Earthworm is a housing provider and also manages 7 acres of land. We need to recruit new members who bring skills and enthusiasm to help run and maintain everything. All members pay rent, which is the main income of the co-op and helps to maintain and improve all our resources; both people's personal spaces and the areas we share.
The land and buildings are planned and designed using environmentally sustainable principles and we need people who appreciate and value these. The current members have already led long and interesting lives and we need to recruit tolerant and thoughtful people.
Below we have expanded on who we are looking for in more detail.
- Skills wanted
- People who are environmentally minded
- Sympathy and tolerance towards radical politics and alternative lifestyles
- People wanting to live and work, or retire in a rural location
- People who can handle the renovation process
- Belief in and enthusiasm for co-operatives
Skills Wanted
Any housing co-op needs some diligent members to manage the membership process, the co-op accounts, rent books, researching and obtaining quotes for maintenance that we can’t do ourselves, and keeping on top of the maintenance that we can manage ourselves. In addition, our co-op, Earthworm Housing Co-op is still in a large scale renovation project including work on brick work, roofing, plastering, plumbing, electrics, glazing, insulating, fencing, tree-planting and building/rebuilding kitchens, bathrooms and some interior walls and exterior windows.
If you don’t have any such experience, but you do bring much enthusiasm and the willingness to spend some of your time learning, then Earthworm is a great place to learn.
We only demand four hours per week, of each member's time, working for the housing co-op. It is quite possible for some members to work full time elsewhere, and still be members of the co-op, but at the moment if everyone worked fulltime elsewhere, it wouldn't work well. There's more information about this balance, and how we manage it in the Work commitment section.
People who are environmentally minded
At Earthworm we have the opportunity to reduce the energy use and pollutants from our buildings and grow a lot of our own food. We use organic principles in the growing of food and try to manage our land in the safest and most sustainable way we can. Some of our members have rich backgrounds in gardening, land management and permaculture, as well as campaigning on issues as diverse as animal rights, genetically modified foods, river health and nuclear power, though in general we're all a lot more mellow than we used to be!
When the whole co-op makes a decision about purchasing cleaning products, building materials or things for the garden and grounds, the wider environmental impacts of those imports are considered. We have an excellent library specialising in environmental issues, nutritional health, the politics of food and power, low impact housing and social change. Lots of fiction-for-fun too.
We don't want to be a housing co-op with mainstream ethics; we want to be more pioneering and committed in terms of having a positive or less-damaging effect on the environment, both in our own 7 acres and the wider world.
Our design decisions and purchasing agreements around our maintenance and renovation of the co-op reflect this, as mentioned above.
How this manifests in the current membership varies widely. Some members are very meticulous about the recycling, others never use aeroplanes. Some are vegan, others buy local organic meat. Some buy sustainably sourced wood, and others put hours in to reusing and up-cycling building materials, tools and furniture. Some use unbleached loo roll, others always use the compost toilet. Some grow lots of their own veg, others make lots of their own clothes. Don't worry that we all take ourselves phenomenally seriously (we seriously don't!) but we do care about the environment.
Sympathy and tolerance towards radical politics and alternative lifestyles
You don't have to have any knowledge or experience of radical politics, alternative lifestyles, organic growing or direct action to join the co-op. It is expected, however, that you are sympathetic or at least tolerant of such ambitions. The current membership have all lived, and want to live in slightly different ways, and the differences between us aren't a problem in the light of our common aims and values.
People wanting to live and work, or retire, in a rural location
To live here you will need to know how you will make money for your rent either through working, a pension or claiming benefits. We want new members to have sustainable and fulfilling ways to earn their daily crust or fill their time.
Earning a living in a rural area isn’t as easy as a city and it takes ingenuity and perseverance to make a business work or to get a job. To work locally you will probably either need a motor vehicle or be prepared to catch the bus or cycle to bigger towns or local stations. There are far fewer buses than you'd be used to if you come from a town or city. Working remotely is of course another option.
With our acres and workshops, Earthworm Housing Co-op may be a good base from which to run a small business. Living close to others who might have similar interests can create a productive web of people, projects and opportunities.
We do understand that not everyone can work and we don't want to be a co-op with totally homogenous members. We definitely have niches for people not in paid employment, retired people, people concentrating on raising families and/or people who are long term sick, and we will consider all applications. Please give us lots of information especially if your situation is complicated, and do read the rest of this website to get an idea of where we're coming from, and what we hope to achieve here.
People who can handle the renovation process
Earthworm Housing Co-op is in a long-term process of renovation. In 2011 some of the current members stumbled upon an enormously exciting opportunity to renovate and improve 3 old buildings, and this big job might outlive us!
As well as being very rewarding, it is hard work and not a little disruptive. We all have to make sacrifices to achieve our 'eco renovation' dream, but we're also learning valuable practical skills.
For our plan to work, we need to recruit more members who are also excited about this work, and the learning within it.
In 1909 houses like ours were designed for a rich family with 10 servants and built to burn a ton of coal a week. Coal didn't travel far (from Wales or the surrounding English counties), and the Victorians and Edwardians didn't think it would ever run out, so the draughtiness of their buildings wasn't considered a problem. The fact that ash makes surfaces really dirty really fast wasn't seen as a problem either, because there were live-in "servants" to spend all their time on cleaning and maintenance! We are making lots of changes to the original 1909 design.
The changes we are making to our buildings are extensive, because the assumptions that informed its original construction don't fit with our current ideals of sustainability, energy consumption, social equality and health.
We have redesigned our property in part to make it easier for different people to live here; not everyone wants a shared kitchen forever or to share with children. Some would describe our redesign from the 1990s version as a move from “commune” to “co-housing”. Separate small kitchens and bathrooms have made family units within the co-op that are “almost normal!”
There will always be a shared-house part of the co-op too, which suits some members best. We look forward to meeting new people who are capable of keeping communal kitchens and bathrooms pleasant and tidy!
We are committed to preserving and improving what we already have, not building new structures like straw bale houses, earthships or benders. Though such structures can be more "efficient" or "low-impact" than an old retrofitted building in some ways, we have made the decision to preserve and improve the existing resource and we need new members who share this aim and are excited about it.
In order to achieve our aims we are currently living through years of disruption, (e.g. scaffolding, ground works, moving furniture around, storing building materials in communal spaces and generating loads of mud). We won’t be giving ourselves reduced rents or rent holidays though, as we need the money to make the improvements, and we’re happy enough in the knowledge that progress is being made, and that we are doing something that we consider very worthwhile.
As might be clear from all this, or clearer still from a visit, the accommodation is changing and improving all the time, and won't be “finished” for many years yet. Lots of decisions have already been made about the renovation, and we'll share the detailed plan with you if you progress through the membership process, or volunteer often.
We hope that new members will be as excited as we are about saving and improving our buildings and happy to wait for further improvements to come later!
Belief in and enthusiasm for co-operatives
We don’t expect all future members to already understand what co-operatives are and how they work, but we do expect that new members are as keen as the rest of us to live co-operatively. You will learn about this in the run-up to or the duration of a probationary membership. We have a broad library on this topic too, and some members are professional educators and facilitators, helping other groups to form workers co-ops, housing co-ops and co-operatively run land projects and social centres. E-mail earthwormcooperative@yahoo.co.uk if you would like to be put in touch with them, and spell out your request clearly! Please also see the section What is a co-operative.