Sarah Best
Storytelling, Advocacy, Fundraising & Acquisitions Circles
Sarah is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies doing participatory action fieldwork with the JVCLT, researching how alternative communities challenge dominant cultural stories about nature and community, and how they foster a sense of place, belonging, and spiritual meaning.
“I originally started working with the JVCLT as part of my PhD research. I was interested in intentional communities, so I reached out to Mary-Kate about that, and she said,
‘Yeah, come and check this out! We're doing a visioning exercise retreat.’
That first visioning meeting was really inspiring. I immediately wanted to be on board. That was a great way to jump into it.
My research focuses on different ways that we connect with, and relate to, the land. This overlaps a lot with my own spiritual orientation, which is very nature-based, grounded in nature and place.
A lot of my fondest childhood memories are of just being outside, playing in nature, having wondrous, awe-inspiring connections with the natural world. That has steered my life in wanting to protect the natural world, and has given me a real sense of reverence for and connection with it. Finding people in communities who are working towards that is really exciting.
The JVCLT is about creating affordable housing, but it's also a lot more. There's movement towards radical system change, transforming how we live in community, and modelling ways of living sustainably on the land. You can't really have environmental well-being without social well-being. They go hand-in-hand, and ensuring all people are housed and have a healthy place to call home is foundational to this work.
That's what's made the JVCLT really attractive to me, those twin streams of research and spirituality.
Our modern world is isolating. Radical, systemic transformation is not easy to do as individuals. Being part of a collective, with all the different nonprofits and CLTs who are a part of this larger movement of incredible, dedicated people, trying to foster resilient, connected communities, it's inspiring. It's exciting and energizing!”
Q- Which of your skills and talents align with this work?
“I really enjoy storytelling and I would say that I'm a pretty good writer. I do really love writing and I've loved how this work with the JVCLT has given me an opportunity to undertake collective writing projects, like the blog posts, the website and grant proposals where we've all contributed. It's been really cool. It's transformed my thinking of writing as a solo act to something that can be more collaborative.
And I really like digital storytelling mediums like film. It's not something I'm super skilled at yet, but it's something that I enjoy and I'm happy about the opportunity to do more.”
Q- What do you envision?
​
“In Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira writes about how it's impossible to imagine what the future will look like because we don't really know what this something better we're working towards is. I agree, but I personally also take inspiration and influence from speculative fiction for what I see as being possible, because what is fiction really, if not a way of imagining different possibilities and futures–both the good and the bad?
Lately, I've been really interested in the genre of solarpunk, which is a genre of speculative fiction, but also a real socio-cultural movement going on right now, envisioning different sustainable futures where humans and nature and technology live harmoniously and collectively in mutual flourishing. It's decolonial, anti-racist, and post-capitalistic. It moves away from ideas of scarcity towards creating abundance in the present for current and future generations. Social justice is key.
It is a kind of fiction for sure, but it's also happening all over the world in small pocket communities, like the JVCLT and the JVG, where there is this focus on things like renewable energy, people working together, sharing resources, and living in more collective, communal ways that are not really in line with mainstream systems and capitalistic expectations.
I see solarpunk happening here–community land trusts are often included in solarpunk models, as there is a focus on land stewardship and the importance of reciprocity for living with the land in interconnected relationships. My vision for the future is a solarpunk future.”
Q- Who are your heroes?
“Donna Haraway, who's written The Cyborg Manifesto and Staying with the Trouble, writes a lot about human and other species connections, and she has influenced a lot of my thinking.
And David Abram, an ecophilosopher who wrote The Spell of the Sensuous has been really influential to me. Robin Wall Kimmerer is also one of my biggest inspirations–I really love Braiding Sweetgrass and a lot of her other writings. She and other Indigenous authors have been so influential for thinking about how Indigenous wisdom and Western scientific knowledge can be woven together in powerful ways, if we are willing to make space for different ways of knowing and being. And Starhawk, too, whose ecofeminism I find very moving.
And then also people like Mary-Kate and Mike who are working to transform community, really doing that important groundwork that I think is needed for building something better and beautiful.
And definitely my grandmother. Who I am today, who I have worked towards being, is very much in her essence and image. She expanded perception beyond the realms of the ordinary, in ways not aligned with societal expectations, but thinking outside of the box. She was very creative and artistic, and those are things I really value.
She's inspired me to see the beauty in the world and to want to play a part in creating some of that beauty.”