area feature of the website for the Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US).

Also as a result of the Finding Community book she speaks about researching, visiting, evaluating, and joining communities as keynote speaker for “Community Seeker’s Fairs.” In 2007 she spoke at Community Seeker’s Fairs in Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area; in 2008, she is speaking at similar fairs in Portland, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles.

She also regularly contributes articles to Cohousing, the online magazine of Coho/US, and presents short workshops at the organization’s annual national conference. In June, 2008 she is presenting a pre-conference workshop on resolving conflict in cohousing communities at Coho/US’s annual national conference near Boston.

For 14 years (1993-2007) Diana was editor of Communities magazine, a quarterly publication about intentional communities in North America, published by the nonprofit Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC).

Her articles on ecovillages and intentional communities have appeared in publications ranging from Mother Earth News, Cohousing magazine, Communities magazine, the Communities Directory, and Earthlight magazine, to the Encyclopedia of Community. She has been interviewed about ecovillages and other community subjects for Time Magazine, The New York Times, Harper’s, AARP magazine, BioCity Magazine (Tokyo), This Magazine (Canada), Creative Living magazine, and Vision magazine.  She’s been interviewed on Peak Moment TV; “The Movement,” a documentary feature for German and Spanish TV; and on New Dimensions Radio, NPR, the BBC, and various alternative-culture online podcasts.

Consultation-Workshops
Diana has offered consultation-workshops for individual communities, as well as public workshops on dealing effectively with various kinds of “structural conflict” and interpersonal conflict in community, and consensus re-trainings.

She has presented consultation-workshops for New Earth Song Cohousing (Washington), Mimbres Hot Springs Ranch (New Mexico), Silver City Eco-Community Cohousing (New Mexico), Koinonia Partners (Georgia), Du-Ma Community (Oregon), the Olohonua Project (Maui), and in British Columbia, Windsong Cohousing, Yarrow Ecovillage, Roberts Creek Cohousing, Eco-Reality Co-op Ecovillage, and Pacific Gardens Cohousing.

She also does phone consultations on these topics and on the steps of forming new communities.

Workshops
Diana leads workshops at public venues, for forming community groups, and at conferences on

1. the practical steps to starting successful new ecovillages and intentional communities (mission and purpose, decision-making, dealing effectively with “structural” as well as interpersonal conflict, communication skills, legal structures, and finding and financing land);
2. how to research, visit, evaluate, and join an ecovillage or intentional community; and
3. consensus decision-making and facilitating consensus meetings.

She has led workshops at the Permaculture Certificate Course at the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm, Tennessee; Los Angeles Eco-Village; the Ecovillage & Permaculture Certificate Program at Lost Valley Educational Center, Oregon; the Natural Building and Leadership Skill-Building Intensive at O.U.R. Ecovillage, British Columbia; and Easton Mountain Center, New York.

Conferences
Diana has presented at ecovillage, communities, sustainable living, and Peak Oil conferences. These include “Red Dirt & Green Culture” Sustainable Living Conference, Oklahoma (2008); International Ecovillage Conference, Tokyo, Japan (2007); Urban Ecovillage Conference, Chicago (2007); Women Living in Community Conference, Asheville (2007); Sustainable Living in Community Conference, Vancouver (2007); Coho/US National Cohousing Conferences (2007, and in years past); Community Solutions’ annual Peak Oil Conference, Ohio (2005); and PetroCollapse Conference, Washington D.C. (2006).

She has also presented at Green Festivals, Washington D.C. and San Francisco; Real Goods/Solar Living SolFest, Hopland, California; Twin Oaks Communities Conferences, Virginia; The FIC’s Art of Community Gatherings; and Network for a New Culture Summer Camps (East and West).

Colleges and Universities
Diana also speaks about communities at colleges and universities, including the Synergy Conference, Evergreen State College, Washington; Sustainability Conference, Lewis and Clark College, Oregon; HOPES Conference, Oregon State University; and for individual classes at New College of California; Warren Wilson College, North Carolina; Ecovillage Program, University of South Carolina; and Vanderbilt University, Tennessee.

Books
Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community (New Society Publishers, 2007), offers practical advice to help community seekers research communities thoroughly, visit them enjoyably, evaluate them intelligently, and join their chosen community gracefully. As Communities magazine editor, Diana was privy to dozens of anecdotes and stories from communities across North America about what works and what doesn’t work in terms of new people joining communities, as well as stories from people who’ve visited communities that they liked and didn’t like. She drew on these stories and from her personal experiences of joining a community herself, Earthaven (and having served on its membership committee). Topics include important questions to ask (of community members and of yourself), signs of a healthy (and not-so-healthy) community, joining costs (including a “What It Costs” sample comparison chart), and common blunders to avoid.

For Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities (New Society Publishers, 2003), Diana learned from dozens of community veterans and founders about what it takes to start successful ecovillages and intentional communities in today's financial and zoning climate. In it she used success stories, cautionary tales, and step-by-step advice to cover typical time-frames and costs; the role of founders; getting started as a group; vision documents; power, governance, and decision-making; legal structures; finding and financing land; zoning issues; sustainable site plans; selecting new members; and good process and communication skills for dealing well with conflict.

New Book Projects
Diana is currently working on a book about dealing well with “structural conflict” and interpersonal conflict in communities and how to help create a sense of support and connection.

She is also working on a book with best-selling author Joan Medlicott, author of The Covington Ladies Send their Love series. This part how-to guide, part novel, provides via Diana’s practical advice and Joan’s development of characters and story, to show how a small group of women set up and enjoy a shared group housing arrangement for companionship and mutual support, like the women in the Covington Ladies series do. (See the July 2007 issue of AARP magazine for an article on Joan and her Covington Ladies novels and elder women in shared housing nationwide.)

Before she became involved with intentional communities, Diana hosted radio interview programs on KORL radio in Honolulu and KVMR radio in northern California, and wrote articles for New Age magazine, Yoga Journal, East-West Journal, and Shaman’s Drum. In the 1980s in the Bay Area she worked at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Fritjof Capra’s Elmwood Institute.

Diana lives in an off-grid homestead at Earthaven Ecovillage in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. She has introduced several processes she shares in her workshops to Earthaven, including the “Gifting Circle” feedback and bonding process; the “Graduated Series of Consequences” process to help community members stay accountable to group agreements; new accountability, orientation, and training processes for Earthaven’s membership process; and several new practices for its Council meetings and Council facilitation process.

One of Diana’s favorite pastimes is to eat dark chocolate, hang out with community friends, and enjoy lively, hilarious conversations about that endlessly fascinating topic—living in community.