“Depending on how and why you approach Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, you might think of it first as a biodynamic farming and gardening training center, or as an example of intentional community living, as a residence including people with “developmental” or “cognitive” disabilities, a local organic food producer, or as a workshop and conference site. Perhaps you would see it as an ideal place to help students of varying ages integrate ideas about sustainability, social renewal, local sustainable agriculture, healthy lifestyles, watershed management, sustainable architecture, and entrepreneurial partnerships. You might see it as a studio for artists, weavers, potters and mosaic art, or an ideal place to volunteer for a day, a year or a lifetime.”
Overview
Mission
Our Mission is to create and maintain a land-based community together with adults with special needs. Inspired by Anthroposophy, members of the community support one another to contribute to the wider society through biodynamic agriculture, social, craft, cultural, and educational endeavors.
Our village is home to people of all ages: single adults and families, young people who come to volunteer for a year or more, and participating elders. While all share active social idealism and an intention to be in this community, abilities and capacities vary. Each person adds to the richness of interdependent living.
At Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, community members live together in houses throughout the village, fostering relationships based on respect and mutual support.
Village members enjoy an abundance of cultural opportunities that encourage the discovery and development of talents, capabilities and interests. In the village, a diverse program of concerts, lectures, courses, dramatic events, interest groups, art exhibits and festivals enrich life and are occasions for interaction with the local community and beyond. Community members shop, deliver products, volunteer, engage locally and enjoy libraries, and many local and regional venues and events. The Camphill Academy provides opportunities for college level education for those wishing to advance their knowledge of social therapy and anthroposophy.
History
Camphill Village Kimberton Hills (CVKH) was founded in 1972 when Karin Myrin, heir to the Myrin estate in Kimberton, Pennsylvania, gave the estate as a gift so that a new Camphill community could be created. The Camphill movement had begun in 1940 in the United Kingdom, created by a Viennese pediatrician, Karl König, who specialized in the curative education of children with developmental disabilities. König and a group around him fled Vienna in 1938 when the Nazis occupied Austria, and regrouped in the UK and eventually at an estate on the Camphilll estate near Aberdeen, Scotland, where they established life-sharing communities dedicated to curative education.
Many new Camphill communities were created in the next decades throughout the UK and in other countries – there are now over one hundred worldwide, in more than 20 countries on four continents.
How did Karl König know the Myrins? Their connection was through Anthroposophy, created in Europe before the world wars by Rudolf Steiner (1861– 1925). Steiner’s writing and lectures have had widespread influence, perhaps best known through the Waldorf School movement, and in many realms of life: agriculture, medicine, social forms and care, architecture, therapies, movement art, literature, education, religion, finance, social organization, and others. Karl König was an anthroposophist and a student of the writings of Rudolf Steiner, though they never met. Alarik Myrin, who purchased the land in Kimberton Hills in the late 1930s, was also a serious student of Anthroposophy, interested especially in Steiner’s ideas about biodynamic agriculture; Myrin’s mission was to introduce biodynamic agriculture to America. The connection between König and Myrin was through Carlo Pietzner, a member of König’s Viennese circle who was active in creating new Camphill communities in the UK and in the U.S.
The small group that came from other Camphill communities to found CVKH were anthroposophists, as are many current members of the community. The practice of Anthroposophy is much in evidence at CVKH; however, it is not a requirement for membership in the community and community members are not all anthroposophists.
The Anthroposophical Society of America characterizes Anthroposophy as “a discipline of research as well as a path of knowledge, service, personal growth, and social engagement. Introduced and developed by Rudolf Steiner; it is concerned with all aspects of human life, spirit and humanity’s evolution and well-being.”
If you want to learn more about the role of Anthroposophy on the environmental movement, have a look at Echo-Alchemy by Dan McKanan.
Here is a list of Camphill communities.
Governance
Decision making at CVKH is primarily by consensus. The household is the core unit; each household consists of the householder(s) (often a couple with children), several villagers (individuals with intellectual disabilities), and several short-term coworkers (volunteers who come usually for one or two years). No one who lives in the house is paid a salary; their needs are met based on a budget set annually, including food, clothing, lodgings, vacation funds, and incidentals. The annual budgets are proposed by the household and then discussed in the neighborhoods – clusters of three or four households. The recommendations of the neighborhoods, on matters of policy as well as budget, are taken to the Finance Group and then to the Management Group for approval. The recommendations of the neighborhoods, on matters of policy as well as budget, are taken to the to the Management Group for approval or re-working with more input form the neighborhoods or impacted entities. If necessary, these recommendations go back to the neighborhoods and the households for changes.
There are many other groups, each with a mandate as to what matters it can settle by itself and those which need approval by other groups. There is the Land Group, the Admissions Group, the Maintenance Group, the Applied Arts Group, the Development Group, and others! Important issues of community-wide interest can be the subject of specially called “Open Meetings.”
There are a few paid positions, for example office manager, accountant, maintenance associate, and Development staff, but policy decisions and community agreements are made through discussion and consensus by the members of the community.
There is a board of directors, as required by law since CVKH is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. The board meets five times each year, approves the budget in March of each year for the fiscal year starting on April 1, and has fiduciary and legal responsibility for the organization. The executive director of CVKH is chosen from within the community by the community, approved by the board, and receives no compensation. The position rotates as needed.