Editor’s note: Guest writer Justin writes of his experience in a natural building workshop in 2023.
When I discovered that Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage offers a natural building workshop, I was thoroughly captivated. I’m deeply interested in sustainable architecture as an artistic medium, enabling marginalized populations to achieve abundant lifestyles with deep, reciprocal connections to the land and community.
So–a workshop promising exposure to a wide range of inexpensive, accessible, natural materials and processes? Sign me up! Plus, I’ve had stars in my eyes looking at DR for over a decade. The spiritual alienation, environmental degradation, economic exploitation and social atomization of Western capitalist culture has left me hungry for an alternative. And here’s a community of folks doing their best to embody a healthy, inclusive, sustainable alternative close to home. This is great! We can save the world with this stuff! I’ll admit, my expectations for the workshop were pretty high.
As promised, the workshop offered hands-on experience with earth bag foundations, straw bale walls, and cob building. This may seem like a lot of technical ground to cover in five days. But a little guided practice goes a long way in 1) replacing the overwhelm in confronting a new building process with a sense of empowerment, and 2) demonstrating a range of beautiful projects using these skills with tangible applications in the community.
We opened ourselves to what’s possible using these processes, rather than attaining technical mastery. This workshop could be thought of as an entry point; an invitation to practice skills we can perfect in our own communities, a gateway to knowledge we can continue to research on our own terms.
To that end, our hands-on experience was supplemented with guided tours showcasing built environments demonstrating a surprisingly wide range of applications for green building in both Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth Farms communities. There is freedom here to treat building projects not as commercial products that must function in a prescribed manner forever, but instead as laboratories for innovation, with space for continual repurposing to meet the evolving needs of a dynamic community. And not all of these experiments have worked as planned.
Being shown what has and hasn’t endured in up to 25 years of Midwest humidity and weather, and having frank discussions about evolving strategies to fine-tune building science to better achieve design goals, was invaluable in advancing my understanding of natural building. Being given permission to try new things, to fail, and encouragement to try again was tremendously empowering.
And to top it off, we benefited from the widely varied perspectives, experience and design sensibilities of three different instructors, each of whom I came to respect personally, as educators and as creative individuals.
This brings me to an unexpected value of this workshop that has me keen to write this testimonial for you. I experienced real and profound intimacy from my experience that I’ve come to realize is sorely lacking in my life outside DR, in the larger world. Again, this may seem like a tall order for a five-day experience. But our instructors, and perhaps our specific group of workshop participants, demonstrated deep commitment to creating a safe space for sharing.
Part of this was by design, and reinforced by our daily schedule. Every morning, we were invited to share our physical, emotional and intellectual selves taking turns in a circle, before again taking turns leading group stretches as equals. One of our three incredible instructors even volunteered her time at morning coffee to provide an opportunity for anyone interested to come and ask questions about the community or about natural building before getting started with all of that each morning.
We shared excellent home-cooked meals, many of which evolved into essential venues for decompression, externalizing our shared experience in the workshops, and good-natured debate spiced with plenty of jokes and just having fun together. And, of course, there’s something alchemical about the bonds of fellowship shared by people mixing clay, sand and straw together with their bare feet.
I have never allowed myself such a high degree of vulnerability, nor shared so much of my ideas and feelings with perfect strangers, in such a short amount of time. I should reassure you that your degree of social engagement is up to you. As an easily overstimulated person myself, this is an important point: the instructors respected our limits and our boundaries as a foundational aspect of creating that safe space I enjoyed. I came to see the social engagements built into the workshop as invitations to connect and grow together, rather than prescriptive obligations.
I should also mention that not everyone is perfect, and mistakes were made in the pursuit of fostering an inclusive environment and the celebration of diversity that this community aspires to. But as our conflicts played out, I became convinced that the individuals involved really care and are committed to doing the work of getting better in a way that makes me love this community all the more. I’m sorry not to be able to give the specificity that I value in compelling testimonials here, but I also want to do my best to respect individual privacy and autonomy.
As my first in-person encounter with intentional community, the Natural Building Workshop was a window I could look through to see how this remarkable village works through periods of growth and of conflict. And though I suspect that other programs offered by DR (the visitor program and work exchange, for example) are designed to provide a more intentional and complete picture of community life here, there is tremendous value in uncurated experience. It’s what the community shows in its actions that speak loudest about its lived ideals.
Dancing Rabbit has shown itself to be a very public-facing ecovillage with a host of outreach programs belying its small size. And I can tell you that, although it’s always a work in progress, the project of cultivating inclusive, non-exploitative relationships here and sharing these with the wider world is real.
Are you interested in a retreat that offers hands-on experience? If you’re adventurous enough to sign up and get there, courageous enough to give of yourself to the people you meet there, and if you approach the experiment of living in an ecovillage with an open mind, you might open yourself up to some invaluable personal growth, as I did.
I feel empowered to pursue healthier relationships in my community and personal life. And I feel inspired to continue my journey with natural building, too. I’m grateful to the community that made this experience for me possible, and I can’t recommend their Natural Building Workshop enough. It is no overstatement to say it has been one of the most transformative and inspiring adventures of my life so far.
Upcoming DR Events
Ecovillage weekends: 8/7-10 and 10/16-19
Cob oven workshop: 8/21-23
Singing Rabbit: 8/28-30
Visitor program: 9/13-27
Justin Rulo-Sabé holds a BFA in Art History and Interdisciplinary Arts. He taught himself to rebuild old houses, and he rents and manages affordable apartments. He has also designed and built structures for Missouri Botanical Garden and Earthdance Farms. He is a full-time wage laborer, and also works as a handyman. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, writing, woodworking and printmaking.