Digging and dreaming at The Community Farm

Words by Ciaran Mundy

Last Week Bristol Pound team went to The Community Farm for a team building event facilitated by Dan Start. Dan is one of the South Wests best known writers and publishers about all things wild and The Community Farm is an award winning Coop producing  fresh foods for people and businesses around Bristol. Both Ian Sumpter at The Community Farm and Dan helped us out for free for which we are so grateful.

The Bristol pound Team started as almost exclusively voluntary, but as of the beginning of 2014 the team have been successful in bringing a major EU, Tudor Trust and Technology Strategy Board funding to Bristol to help develop the scheme along professional lines. Making such a change is not so simple however and we wanted to stay in touch with the voluntary spirit and the values that underpin the teams work and the scheme as a whole.

For the first half of the day Dan Start helped us examine the core values behind our work and do some visioning of what we hope the scheme can help Bristol become in the next 10 years. It was at times moving, sometimes funny and also tricky navigating fundamental things that touch on both personal and professional motivations, but it was worth it and I certainly felt more grounded and motivated as a result. Thank you team and thank you Dan.

After a shared ‘pot-luck’ lunch we mused on what we had discussed and made some important commitments while digging the soil in one of the farm’s big poly tunnels, ready to plant out rows of salads. We made some important commitments about how we work as a scheme and  you’ll be hearing more about that very soon.