| MALWEN: A New Queer Intentional Community! Article first appeared in the July edition of Global Radical Faerie News Contributor: Mike Kear |
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| Photo Credit: Malwen Malwen is the name of a collective of faeries who have been slowly working away at setting up a queer land based intentional community in Cymru, more widely known as Wales, a nation on the west of the island of Albion (Great Britain). Those that are involved include: Epiphany (aka Mike), Sparkling Water (aka Mary), Blossom, Mackerel Sky (aka Tom), Greenheart (aka Iro) and Andromeda. All of us are passionate about building community and our vision “to nurture queer, interconnected rural enterprises, within a respectful, eco-friendly community, helping people to thrive through land-based livelihoods.” What does Malwen mean? It means Snail in Cymraeg (Welsh). It’s a surprising yet powerful and relevant emblem for our queer-eco-project. They exhibit behavior and physiology that can be seen as queer, such as being asexual or hermaphrodites, and are resilient in the face of hostile conditions. Malwod are often misunderstood and demonized by gardeners, in much the same way as queer people have been in our human society. Malwod conjure up a questioning of modern thinking and reveal the neglected, and often under-appreciated, queer universe we live in. Many, many people in Albion have been dreaming over the decades, and sharing those dreams, of finding land and creating intentional community, a sanctuary, a place where we can build a long term and secure connection, where we can nurture ourselves and honor the land and all the beings that call that place home. Malwen now believes we have found the land to manifest the dream in the physical world. We hope it will be the start of many manifestations in Albion, and we hope to be able to support other projects in their visions to find land. What is our Mission? We are creating a nurturing, queer, land-based community that includes housing using low impact and eco-efficient buildings, and land based livelihoods using permaculture/regenerative agriculture. At our core we see ourselves as being one part of the eco-system, helping steward the land alongside all other nature doing likewise, creating a diverse and wild ecology as is possible. The ethos of Malwen is to empower the people that live and work there — and visit — to grow towards their full potential, knowing that they have a secure home and a base for their livelihood which is connected to, supported by, and honors the land. It will be a place that is very open to hosting, involving and building strong relationships with non-permanent residents, our neighbors, volunteers and visitors. |
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| Photo Credit: Malwen Where have we found land? We’ve found some beautiful land in North Pembrokeshire called Hes’cwm Isaf, meaning Lower Valley, with land that goes down to the sea, to a very quiet little beach only accessible on foot. It feels so very special and a place that wants to hold us. The place is modest in size; currently there is a small farmhouse, plus a stone cow shed and an old stone mill that we plan to re-purpose providing us with more facilities, alongside other low impact, eco structures. The water source is a fresh-water spring. There is a very small woodland with a lovely stream running through it very near the buildings, small fields for food growing, and larger pastures for continuing the smallholding, extending the woods, re-wilding, future food growing and camping. Overall there is 40 acres of land (approximately 16 hectares). The views from the land are gorgeous. Very rarely do affordable coastal properties become available in Cymru like this, and even fewer with land going down to a quiet, sheltered beach. We have been visiting the land many times, and in a very surprise moment when Mike first met the owner on the land, he turned and offered his hand to accept our offer of £780,000. Mike was stunned, we now actually have an opportunity to bring the dream alive here! The land here is diverse, there are dry stone walls, ancient hedges, pastures, grass land, scrub. It is not perfect and there will be many challenges ahead. We are hoping for a fuller ecological survey soon, and will need to plan how to live with Balsam, Knotweed and Bracken, as advice so far sought is that we can live quite harmoniously with them, we just need to talk and hear their stories. On our last visit, we were greeted by four rare birds in the corvid family called Choughs or Brân Arthur in Cymraeg. These birds are steeped in legend, they represent the soul of the legedary King Arthur in his departure on the battle field. They are endangered due to habitat loss, as they depend on a healthy and edgy coast scapes full of life, much like us humans of Malwen. We perceived their presence here as adding to the call we feel from this land; if the Chough community feel at home here, then we will too, as long as we remember our connections and obligations to the other-than human queer friends. As they wheeled and schlooped and cried out over the craggy rocks and tufted fields, their fingered wings stretched out to us in a cautious welcome, “Croeso adref malwod bodau dynol! Gadewchi ni weld beth allwch chi ei wneud!” Perhaps in the soul of Arthur that these birds carry lie ties to our ancient and mystical queer past… We understand that the land has not had much in the way of petro-chemicals for a decade or more. Some care will be needed to help bring it back into balance and we hope to seek some significant grants to enable us to do some of this work. We believe that the property, with minimal further investment, could support 3 to 5 people living there. |
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| Photo Credit: Malwen So what is it that we are actually manifesting here? At the start of 2025, we formed a Charitable Community Benefit Society called Malwen Queer Community Trust, and have been setting up the governance and process to support the work of the Trust (current trustees are Mike, Mary and Blossom). The Trust will own the site and will give long leases of the land and property to different small, autonomous parts of the community. Each part will be designed to be small, manageable and structurally independent of each other to build resilience. The relationships between the community elements and the Trust will be designed with care for the long term, with simplicity and to help meet the charitable aims of the Trust. The first stages of the project will include a small housing cooperative which will be responsible for the running of the permanent accommodation and will work in partnership with the Trust using low impact building techniques, renovating the existing buildings to be ecologically efficient. Alongside this, we will develop in close consultation with the local community: + a land-based enterprise that is based on regenerative agricultural/permaculture. It will supply food to the community, the local area and more specialist produce further afield; + a small campsite and further guest accommodation (for example: with a yurt, a cabin, a tree house), providing accommodation for visitors, non-permanent residents and volunteers; + additional land based enterprises including woodland creation/coppice; craft-making/artist ventures and specialist food growing; + a small people center with its main focus on providing a fully inclusive space for queer and activist groups to run small events and retreats throughout the year. Initially some events may be run by Malwen itself, but most events are likely to be run by other organizations. Once the first stage has been established, we hope to develop either on the site here or neighboring the site: + establish a small dedicated space within the local community to offer a respite care facility for the elderly and those with terminal illness; + a small dedicated rehabilitation space and program that supports those looking for treatment for addiction; + a space for activists to recuperate and recharge. We’ve been doing a variety of consultations at festivals, fairs, prides and online and want to connect into the local village when the purchase is complete, ensuring that we are relevant to the needs of the queer and local community. We look forward to building, growing, designing, dancing, swimming,crafting, laying, playing, hosting, connecting, cooking, skipping,watching, hugging, working, relaxing, celebrating on the land together! Come get involved or support from afar! |
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| Photo Credit: Malwen How can you help, you ask? Albion queer folk, including Albion Radical Faeries, have been waiting a long time for a queer community land project to manifest and there is no better time than now. This project is part of a greater global manifestation of queer community based projects; a web we are building together. We want to step up into this vision. Please help us and send out positive energy, remember Malwen in your prayers, and please remember this work in your ceremonies. In a more pragmatic way, we very much welcome financial investments. We have secured the funding for close to the purchase price of £780,000. We need significant additional funds to develop the project. Our next target is for an additional £200,000. We hope to raise this with Loan Stock (where people can choose the length of time of their investment and their interest rate, between 0-3%). This will enable us to start the process of working with the land and repurposing the stone buildings. We will soon have a completed business plan, Loan Stock Agreement and investor pack to share with you. Next steps? Help us prove that we can do this! If you’d like to help enable the project financially, please reach out to us via email: mike@malwen.cymru and we can arrange a call or a time to speak by video online, where you can ask further questions and get to meet us. We can share with you the business plan and the Loan Stock investor pack. Thank you for reading this far. The task that lies ahead is ambitious and we are under no illusion that it will take hard work, but we believe the land at Hes’cwm Isaf in West Cymru will hold us. With the ongoing careful development and support, ensuring each phase is financially self sustainable and resilient, we will build a robust community for future generations of queer folk to thrive. We look forward to hopefully seeing you on the land at some point in the not too distant future. 🌱 Mike Mike has been passionate about building community for 35 years, first involved with the Edward Carpenter Community and living in an ECC community house. Whilst in London, he was engaged with his local allotment gardening community for nearly 20 years and the Radical Faeries of Albion since 2016, having lost count of the number of gatherings attended in the UK, Europe and beyond. Before working as a freelance photographer he had a professional career including Project Management, Marketing Strategy, Market Analysis, Financial Planning &Strategy. He has been living in a 30 year old intentional community in West Wales for the last 3 years, a great university of learning, reconnecting with his Welsh heritage whilst developing Malwen, building connections and looking for land with the wider Malwen collective, where queers living in and visiting can finally call home. |
| Click here for the original article in GRFN. |