Introducing the newly formed Camas Winter/Mac House team – pictured from left to right and horizontally – Davie, Eilidh, Cat and Emma!
We’re living and working together as a pilot of the new Mac Houses project for the Iona Community. This includes helping out in a few communities in the north of Glasgow and following up on some work for the island centres, while living together as an intentional community.
The four of us know each other from working together at the Camas Centre and we want to do ‘Camas while not at Camas’. It’s too cold and stormy to reasonably expect youth and community groups to come down the track during the winter months so we’re hoping to bring some of the essence of Camas to the mainland. Building intentional residential community around shared values of social and environmental justice clearly isn’t confined to the Ross of Mull or the Isle of Iona.
A core ambition of ‘Mac on the Road’ (the project accompanying the MacLeod Centre’s retrofit) is to explore the work of the Mac Centre on the mainland, including how small groups of young adults might be supported towards intentional community and living out the values of the Iona Community. We’re hoping this pilot will give an idea of how this could work.
Our winter plans have three main strands: supporting our host communities, intentional community living and to support other pieces of work the Community is involved in.
Support to our host communities.
We’ve partnered with churches in Milton, Possilpark, Maryhill and Ruchill – the “North Glasgow Cluster”. It would be daft to imagine we could properly help out by inventing new projects over the months we’re living here. Rather we’ll be lending hands, experience, skills, chat, listening and home-baking to existing projects, groups and organisations.
Living in intentional community
Living in intentional community according to the principles of the Camas Community, while living in Maryhill. We’ll be enjoying shared meals and having weekly reflections on the themes of our Camas mission statement. We’ll be encouraging each other to live in line with our social and environmental values; intentional living allows us to support and hold each other accountable to these values. Many of you will spot the echoes and parallels to the Small Columban Houses and Columban Stairs the Community has previously fostered.
Other Community activities
As mentioned, this is an opportunity to pilot and audit our experiences of the “Mac Houses” initiative. We’ll also be helping to evaluate the previous Camas season, planning for the next season, all while deepening and expanding the connections Camas has with groups on the mainland.
We’re still finding our feet… However, we’ve got plenty to look forward to over the winter and have already experienced plenty of support in the forms of people’s time, experience, furniture, enthusiasm and warmth. We’re hopeful that we’re getting started on something really valuable.
Davie, Eilidh, Cat and Emma.
