This is a CTP of initiative: Ecovillage Sieben Linden (Germany)
The community had gone through intensive phases of planning and buying land in 1997 together, settling, and starting to live in a residential-led ecological village including cooperative ownership of houses (see previous CTP). They had worked with community building methods and external supervision to hold the social ‘unity’ of the initiative. Since settling in Sieben Linden they were starting to live a more daily and regular life and they noticed the interest in nurturing community and the awareness for each other had suffered. Moreover, conflicts increasingly arose in the assemblies and got stuck with the same issues. They were longing for a way how to better understand each other and how they could create a space that supports emotional encounter and conflict resolution in a deeper way for the entire community. ‘ZEGG Forum’ was invented for this purpose in the community of ZEGG; it is a method to support community life.
“ZEGG Forum is a deep and intimate process for groups with up to 50 participants. The aim is to reveal whatever is authentic, alive and true within us. Forum creates a space of trust and openness between people. […] The group gathers in a circle. The protagonist enters the middle to share their current inner experience. […] The circle supports the presenter with their full loving awareness and presence. […] The facilitators play a major role in this process and need a profound prior training. This helps them become more authentic themselves and learn to remain present with the emotions that may arise in the circle. They act as "midwives" to assist the authentic process which the presenter undergoes.” link to full text: What is the ZEGG Forum? On the website of ZEGG
In Spring 1999 the ZEGG community near Berlin hosted a course to educate ‘ZEGG Forum’. 15 people from Sieben Linden attended and received their licence to guide and hold ‘ZEGG Forum’. In autumn 1999 ‘ZEGG Forum’ coaches from ZEGG community were invited to Sieben Linden to guide a community retreat. It was perceived as highly attractive and almost the entire ecovillage participated. Interviewees said it was an important process to improve the personal relations and in a broader sense the community life in Sieben Linden. The members were stimulated with new motivation to attend the assemblies. A majority of the members welcomed the ‘ZEGG Forum’ as an encouraging new format to be seen, to present themselves, their issues and ideas to the community. With the intense education programs on how to lead ‘ZEGG Forum’ in ZEGG plus practicing over the years in Sieben Linden, today more than 20 people in Sieben Linden are licenced facilitators having rich experiences in ‘ZEGG Forum’.
Since autumn 1999, ‘ZEGG Forum’ is a key method Sieben Linden works with until today. Over years, weekly regular groups have applied ZEGG Forum to work on conflicts and stay in touch with each other. Till today, it is used in the beginning of the monthly assemblies for about 20 minutes as a setting to connect on a personal level.
“We intended to work and care for our community from the beginning on, but since then, it was introduced more intensely and institutionalised with an annual and well planned community retreat in autumn.” (Interview Eva Stützel)
‘ZEGG Forum’ itself is a method for inviting coproduction. Through self-expression a space for mutual understanding is created. It is often experienced as base for social cohesion in the community, and it can help to create trust and a sense of connectedness and thus preventing community erosion. “Forum provides a stage for thoughts and feelings that are ever present in daily life but which lie veiled or suppressed out of fear of rejection or judgment. It is a vehicle designed to bring into group consciousness what has been, until now, only present in the individuals’ consciousness.” (What is ZEGG-Forum? by Dolores Richter and Achim Ecker )
‘ZEGG Forum’ was developed over years in ZEGG, a community with has a strong focus on interpersonal relations and love. Sieben Linden as an ecovillage developing its expertise in ecological living could benefit from the experiences and developed methods from ZEGG community. Vice versa, Sieben Linden later supported ZEGG in their ecology. This is a concrete example how ecovillages and other kind of community initiatives support each other in their special expertise to work out a holistic and sustainable community based on the four dimensions of sustainability – ecological, social, economic and cultural.
In March 1999: three ‘Community Forum courses’ in ZEGG community: for the first course 15 people from Sieben Linden attended plus a few of them attended the other two courses. These people have been educated as trainers for Forum and are licensed to lead Forum.
In October 1999 two invited facilitators from ZEGG do Forum with the entire Sieben Linden community. It is the ‘kick-off’ of an annual community retreat with ‘ZEGG Forum’ as a key method.
Since there was a great openness for the new method in general, there is different degrees how people like the new method. One member developed a strong resistance and is still a member in Sieben Linden till today.
“One community member was completely against the usage of any method of the ZEGG and refused not only to participate (nobody ever was forced to participate, it was always open choice), but argued that using the ZEGG-Forum would convert the project into a sect. He had withdrawn from community life already before because of some other problems and the introduction of the ZEGG-Forum that invited people to self-reflection was for him an additional reason to withdraw from community life. He still lives in the ecovillage now, 18 years later, and this conflict has never really been solved. Officially, he is still a community-member with all rights, but doesn‘t participate at all in community life. There is a mutual agreement of living next to each other without agression, but not a real resolution of the conflict.” (Interview Eva Stützel)
Some members from Sieben Linden had been to ZEGG community for ZEGG Forum courses and assumed it would help the group dynamics and personal relations to practice this method. Nevertheless, they did not know if the other members would experience the same and how the community would react to it. It was an experiment for the community. The 15 member who did the course in ZEGG participated for their own personal development as well.
The introduction of ‘ZEGG Forum’ and the annual community retreats are accompanied by learnings on multiple levels of Sieben Linden community and of a decent number of individual members. Self-reflection, personal transformation and emotional learning are of high value for a number of people. From their point of view social learning includes questioning own attitudes, imprints and growing over oneself in relation to social interaction. One can only live in such a community if he or she is willing to change her/himself (Kunze et al. 2015). The interviewees say that social learning also includes de-learning of old stereotypes and habits and to be really open for listening to and understanding others. Community is a field for ‘rubbing’. It is seen as a promoter for personal growth. ‘ZEGG Forum is a cultivated space where people mirror each other.
“One of the most important learning outcomes of the ZEGG forum is the recognition that it actually creates trust and a positive impression, of people show their weak points. Whereas in normal conversation, we rather show our shiny side and try to hide the weaker points, ZEGG-Forum encourages to share as well the weak points – and this creates trust or even love” (Interview Eva Stützel)
“An interesting experience is that the people giving seminars about Sieben Linden often get the feedback of being surprisingly open about the weak points of Sieben Linden. There is an openness to share failures and weaknesses not only on a personal level, but as well to share the weaknessees of the community as a whole” (Interview Eva Stützel).
It is assumed by the interviewee that this is part of the community-culture that has been created through the ZEGG-Forum.
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