Easter weekend weather at Findhorn was close to perfection and saw over 300 visitors flock to The Park on Sunday 12 April to explore, play, enjoy and generally taste what the Findhorn Foundation and Community has to offer.
There were over 20 craft stalls, free complementary therapy taster sessions, an Easter egg hunt, participatory drumming, horse and cart rides, afternoon tea, visits to the permaculture garden and a general sense of a convivial community working together to share its bounty with a wider circle of local community. It was also a great chance for the Youth Project to raise money for its Youth Exchange to Kitezh, an orphanage and community in Russia supported by Ecologia, a charity founded by community member Liza Hollingshead.

This was continued during the week with visits from a local primary school who had great fun kneading dough, baking bread and playing in the garden at our Cluny Hill campus, and Moray Health Walks, most of whom had not been to The Park before. One participant said, “the peaceful surroundings made me think carefully about how we live our lives”, another, “it was inspiring to see how another way of life close to nature can be enjoyed”.
This is part of a conscious intention of the Foundation and Community to proactively reach out and be more accessible and relevant to our local area of Moray and to contribute to and learn from local organisations and groups, particularly those who are disadvantaged. We are looking forward to welcoming many more local groups this summer.

There are other new shoots emerging this spring as a creative reshuffling happens in both the Findhorn Foundation and the community’s leadership.

Bettina Jesperson has stepped down as Chair of Management as she is soon to become a mother, and Fabien Barouche, one of the Listener Convenors of the New Findhorn Association, an umbrella for the myriad organisations, charities, businesses and individuals here, has taken a year out to explore new personal directions. Bettina is replaced by Ana Rhodes and Fabien by Eian Smith, both young community members, keen and feisty and full of spring energy, ready to build new relationships, foster community spirit and get on with the creative opportunities of the times.

We applaud their willingness and courage to fly at the front of the flock at this time - and the willingness and courage of so many leaders at the global and local level. It is not easy to lead in such circumstances - when aspiration is often overtaken by desperation, and when we are redisgning a whole system and creating the future we want without knowing exactly how to go about it - experimenting, intuiting, learning.

Peter Senge, in his 2008 book The Necessary Revolution talks of the need for a regenerative society where we “reconnect with ourselves, one another and our fellow non-human inhabitants on earth”. This reconnection was clearly evident in our spring celebrations this year.