Laying the Groundwork for a New Intentional Community in New Zealand
Development & Property Trusts, Eco-Villages, People Systems, Village Development — by Bob Corker December 22, 2009
Shifts and Closures
The Koanga Institute originally developed out of a mission to save heritage seeds in New Zealand. Over a period of 20 years it has built up a national collection of over 700 varieties, which are regularly grown out, distributed and maintained. For most of the last 20 years this was done just outside of a Kaiwaka, a small village about 100 kms north of Auckland, NZ’s largest city. Increasingly over the last 5 years the Institute has focussed on how we learn to live sustainable lives, believing that we can’t save the seeds if we don’t save the gardeners, and we don’t save the gardeners unless we build communities that honour and support gardeners. Then completely out of the blue, three years ago, Kay Baxter and Bob Corker, the founders of the Institute decided to leave Kaiwaka and have taken the Institute on a nomadic journey.
The main reasons for leaving Kaiwaka, were a sense of impending suburbanisation of our once rural district (one lifestyle block at a time), and the sense that the eco-village we had designed had some major limitations in its economic and governance structure, and that these combined limitations were unlikely to change. We had a dream of taking what we have learned from our years of observation, study and experimentation and do something more bold, with more potential to engage our personal visions and those of others. The dream hasn’t got a home just yet, but our nomadic ways are about to end. Over those last few years we’ve continued to shape our vision and we’ve had some major shifts along the way
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