The picture at left was the main entrance to the Rhizome Collective's
warehouse. When it began in 2000, it was a burnt out shell of a
building with an asphalt parking lot in the center. After the removal
of the asphalt, it was changed into a lush, thriving garden.
Wood mulch that was otherwise destined for the landfill was collected for free local tree trimming businesses and spread across the
courtyard. Rhizome Collective's warehouse/living space closed in 2009, after nin amazing years, but their inspirational work lives on!
Updates: A DREAM FULFILLED: August 14th, 2009
Hello. We hope you all are well. :)
After many, many, many years (and many, many more meetings)
A-Welcome-To-All: We Invite You, Olympia Ecovillage partnered with the Rescue Community and together we finally have
achieved our dream and we have our first house (with more to come soon)
up and open and we are now accepting new members into the first home of
our wonderful community!
A-Welcome-To-All: We Invite You is named as such because we extend a
welcome to all, and we invite you. We, along with the Rescue Community, have not yet created an official
name for our combined groups.
Print out our below flyers for information about visiting our community
for 7 days for an introduction or an internship. We have several
introduction methods so that people of all financial backgrounds are
welcome.
Even if you can't make it to Olympia, we hope you can join our
online Community (that will have videos that we create later) that we
call the Peace Communities Social Networking Website and Online
Community with Member Profiles, Discussion Forum, Event Listings,
Photos & Slideshows, Custom Video Players, Real-time Activity
Stream and much more found by clicking here: Peace Communities.
Our Ecovillage Community has rooms available and
openings. Free hugs. Will reduce rent for help w/ b & b. Sometimes,
we also have work/trade openings so please don't let finances stop you
from contacting us.
Questions we hear often are below with our answers.
Do you rent to first time renters and people new to ecovillages and intentional communities? Yes.
Do you require recent rental history or rental references? No. But we do require personal references from two friends or family.
Do you rent to people and college students sharing the home? Yes.
Is this home near a bus stop? Yes. The buses stop less than one block
from our home and pick up every 15 minutes most of the day.
Is there parking space? Yes.
Is heat, utilities and all electric included? Yes.
Is there any application fees or credit check? No, everyone deserves a chance.
Is there any additional pet fee or pet deposit? No, everyone deserves a chance.
Do you have a garden? Yes, we have a large garden in back and a patio.
Is TV OK? Yes, we already have a Direct TV satellite up but you would have to pay an extra fee to get it turned on. Is this home friendly towards illegal drugs and 420? Sorry, no. What you do off the property is up to you but we do not permit it to be used or stored in our home especially because reckless behavior with such items can cause us to lose our home that we worked to get for many years.
Does the room come with a TV and DVD player? Yes, both have a remote. It also
comes with a Popular DVD library full of movies and documentaries and progressive, activist films from all over the world that you can watch. Watching
movies and documentaries or talking about great movies are great community building forms
of entertainment.
Is there a TV in the living room? No, and we have no plans on placing a TV in our living room.
Smokers OK? Yes, but never inside the house. Outside only please and never in main walkways.
Why didn't you email me? Probably because you didn't include a
telephone number along with an email telling us about you. If you don't
intend to send a telephone number please, no offense, but please save
your time and don't send us an email. Life is too good and beautiful
for lengthy email back-and-forth exchanges in front of a computer so we
prefer to use the phone.
If I pay for it now can I move my things in now? Yes.
We do not contact people who do not provide a telephone number. Thanks everyone.
The Peace Communities is Looking for Partner Organizations to Share Space in Olympia. We are also looking for Partner Organizations, businesses and individuals who are willing to finacially help us make this dream come true.
Dear friends,
The Olympia Ecovillage, serving the Olympia, Washington area for over 7 years, has partnered with several progressive organizations to form the Peace Communities. Among the many progressive organizations that have joined the Peace Communities thus far are the Mutualist Project members of the Z Media Institute (ZMI) 2007 Alumni, the Olympia Ecovillage/We Invite You, The Beauty of Barter, Imagine Seven, the Organizers of the Fifth Annual A World Beyond Capitalism Conference and organizers of the Do-It-Yourself Multimedia Creation Center. We have also have had conversations with the Evergreen Infoshop about possibly sharing a space and we welcome more Campus and Student-run organizations. Peace Communities is looking for More Partner Organizations to work towards Sharing Space in Olympia. We would like to work with several other organizations or progressive businesses to share the cost of a house, or transform a downtown or West Side warehouse into a shared space (as was successfully accomplished by the Rhizome Collective http://www.rhizomecollective.org ).
In addition to rental space, we will offer the use of free-of-charge shared webhosting space, help designing a website for your group, free-of-charge announcement space in our newspaper, "Natural Learning" with a circulation of 5,000 issues, 24 hours access to a feminist library and a secure room with a women's empowerment audio/video studio equipment. To see a small list of some of the recording and audio equpment that the freeschool currently has please click here: PDF Flyer or Document Flyer.
"The Rhizome Collective is a consensus-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based on Austin, Texas, USA. The collective was founded in 2000 and operates an Educational Center for Urban Sustainability and a Center for Community Organizing."
"The Rhizome Collective operates out of three warehouses on Allen Street in East Austin. These warehouses and the 1/3 acre (1,300 m²) on which they sit make up the Rhizosphere. In addition to housing the collective, the Rhizosphere is used as a space for the development of urban sustainability practices."
"The Rhizosphere hosts space for organizations such as Austin Indymedia, the Austin Zine Library, the Inside Books Project, which ships reading material to prison inmates, Bikes Across Borders, and Food Not Bombs."
The idea to create a housing and community space collective in Olympia, has been in the research, cost analysis and forming process for many years. It is now our desire to rent additional space within the next year. Our next public forum will be held at:
We welcome all individuals, organizations and progressive businesses to participate in these conversations. We are grateful for help that we receive from all individuals and organizations, however, on order to maintain our education independence we are not accepting applications from government groups, religious groups or multinational corporations.
"If you are interested please send us an email by clicking on 'contact.' Thank you.
