As Lifespan Community celebrates its half centenary we bring you an interview with Freer Spreckley who was one of the founders back in 1974. He and Hylda Sims were both alumni of the famous Summerhill School and originally saw Lifespan as being a kind of lifelong version of Summerhill. Freer describes the early years of that isolated intentional community based in terraced houses, located high in the Yorkshire Moors.

Summerhill School
https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk

Lifespan Community Collective
https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/community/lifespan-community-collective

Commune on the Moors: The Story of Lifespan
https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/shop/commune-on-the-moors

Spaceheads:
https://spaceheads.co.uk/recordings/a-new-world-in-our-hearts/

Cath Muller has had a long history in co-operativism having had a key role in the Radical Routes Network as well as being a member of Cornerstone Housing Co-op in Leeds. A few years ago she travelled (over-sea) to North America and was particularly inspired by a visit to Twin Oaks Community in Virginia. Now she's working with others to create "A Commune in the North" with the idea of bring about something on the same scale as Twin Oaks in the UK. And she doesn't want there to be just one commune... she wants there to be many of them!

Radical Routes
https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/communities/radical-routes-members
http://www.radicalroutes.org.uk/

Cornerstone Housing Co-operative
https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/community/cornerstone-housing-co-operative

A Commune in the North
https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/community/a-commune-in-the-north
https://www.acommuneinthenorth.org.uk/

Twin Oaks Community
https://www.twinoaks.org

Spaceheads:
https://spaceheads.co.uk/recordings/a-new-world-in-our-hearts/

In this episode we're going in-house and speaking to Jonathan How – one of the original members of the Diggers & Dreamers team. As well as communal living he's had past involvements in radical bookshops, wholefoods, publishing, co-op development and more recently local government. Following his path from the British urban squatting movement of the 1970s to the present day we hear how his conclusion is that the hippies were right all along – they just needed to be a bit more organised! If we're ever going to achieve anything then we all need to rebalance our mindsets so that they're made up of equal parts digging and dreaming.

Diggers & Dreamers Timeline:
https://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk.about/timeline

Spaceheads:
https://spaceheads.co.uk/recordings/a-new-world-in-our-hearts/