Actually his early designs were intended to be mobile
At least possible to deploy via large airship. I saw the early drafts (they were pretty basic, and slightly wobbly ductus I’d say).
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Small land-based project in West Kent
This is an example of a West Kent project, based on some donated land, currently being run on a shoe string and trying to ever broaden its appeal to keep going. The organiser Laurence Snook is doing a great job, but it’s been hard to get a lot of the local community involved.
http://www.communigrow.org (‘learning, teaching, and sharing up to 5 acres available for cultivation as an educational charity, providing learning and land based experience’).
We currently provide:
- over 3 acres of cultivated 'market' garden for volume food production
- an acre of developing natural habitat
- a field 'education centre' of solar tunnel, protected space and 'pocket gardens' for schools and groups free of charge
- voluntary work experience for our supporters, all local families and individuals as a 'Kent Shed' project for wellbeing (click here)
- a growing team of voluntary amateur gardeners to provide the skills and knowledge of mostly organic or better (permaculture) growing
- planned expansion of our resources on site to provide all-weather study centre, plant propagation and further skill resources in our 'Field Kitchen' and off-site in the communities of Larkfield, Ditton and Maidstone to run workshops and lead discussion of low carbon living.
- further work includes accredited training and apprenticship, new conservation study and environment care through use of appropriate technology,
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Thanks for comments - and any help/advice for grant application
Thanks for comments everyone. I’ve got a busy few days but will respond when I get some time
I’ve been collaborating on another nomadic project that is very similar to what Jay is working on - I’ll start another project on the platform to give some details shortly.
I’ve been working on a grant application to support development of the project - the deadline is immanent so any quick thoughts / pointers would be most useful.
Got to sum all this up in a few hundred words + describe where the project should be in a year and what would be the deliverables (learnings to share to help get more new entrants into land based enterprises)
Wondering what to say about where the project will be in a year -
Hard to say exactly where things would be by then - based on experiences with previous projects maybe not far - could of just formed a team,figured out governance structure and working practices and possibly funding model.
Alternatively (and often I like to be optimistic) If everything went very smoothly/fast could have a bit of land in 6 months and be engaged in food production by the time the funded period ends.
Not sure which story to tell of where it will be or if I should map a range of possible trajectories (all within a very limited number of words!!)
Stuff I was thinking was to highlight that the project is somewhat unique as anyone investing or working will have a stake in the ownership/governance (be part of the commons) unlike in many other models where people are either hands off investors or renting growers or employees without any direct control.
Deliverables no matter what the trajectory would be assessments-
which channels found people that were interested - different social media, print media, events, real life networking
once people were engaged what channels strengthened participation in project governance/development from the demographic that are engaged - sms/email/meetings/snailmail/social media/video conferencing
Also looking at the demographics of those that express interest or start to participate in different aspects of the project - age/location (rural/urban)/other stuff?? education??? Who are the people interested??
Anything else people can suggest for deliverables…
Who is the proposal going to?
If you don’t know them personally or it is a goverment/EU thing I would recommend to make sure the buzzword bingo (du jour!) will be completed. If you can - cram in what you really want to do between the lines as well. Perhaps have very tidy diagram that get some info across (but mostly that you can be trusted to make tidy diagrams for deliverables). Sorry for sounding cynical. In my opinion the art of the thing is to manage to cover both angles.
Many funding agencies have the aim to “kick lose” another 5-10 unit of money for each invested. You may want to communicate something in that direction (generation of real economy/ option not to have to pay this or that expense).
One angle I could imagine as well is to do a bit of intercultural work on top of the actual content by doing seminars for the (many) newly arrived refugees. I think that wouldn’t hurt.
About the development - very few Good Things you can do today will show a ROI (that you can measure reliably and quantitatively) any time soon. Especially on a budget. With immaterial things, like learning, this may be a bit better. Perhaps you could also look through the available citizen science projects - there are a bunch of cool ones in the UK! Citizen Science: Research You can Do | Podcasts
There was a project that uses an app to make fine happiness maps - that got me thinking perhaps you can find a project that tries to work out new metrics for a “sensible economy”. I thought LSE had something of the sort hidden away somewhere. You might be able to piggyback onto them somehow? I know we have members from LSE here but I forgot who it was…
Hey Darren
Some great idea’s. 
It might be worth considering somewhere in Scotland. Crofting land is relatively cheap, and you don’t need planning permission for agricultural buildings. However it does mean that you’ll have to be prepared for scottish winters…
From a USA permaculture perspective, Paul Wheaton has created some interesting articles about his experiences, part 1, part 2, and part 3.
One of the most important things you can do, to avoid future problems and arguments, is to create proper governance in the legal structures you use, but it’s got to be built in from the start.
@Darren, let me know when you’ll next be in London, and i’ll introduce you to one friend who’s been having to deal with this sort of problem.
@trythis, Building structures out of shipping containers is fun.
There are all kinds of benefits and drawbacks to using them.
Insulation will be important, and it is possible to do this in a sustainable manner, but you’ve got to watch for trapping moisture between the insulation and the metal of the walls, floor, and ceiling, as this can cause longer-term problems with rusting where it cannot be easily repaired. De-humidifier’s are your friend.
Use some form of sacrificial material with a good electrical contact and you’ll reduce this sort of problem. There’s lots of advice from people who maintain metal-hulled boats.
You can buy shipping containers cheaply, but you need to check them out first, as some of them can be pretty trashed internally, which will increase the work you need to do to make them usable. One group i know had to add an extra month to their schedule, because of the extra cleaning they had to do. They realised that if they’d spent that month working for money, the’d have been able to earn enough to buy two containers that would have been in the same state that the container they were converting finished with. 20-20 hindsight.
You’ll also need to look at the internal support structures. They may look like big pieces of Lego, but there are specific ways that they can be stacked to get the optimum support for the height you want. Stacking them differently is possible, but you’ll need to think carefully about how you do this.
The metal surface on the top has very little support for weight. It’s the internal ribbing that gives the support.
Also if you have access to a flatbed vehicle with an built-in crane that can lift a container, then you’ll be able to move them around more easily, as well as stack them up to 2 containers high. You’ll need someone with an HGV license, but this sort of vehicle will be worth it in the long run.
@Jaycousins, i’m still following your progress with the Hexahome designs…
Hexayurt-based workshop-building’s are one of my long-term projects…
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Found something
while diddling around Nepal project:
Forest knowledge management - http://fkims.org/client/data/station_info?stationId=6
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Any update?
Hi Darren,
Did you get a result from the grant application? Or is anything else in the pipeline at the moment? I met you at Barn Camp this year and would be interested in getting involved.
Craig
Upddate
Hello Craig,
Nice to see you here 
The grant did not come through, but an application went in recently for a bigger grant, which involved more detail and putting a financial plan together, which was interesting.
I’ve spent the summer mainly focused on other projects. Although I’ve still been touting this idea a fair bit. Now got interest from a number of people who say they are willing to stump up some capital for land and some people interested in being involved on the ground. Guess its getting beyond time interested parties should all meet up. You would, of course, be welcome.
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Wisdom tooth
Hi Darren,
How are things progressing now? I live in Cirencester at the moment, so closer to the Gloucestershire places. Hurry up before we all die of old age. 
Progress…
There has been a fair amount of behinds the scene progress.
A group of friends who were at the early stages of developing a land/housing co-op have decided they don’t want to plough the capital they have into the down payment on a house with land and have a mortgage to pay, and that they are interested in this model. We’ve been having meetings and started looking for land that could be bought outright, although we havent found anything everyone has been excited by yet.
I’m not sure exactly how this is going to progress. We have been talking a lot about how project governance is going to work, how other people would be able to get involved etc. It looks as if the project will be something like what is suggested in these posts.
I did try messaging you a few months back via this platform (you should have received an email) but didn’t get a reply… I’ll try again, maybe check your spam filter?
Check out the POC21 crowd!
Hi Darren,
curious about how this initiative is going? I was reminded of it during a recent presentation at UDK in Berlin (@Susa and I are running a course on product design there this semester). There were two people there involved in driving the POC21 experiment and they presented their new project: Sourcing and settling a huge plot of land between Berlin and Hamburg. In the aftermath of the POC21 five week experiment they questioned the wisdom of such a huge investment in such an ephemeral initiative. So they decided to go for something permanent building on what they learned. Apparently some well off person is donating land to the intiative. They are actively looking for people who want to be involved in setting the new place up. If you want I could connect you with Kari, one of the presenters?
Progress
Things are still progressing. It has once again transforemed somewhat, merged with another related project. There are weekly meetings. As the various, now merged, projects started with different groups of people with somewhat different ideas and goals, there has been a fair amount of work on aligning aims, objectives & visions.
Also a lot of work on organisational structures - we are looking to have one organisation to own the land and another to manage activities on the land. The owning organisation will be acting in a, generally, hands-off capacity as a long term guardian of the land - protecting it as a commons and from future abuse. The terms of the lease to the management organisation will empower the owning organisation to revoke the lease if the land is being abused.
If the management organisation goes bankrupt the land is not at risk.
We have capital available and have been looking at lots of pieces of land. So far nothing that feels right, but the search continues.
It would be great to make a connection with the land project the POC21 crew are doing in Germany - I caught your tweet about https://twitter.com/openstateber - I guess this is the center of the poc21 land project? Could not see any mention on their twitter feed or website.
Their http://roc21.net/ refugee project also looks interesting - related to stuff you were working on @Jaycousins