Hartwood CLT Aims & Objectives

Hartwood is a Community Land Trust seeking to heal and enrich life for all. Working to restore and teach the evolution of sustainable, ethical practice, rebuilding justice. An umbrella organisation working to create networks of low-impact, food and energy resilient, permanently affordable, self-governing eco-arks. To be guardians of sanctuary for all living things, re-energising our despoiled and depopulated rural landscapes.

We discover and propagate ways and means to:

• Purchase undeveloped uplands, typically forestry plantation, abandoned farms, and form trusts or co-operatives to each own, construct and maintain self-build low-impact villages, preferably in clusters.
• Sustainably use resources on site such as wind, sun and water, stone and timber for building and to generate energy. Re-forest, intensively compost to replenish and cultivate as much of of our own food and energy as possible.
• Collect green waste, trashed windows, sinks, timber etc. as direct recycling. Refurbish, re-use and rebuild. Create pasture, field and sanctuary, homes, workshops and beauty amongst the forest. Learn to trust and rely on each other. A community without shared work is a meaningless one. Prepare for the hard times to come.
• Abolish private ownership of our landbase. We are eternal tenants of creation and must mirror this in our communities, if we wish to maximise harmony, fulfillment and sustainability. Recommended legal structures abolish speculation by residents selling off community property piecemeal to others lacking community involvement. Land is always the sole source of life, hence land ownership is inescapably life ownership and when one owns or controls the life of another against their will, conflict will inevitably ensue. Individual input and resource creation is fairly recompensed.
• Work with planning authorities where possible (e.g. TAN6 in Wales), go retrospective where the suits try and keep us in our cages. Regenerate the deserts created by centuries of over-exploitation, greed and debt to become fruitful, wild and protecting. Devote ourselves to minimising unnecessary toil, eliminate servitude and rediscover the vast potentials of the human condition, half divine and half mortal. Reach for the light, discard the toys, desperation and lazy habits we use to stifle the emptiness.
• Reconnect with the dead and the divine. Acknowledge the true depth and breadth of creation as recognised by every human culture but our own. Cast aside the dismal myths of meaningless chance and the dusty husks of corporate religion to make way for the fertile, fruitful and fulfilling inheritance that lies shimmering beneath the mystery of existence.
• Evolve or perish.

Nuts & Bolts:

The income to create all this comes from rents paid as time, money or in kind, for use of community property. Although homes, shops etc. are legally rented from the landholding body (IPS co-operative or private trust), all rent-paying residents are also voting members of the landholding body, both tenant and landlord, and as such responsible for setting rents, deciding how rents are spent to maintain a pleasant place to live. e.g. purchase materials for construction of the co-op’s homes and other buildings, pay wages for that construction, raise money through loan stock and much more. The community can then provide communal facilities such as tractors, a launderette, school or local bus service and community workshops and meeting spaces etc.

In time such crutches will prove unnecessary, but we have deeply embedded mindsets from centuries of owning as power, which will take time to unlearn.

With authorised planning permission, residents also become eligible for local housing allowance. This can be used to subsidise permanent public housing, with a reducing cost over time, and is a more ethical, efficient and responsible way of spending public money than continually pouring large amounts into the bottomless pockets of private landlords, speculators and bankers, as is currently enforced. No need to enslave yourself to a lifetime of mortgage payments to feed psychopathic banking institutions.

The aim is to redistribute our weight over this land. Even today 92% of the UK remains uninhabited. 70% of the nation is still owned by the richest 0.87% of the population, with the next wealthiest 3.4% owning a further 23% of this country.(source) We are still herded into urban reservations resulting from historic brutalities we have almost forgotten, yet we live with the profound consequences daily.

There is more than enough room for us all, and we will not stick out like corporate fantasy eco-towns. No system of production is more efficient than small-scale horticulture and mixed farming, and wherever we go we bring the means to restore the land we inhabit, providing we put our minds, time and spirit into it. Why reduce yourself to being merely part of a system insanely focused on consuming everything in sight? Why not enjoy a variety of skills and occupations throughout the weeks and months, work, play, be, eat, think, dance and more alone and together as life unfolds.

We need not abandon the best of modern life, only the worst. The work before us is immense, but not overwhelming. Through co-operation, humanity has achieved anything it set its intent to. Only through fear and relentless competition have we reduced ourselves to the tawdry, violent and suicidal mayhem we now find ourselves increasingly having to endure.