Introducing When we’re 64: A Living Story
A new kind of week at the Findhorn Foundation, for anyone who likes asking questions.
There's a week coming to Ecovillage Findhorn that’s unlike anything we've offered before. It asks you to bring your curiosity, your questions, and maybe your inner journalist, historian or archivist, and see what you find. We're calling it:
When we’re 64: A Living Story - to celebrate our 64th birthday!
A blast from the past: A community picture from days gone by…
Why this week is different
When we’re 64: A Living Story is designed for the part of us that loves to think, read, interview and dig behind the scenes and also celebrate along the way! Cornelia Featherstone, long-time community member and co-creator of the week, has a name for it: the citizen scholar in all of us.
“It’s using the faculties that are often a little bit neglected in our heart-based culture. The brain, the mind, the inquiry, the researching and reporting.”
It's a strange thing to say about a community that, by her estimate, has more PhDs and dissertations tucked away per capita than almost anywhere else in the world, and yet rarely talks about it. When we’re 64: A Living Story makes room for that side of us to come out and play.
Six decades of stories to draw on
The Findhorn Ecovillage has been around for over sixty years, with hundreds of people who've lived, built, healed, debated and grown here. And the doors are open to you.
Want to know how the community handles money, conflict, land or belonging? Curious about the Angel of Findhorn, the community's early experiments, or a piece of history that's never quite been written down?
During When we’re 64: A Living Story you can follow that thread: interview people, dig through decades of community magazines and library archives (recently catalogued and ready for exactly this kind of digging), maybe even track down a former member on Zoom, wherever in the world they've landed.
“You get to step into your inner historian, archivist, librarian and journalist, not in a frightening, high-brow way, but in an empowered way.”
Previous workshops using a similar free-flow, inquiry-led format have thrown up real surprises: participants reviving a long-dormant community Money Game ritual within days of it being mentioned, or a chance conversation leading straight back to a piece of nearly lost history.
There's something about following your own curiosity in a group like this that tends to create more than anyone could have planned for.
Mike Scott and Eileen Caddy
You can read a story by Mike Scott about one of these chance conversations here. He magically knew the answer to the question: “Where do the words from Eileen Caddy’s guidance for the Weekly Inspiration Emails come from?”, when no one here could remember.
What a day looks like
The founding practices are present throughout the week, with focused sessions for research, reporting and reviewing stories. The week opens with a simple circle: why are you here, what are you curious about. From there it flows into self-organising and yet supported research and inquiry sessions and conversations with community members. Because the week falls right around the Foundation's 64th birthday, a thread of celebration, story and party will be running through it too, with opportunities for the whole community to come together. You can join meditation and singing in the mornings, and enjoy afternoons that open outward into whatever the week's questions turn out to be.
Ceilidh Dancing at the Community’s Birthday in 2025
Whatever you uncover, you're invited to bring it back: a short report, a video, a piece of writing, a collage, something that becomes part of the community's, and your own, living collective autobiography. As Cornelia puts it, drawing on the phrase that's guided this project since it began:
“As we honor the past, we meet in the present, and together we step into the future.”
Why come at this special time?
You'll be here for a milestone birthday, alongside residents, alumni, former members and old friends of the community, at a time when there's a joyful celebration happening. Underneath that, it's an invitation to something more intimate: placing your own story into the context of the ecovillage, and seeing what that context hands back to you. “As without, so within,” as Cornelia says. The community's history becomes a mirror for your own, and your own curiosity becomes a way into the community's.
It's also an experiment: the first time we're offering a week like this, scholarly and inquiry-driven, to guests as well as community members, within the context of our community celebration. If you like the idea of not quite knowing what you'll find, and trusting that the not-knowing is where the good part happens, this might be the week for you. If you first came many years ago or have been longing to visit for the first time, we’re excited to welcome you!
Jonathan Caddy’s Birthday Speech in 2025
