. . . TO INSPIRE OTHERS TO CREATE THEIR OWN SHARED SPACES INSIDE THIS NEIGHBORHOOD AND BEYOND.
Though this tiny, three-home paradise inside a typical American suburb “sticks out like a sore thumb,” it’s also deeply interesting to many of our neighbors, who, increasingly, collaborate with us in varied ways. Its rich, nearly jungle-like environment also attracts those who drive, walk, or bike by, plus drawing individuals and groups from near and far who have heard about this experiment in “growing community from the ground up.”
In fact, Green Acres Permaculture Village tends to serve more and more as a template for others who either seek the same, or who find themselves utterly inspired when we give them “the tour.” So often, standing on our flower-ringed patio, visitors exclaim in surprise: “This feels like another world!”
Our regular Thursday evening Community Dinners are open to neighbors and friends, and serve as an easy and natural way to get to know us. New people get “the tour” if they wish, and those interested in living here when we have openings can engage with us to begin to assess our mutual connection.
The patio is also the three-season space for lunar and seasonal celebrations, workshops, artistic and musical events, and other gatherings.
During the winter season, or in inclement weather, we gather in one of our three homes.
LONG TERM VISION/GOAL
Our long-term vision/goal is to see all of Green Acres Neighborhood, a core neighborhood that abuts Indiana University — about 460 homes, now mostly student rentals — transform into a mutually beneficial and shared opportunity for “growing community from the ground up” — with paths running throughout the neighborhood, food, flower, and forest gardens everywhere (front, back and side yards), more spaces where people gather, sharing knowledge and tools — on and on. To do this, it may be that we will need to convince at least one real estate company that owns some of these rentals, of the beauty and the necessity of intensified cooperative retrofit suburban living with both each other and the Earth during an era of increasing fragmentation, isolation, inflation, food scarcity, supply chain breakdowns, etc.
In the long run, we envision Green Acres Village, as one node in an extended network of tiny, likeminded villages inside this Green Acres neighborhood, serving as a demonstration site for Indiana University, with programs in history, arts, design, planning, sustainability, psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc. — all geared towards a growing understanding of the kind of education needed in the 21st century.
