Book Reviews

Diggers & Dreamers 98/99
- The Guide To Communal Living

D&D Publications £9.50 ISBN 0951494546

Squall 16, Summer 1998, pg. 46.

If you’ve been considering joining an existing alternative community or starting your own, Diggers & Dreamers: A Guide to Communal Living is a good place to start. It’s a combination of articles raising issues of communal living far beyond the ‘who’s had my milk?’ variety, and an impressive directory of existing communities and support organisations.

If you thought the idea of communal living went out with tank-tops; that any such communities surviving in the 90s must be occupied by diehard hippies/religious freaks or that such a life means a cop-out carefree life of ease, D&D will put you straight. The publication is littered with a healthy dose of realism and humour bourne out of the experience of its editors and contributors.

The current edition features articles including a Rough Guide stylee cycle around modern Kibbutzim; a research-based exploration of the growth of ‘intentional communities’ in Britain; a piece on a Scottish community planning to create their own burial ground; another on the Pure Genius land squat in Wandsworth; and How To Do It giving sound advice on setting up a community. The articles are interspersed with relevant book reviews and humorous bits and bobs.

Communities listed in the directory write their own biographies and the editors’ hands-off approach to this section of the publication make each group’s intentions and lifestyles very clear. A surprising and fascinating read.

Back issues of Diggers & Dreamers and a variety of related titles are available from Edge of Time, a marketing and distribution co-op which has grown out of D&D: BCM Edge, London WC1N 3XX.

Sam Beale