Before she began really reaching out, Noel thought through a possible iteration of what Faggtropolis Collective could look like from birth through its early phases of life. She wanted to have some idea of what she was trying to enlist people for, but she had to balance this with wanting the details to be a truly collective and co-creative process. She tried to paint her mental image in broad strokes:
In the beginning, there are some people and some of them own residential properties in or around the same general area. The people come together and meet with intention to discuss forming a permaculture collective. These meetings begin as informal group discussions once every two weeks. As things start to solidify, they begin to resource, bringing more people into the group, as necessary. People come and go from the group over the months that follow. At a certain point, the group stabilizes. With a stable group of founding members, the group assesses its resources and determines what other resources might be necessary to design and implement a coordinated permaculture-guided garden/landscape utilizing all of the properties the founders have to contribute.
At or around this phase the group of founders founds an organization together that they all have an equal share in responsibility for. At the same time or soon thereafter a rough draft design for the properties is created. The founders create and implement a contractual agreement regarding the use of the properties and each of their part in the organization, as well as what to do should any of them wish to leave or change their role.
With the organization formed, everyone’s basic rights and responsibilities as a founding member of the collective in place, properties on which to grow, and a plan for those properties the founders move on to the funding phase. So far everyone involved has been donating their time, and where there are costs, they are shared. One promising way to get this thing off the ground at this point would be to start applying for grants to seed fund the organization. These may be grants for either nonprofit or for-profit organizations, depending on what the founders end up deciding together.
In either event, the seed funding is to implement the initial plan, as well as building out a tracking system and database so that the organization knows what food it has (or will have) and can build on to itself with future properties. The plan implementation and computer system design become the pilot for the larger collective. It is likely some salaries, plants, and equipment will be what the grant or other initial funding must cover – and potentially for more than one year. By the end of that first year or so, the founders have their initial properties implemented, and they have a system that is ready to add more properties. The initial properties are not yet producing much, though there are predictions for when various things will become available and it is not too far off.
At this point, it may be that grant funding is applied for to buy another property – perhaps one that is a little larger that can serve to house a greenhouse/nursery-type operation and larger-scale food forest. If this is the next step, then design and implementation of the food forest and getting that property going may come before finding more urban properties to add to the collective at various levels. Another possible rout would be to move directly at that point to establishing how public membership would work in this collective, along with various engagement and commitment levels. For people working for the collective full time, or who own properties that are fully dedicated to the collective, and likely some others, they would be a part of the collective in the employee sense. Another form of membership could be community membership – in these cases there would not be any say in collective decision making etc., but these members would support the collective in various ways and to various degrees. Some members may choose only to give money. Some may give money in exchange for permaculture landscaping services. Or perhaps those things could happen somewhat simultaneously.
The collective could potentially end up in a place where it was self-sustaining by donation for food, donation for permaculture landscaping, and donation for classes. And, the collective could be feeding not only itself, but also its surrounding community. When the collective is functioning at this level, growth could be huge. Growth ought to be cautious, and ideally everything about the collective would be open-sourced. At a certain point the collective may choose to stop enlisting new properties and instead move on to another venture for those properties – like beginning an in-collective solar energy arm, for example, or adding in a store and some healing arts offerings – and/or it could focus on helping others start their own seeds.
The possibilities seemed quite endless. As it turned out, it would take about five years for Noel’s own seed to get to the point where it was functioning at a somewhat sustainable level, ready for some new growth and evolution.