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Living In Community: Sussex

Sun, Nov 15, 10:00 AM UTC · West Hill Hall, Compton Avenue, Brighton and Hove, Brighton, UK
by @dandelion.events · indexed 4d ago
Merged into a curated record: Living In Community: Sussex
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{
  "$type": "community.lexicon.calendar.event",
  "createdAt": "2026-08-20T11:18:35Z",
  "description": "# Living In Community  \n\nFind your tribe and explore different forms of community-living in Sussex\n\n\"Community living\" isn't one thing. It might mean a shared house with three friends. A co-housing scheme with fifty. A formal co-op with legal structures and shared ownership, or something much looser and less official. It might mean a community garden, or a project like The Place at Seven Dials, rather than living under one roof at all.\n\nLiving In Community is a day to explore that whole spectrum — what's actually out there, what it takes to set each kind up, and what it's really like to live it. Whether you've never heard the term \"co-living\" before, or you've spent years building a community house from scratch, this day is for you.\n\nThere's no obligation to attend the whole day  come for an hour, come for all of it.\n\n \n\n## How the day unfolds\n\n**Morning: finding your people**  \nWe start slow and social. Expect speed-friending, conversation prompts, and short lightning talks from people already living this way — different models, different journeys. Each talk is followed by a proper round of appreciation, not just applause. If the language gets jargon-y, our on-the-day jargon-buster will call it out and add it to a living dictionary on the wall, so nobody's left behind.\n\n**Lunch: co-created by all of us**  \nLunch is potluck - bring a dish or something to share - after all, they say \"it takes a village\". This mean we eat together, and we clean up together too: everyone's asked to wash their own plate and pitch in with the tidy-up afterwards. It's a small thing, but it's very much the point.\n\n**Afternoon: what's already happening in Sussex**  \nThe afternoon is led by _13 Richmond Terrace_, a community house in central Brighton, and turns toward the communities already up and running across the region — what they've built, what they've learned, and what they need next. We'll look at the practical routes into community living that don't require setting up a co-op, as well as the ones that do. We'll be building a live map of these routes, and running a Give & Get board where people and projects can post what they're offering and what they're looking for.\n\nWe'll close the day together, with space to reflect on what's landed and, if there's appetite for it, to talk about what a next gathering could look like.\n\n \n\n### Family-friendly\n\nKids are very welcome - after all, they are integral in our village. We'll have a corner set up with toys, colouring paper, and crayons throughout the day. Parents and carers are responsible for their own children's safety and behaviour in the space.\n\n### Venue & Access\n\nWest Hill Hall has step-free wheelchair access and an accessible kitchen. If you have other access needs, let us know before the day and we'll do what we can to support you.\n\nThe hall is down a little side street off Compton Avenue…\n\n![](https://r2.dandelion.events/2023/08/28/12/43/34/d52f739f-8ba8-479c-9298-733a19f3b605/locationpic.png)\n\nAnd this is what the entrance to the hall looks like…\n\n![](https://r2.dandelion.events/2023/08/28/12/34/57/b08362aa-90ef-479b-b38c-9a19b7a0c7fb/westhillhall_cartoon.jpeg)\n\n####  \n\n#### One more thing\n\nThis is the first time we've tried gathering the community-living movement in Sussex in one room. If it resonates, we'd love it to be the start of something ongoing rather than a one-off. Come along and help us find out!\n\n**Enquiries:** [mags.psysoc@gmail.com](mailto:mags.psysoc@gmail.com) \n\n \n\n## Our Facilitators\n\n### Mags Houston\n\nMags Houston is a heart-led facilitator and community builder with roots in marketing, brand storytelling, and drug policy advocacy. Passionate about creating spaces for connection and collective growth, she has been curating and hosting events with The Psychedelic Society since 2020 - from sell-out Speed-Friending nights to intimate socials and talks exploring psychedelic science and culture.\n\nHer commitment to UK drug policy reform, in particular medical cannabis and psychedelics, led her to running a medical cannabis study with Prof David Nutt's charity, Drug Science, as well as building marketing initiatives for Releaf, one of the UK's most successful medical cannabis clinics.\n\nBased in Brighton since early 2023, Mags co-founded Connection Jam, an alternative social blending play, movement, and authentic connection, which ran for two years. She is also a qualified Singing Mamas Community Leader, running two regular singing circles for her local community in Portslade and Shoreham-by-Sea. She loves to create spaces that weave together her insights from Authentic Relating, Internal Family Systems, and tantric communication training.\n\n### Dan Simpson\n\nDan Simpson is a facilitator, trainer, and workshop designer who has spent over 15 years helping groups collaborate, communicate, and navigate complexity together — working directly with organisations and as an associate, from strategy and stakeholder sessions for businesses to engagement and community programmes for charities and the public sector.\n\nTrained in Authentic Relating up to Level 3 with ART International, alongside Nonviolent Communication and Liberating Structures, Dan designs every session with care and psychological safety in mind, combining experiential learning, reflective practice, and a strong understanding of group process — with a light touch, warmth, and a genuine care for the people in the room.\n\nHe currently leads suicide prevention training and self-care skills sessions for trainee medics, organisations, and the public with Start the Conversation and Olly's Future, and delivers RSHE sessions in secondary schools for Split Banana.\n\nBased in Brighton, Dan led a workshop earlier this year at Burning Nest called \"Who Wants to Live Together?\", exploring what it actually takes to build a life alongside others — a session that has directly shaped and inspired Living In Community.\n\n \n\n### **Iona Steen**\n\nIona has diverse interests  including  system change, and creating systems that will be resilient in the face of climate change, such as co-housing. \n\nHer founding director Future Folk Sussex a mutual home ownership society (MHOS) for five years worked toward purchasing a co-housing site in Sussex, but has since disbanded. She is now member of an urban co-living community in central Brighton called 13 Richmond Terrace, which is set up using a private morgage.\n\nProfessionally, Iona works as an hospital doctor in Brighton and also works for a charitable organisations known as Helen Bamber Foundation and Medical Justice in London as a forensic doctor preparing medical legal reports for asylum seekers.  \n \n\n### **Ellie** Hale\n\nEllie has a deep passion for communal living and community. For the last 15 years she has lived in and helped grow communal houses, and poured a lot of energy into co-organising meetup communities and activist groups - learning a huge amount about what it takes to live and work effectively and harmoniously alongside other humans along the way. Ellie currently lives in co-living community in centre of Brighton with eight community members. \n\nEllie was the Executive Director of a CIC called Catalyst coordinating around 100 partners from nonprofit, philanthropy and digital sectors around a shared mission of _‘shaping liberatory technology for just and regenerative futures’_.\n\n \n\n## Our Collaborators  \n\n### 13 Richmond Terrance\n\n13 Richmond Terrace is an urban co-living community in the heart of Brighton, home to eight members — six adults and two under-18s — living together in a large Regency property they bought and renovated as a community. After years spent trying to purchase a co-housing site in Sussex through the MHOS model and hitting one barrier after another, they scaled back the vision and found another way in: a four-person mortgage, with other members living alongside as lodgers or on residencies.\n\nSince starting in 2025, the house has grown into a small hub for the wider community — its living room doubles as an event space hosting music, theatre, comedy, and community gatherings, and the household regularly welcomes guests and volunteers for stays of up to two weeks, as well as longer artistic or maintenance residencies. At the centre of it all are shared meals and shared creative projects, held together by a focus on community and resilience in the face of climate tipping points.\n\n- [Community website](https://13richmondterrace.org/ )\n- [Diggers & Dreamers listing](https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/community/13-richmond-terrace)\n\n### **Raft**\n\nRaft is built on a simple idea: every relationship worth having - romantic, friendship, family - takes co-creating and co-captaining  \nNo one gets to be a passenger, and no one has to steer alone. We design events and workshops that give people the tools, the frameworks, and the shared experience to build that kind of relationship - together.\n\nRaft is run by Mags Houston and Dan Simpson - sometimes together and sometimes solo - and is built on the spirit of bringing people together with intention. Their events and workshops help people connect and build healthier relationships of every kind - from social gatherings to structured sessions like our relationship check-in workshop.",
  "endsAt": "2026-11-15T16:30:00Z",
  "locations": [
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      "longitude": "-0.1443279",
      "name": "West Hill Hall, Compton Avenue, Brighton and Hove, Brighton, UK"
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  "mode": "community.lexicon.calendar.event#inperson",
  "name": "Living In Community: Sussex",
  "startsAt": "2026-11-15T10:00:00Z",
  "status": "community.lexicon.calendar.event#scheduled",
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